I’m contemplating heading down to Abilene in a few weeks for Lectureship, since I have some vacation days available (it’d be short notice for my boss, so I don’t know if it’s possible at this point).  I checked the speaker list today to see who would be there, and I found the name of my favorite writer and preacher: Brian McLaren.

Right now I’m not sure what to think.  I’ve resolved (more than once) over the last year to dig a little deeper into McLaren’s beliefs than the blurbs, blog postings, and sound bites I’ve typically seen.  I do remember actually liking More Ready Than You Realize.  So I bought A Generous Orthodoxy, and I’ve tried to listen to some lectures/sermons, with my mind as open as possible. (continue reading…)

"How can I win with just one voter?"

Some subpar reasoning from one of the prominent leaders of Emergent and progressive evangelicalism:

“I’ve only met one person in my travels in recent months who has said he is voting for McCain, and that was because he was an admittedly single-issue voter,” Mr. McLaren said. “Nearly all the vocal people I’ve met are enthusiastic about Obama. Based on the people I’m in front of as a speaker, I’d never guess the poll numbers are as close as they are.”

This is a pretty limited perspective. It would be like me saying, “I’ve only met two people in all my travels who were actually born in China.  Based on the people I talk to, I’d never guess there were a billion Chinese people walkin’ around.” Unfortunately for me, there are, in fact, a billion Chinese people.  And unfortunately for Mr. McLaren:

While national polls show Mr. McCain to be neck and neck with Mr. Obama, a survey from the authoritative Barna Group shows that Mr. McCain holds a commanding lead among evangelicals, with 61 percent to Mr. Obama’s 17 percent.

I find it hard to believe that he thinks he’s speaking in front of a representative sample of evangelicals.

Washington Times via Between Two Worlds

[Disclaimer: This post may make me seem divisive, but I don't intend it to.]

Why is the progressive Christian movement - led in part by Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and others - so obsessed with finding common ground? I’m hearing it everywhere.  Common ground between Christianity and Islam, between evangelicals and “post-evangelicals”, orthodox and neo-orthodox, traditional and emergent…. It seems to be the answer to everything.

But is common ground really that important? In a lot of situations people say, “the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us.”  But is that really true?  Are the things that unite Christianity and Islam greater than the things that divide us?  Are the things that unite the theologies of Mark Driscoll and Rob Bell greater than those that divide them?  I guess it depends on your perspective.

If you feel, as some do, that the heart of Jesus’ message was changing this world in the here-and-now, the answer is yes.  If you think of salvation as liberations from physical constraints like poverty, oppression, and emotional scars, the answer is yes. But if you think that the message of Christ is bigger than here, and more lasting than now, the answer gets more complicated. (continue reading…)

As I thought a little bit more about the tendency I discussed in my last post, other instances of the progressive double standard came to mind.  The most glaring is all the flack Mark Driscoll has taken for pointing out bad theology, particularly at last year’s Convergent Conference (my thoughts here).

It seems that every time he steps out and tries to speak the truth about the poor theology of Emergent leaders, he gets chastised.  The sentiment seems to be along these lines: Who are you to say what is good and bad theology?  To many this sounds righteously indignant.  Unfortunately the people who say it are often doing the same thing themselves.

I keep mentioning McLaren’s new book, but it fits here, too. It seems to be nothing but a treatise on the invalidity of the “conventional” (read traditional or conservative) view of Jesus, and the truth of the “emerging” view.  He mocks traditional doctrines and sets them up with language that we can generously call “unfavorable”.  He is committing the same social crimes that Driscoll seems to be guilty of.  Pagitt is no different.

But Doug and Brian’s behavior will never be acknowledged as akin to Mark’s, because their follower’s believe them to be right, therefore they have the authority to correct and mock other theological positions.

John Wilson has some interesting thoughts about Brian McLaren’s new book, Everything Must Change.

McLaren is particularly misleading when he’s suggesting, as he does quite emphatically at times, that somehow the church went off the rails early on, and that only now are (some) Christians beginning to understand what Jesus was really saying. While McLaren occasionally adds nuances and qualifiers, this ahistorical account runs through the book. In this respect, his message is oddly reminiscent of the ahistorical narrative of church history that dominated the evangelical/fundamentalist churches of my youth. Between an idealized first-century church and the present moment, when the preacher was calling on you to make a decision for Christ, there loomed a great wasteland—all those centuries in which the church failed to heed the plain words of Scripture.

This reminds me of a story a friend told me in college. He was taking Church History at this tiny Christian school, and one day they came to a timeline in the textbook. The dates ranged from just before anno domini to the present day. At different point there were little flames which represented an explosive growth in the church or a revival of some sort. There were a dozen or so between 5 B.C. and A.D. 313. Then, apparently, the church just died. There were no expansions, no advances, no great teachers or movements. The church was in hibernation. Then, on a fine autumn day in 1517, the fire was back.

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