A book review of Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That are Transforming the Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2010).
Brian McLaren has established himself as an iconoclastic Christian thinker committed to discovering new forms of the Christian faith appropriate to our times. Author of a series of groundbreaking books, A New Kind of Christianity carries his arguments forward another important step, one that has proven controversial among conservative evangelicals who once considered him one of their own. The book, in part, is an answer to his critics, in part it is an indictment of them, and in part a conscious attempt to move forward with those who share his quest for a new Christianity in a new age.The book, in a sense, represents a new-age catechism containing ten questions and extended answers concerning the Bible, God, Jesus, the Gospel, the church, homosexuality, the future, pluralism, and how to move into the future. The point of the catechism is to chart new directions for the Christian faith. It represents McLaren's description of the quest. Depending on one's theology, the answers are either excitingly helpful or dangerously radical.
Those answers begin with a rejection of mainstream Christian thinking going back almost to the early church. McLaren contends that for most of our history, Western Christianity has been dominated by a Platonic, dualistic "Greco-Roman narrative." It is an "us-against-them" story line that has forced Christians to behave in narrow-minded and violent ways that are not in keeping with Christ. Among other things, it has foisted a false understanding of God on us. McLaren names this false Christian god, "Theos." He writes, "Theos loves spirit, state, and being, and hates matter, story, and becoming...So, having created a perfect world, now Theos is perfectly furious because it has been spoiled and is now decaying." (p. 42) McLaren argues that the new Christianity has to reject Theos and leap back over the centuries and rediscover the biblical God, Elohim, who is peace-loving and compassionate, as well as just. In doing so, we must also stop reading the Bible as if it is a code of laws or a legal constitution. What the Bible actually is, he writes, is "a portable library of poems, prophecies, historical, fables, parables, letters, sage sayings, quarrels, and so on." (p. 79) He understands that the Bible is a culturally-bound human artifact, but also believes it to be inspired in its diversity. Although the Bible retains its authority in McLaren's "new kind of Christianity," he subordinates that authority to Christ. We have to understand (and accept) that parts of the Bible represent an earlier, more primitive spirituality; Christ is the measure of what we take from scripture. McLaren embraces the Bible because when read in its original setting it helps us to "become more sensitive than ever to the wonderful dance of the Spirit of God" and the minds of it authors at critical times in the history of the faith (see p. 146).
Jesus, then, takes us beyond Theos and away from the Greco-Roman narrative to discover in the Bible that "the humble man of peace is Lord." He is the one we trust and give our allegiance to. Jesus is not about power but about love. In working through his view of Jesus, McLaren provides an extended discussion of the Gospel of John, which is often used to support a narrow, exclusivist understanding of salvation. He sees a different narrative in John, one with clear parallels to the Old Testament; and he concludes that Jesus did come come to save people from hell but to "launch a new Genesis, to lead a new Exodus, and to announce, embody, and inaugurate a new kingdom as the Prince of Peace." (p. 131)
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| Brian D. McLaren |
The last of McLaren's questions is, "How can we translate our quest into action?" He charts the evolution of human spirituality in the context of seven stages or successive quests, which he categorizes with colors. They are the quests for: survival (red zone); for security (orange zone), for power (yellow zone), for independence (green zone), for individuality (blue zone), for honesty (indigo zone), and for healing (violet). Each age or quest contains the seeds of the next quest, and the human race does not pass through each stage uniformly. Many are still "stuck" in older stages, and those trapped in an earlier quest reject, often angrily, the reality of the succeeding stage. McLaren believes that the cutting edge of spiritual evolution has not reached the indigo zone of honest and that our quest is now to move forward into the stage of healing the destructive consequences of the previous quests. It is a quest for peace (he prefers to use the African word, ubantu). He also imagines an eighth quest, as yet unborn, the quest for sacredness (ultra violet zone). The ultimate goal of human spirituality is the Kingdom of God, which lies still far in the future. Working toward the Kingdom is what gives our lives purpose and direction in the present.
One of the characteristics of those like McLaren who now reside in the indigo zone is a tendency to look down on people who are still inhabiting earlier zones—and attack them as being primitive or conservative or fundamentalists. He believes that the inhabitants of the indigo zone should resist that urge and, instead, seek to rise to the next level, the violet level of peace and healing. Indigo zone folks thus should not be defensive or prideful but look to the future with hope. McLaren is sure that there is a better world coming because that is God's will: "This is God's world. It is clearer to us than ever that God created a universe of expansion and evolution." As strong as resistance to growth and change might be, what abounds is "God's grace, God's invitation to grow into evert increasing aliveness, goodness, and love. So I cannot help but have hope, because God is present with us." (p. 240) McLaren concludes A New Kind of Christianity with several points of practical advice, among which is the admonition not to fight with those who resist but to gently move beyond them.
Conservative evangelicals don't like this book and have written a number of reviews highly critical of it. One of the most detailed is by Mike Wittmer in his blog, "Don't Stop Believing." In a series of postings he wrote in February 2010, Wittmer comments on each of McLaren's questions, sometimes dispassionately, sometimes with a little irritation, and sometimes with a disdain that matches the same disdain he feels McLaren has toward him and those like him. For those seeking "the other side of the story," Wittmer is a good place to start.
Mainline progressives, on the other hand, will find McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity a comfortable read. His description of the Greco-Roman captivity of the church and its false god, Theos, ring true. His use of scripture to make his points and the fresh perspectives he brings to the Bible are especially helpful. More largely, progressive readers will find fresh perspectives on things that they already believe or understand. McLaren doesn't so much break new ground as to provide additional tools for cultivating ground already dug.
Where McLaren is less than persuasive is in his sweeping rendition of human history as a series of quests. It sounds spiffy and all, but it really doesn't make much sense, and it perpetuates the view that prehistoric peoples' lives were always a struggle to survive. Not denying that it was, still one wonders if small bands of pre-historic humans living off the land struggled for survival any more than millions of homeless Americans who often don't know where their next meal will come from. As we watch people in the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa struggle for a voice and for power, it is clear that in our age the quest for power remains potent, almost omnipresent. And have we not been engaged for hundreds and thousands of years in a search for ubantu (santisuk in Thai)?
Besides the fact that it doesn't work historically, McLaren's color coded version of the human journey has a self-satisfied and slightly arrogant ring to it. He clearly believes that he and those who travel with him have moved ahead of all others in terms of human spiritual evolution. He dismisses his critics as inhabitants of the earlier stages of that evolution—people stuck in older quests. As hard as he tries to warn his readers (and remind himself) that arrogance and judgment is not the way forward, a thread of disdain for his adversaries winds its way through the text. He honestly believes that he knows more and sees with greater clarity, and he is not particularly humble about it. That's fine, but it really isn't helpful to assign his critics and large numbers of faithful Christians to a lower rung on the spiritual evolutionary totem pole—especially when that totem pole is largely fanciful anyway.
That being said, there is a great deal to commend in this book. It helps those who are searching for new ways to think about their faith to understand the sources of their discontent with the inherited traditions and doctrines of the church (the Greco-Roman narrative). It takes the Bible seriously while freeing scripture from biblical literalism and narrow constructions. Looking at the Bible through the lens of Christ and making him the measure of scripture provides a helpful, faithful, and Christ-like way to use the Bible as a resource without having to buy into the less happy aspects of the ancient text (such as those passages that subordinate women or the ones used to damn homosexuals).
A New Kind of Christianity is an important book. It addresses the feeling among many faithful Christians that something is wrong, that something no longer satisfies (or never did). It helps individuals who are seeking new directions to reconnect with the Bible in its own setting and to make sense of those new directions in light of the person of Jesus. It is, in sum, a catechism for the 21st century, a set of questions and answers that make sense for many faithful followers of Jesus in the real world of today.
Links for Brian D. McLaren
Official Website
Wikipedia article
