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Revision as of 13:46, 11 March 2007 editWill3935 (talk | contribs)1,982 edits took out mention of antinomianism until I decide which source to use on this. I think we should only cite prominent critics (and not little known authors).← Previous edit Revision as of 14:02, 11 March 2007 edit undoFrank Thomas (talk | contribs)59 edits →BiographyNext edit →
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:I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord (''A Generous Orthodoxy'', 260, 262, 264). :I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord (''A Generous Orthodoxy'', 260, 262, 264).


McLaren's postmodern approach to morality also causes him to express a lack of certainty on issues such as homosexuality, saying things such as "Frankly, many of us don't know what we should think about homosexuality." McLaren's postmodern approach to hermeneutics and Biblical understanding prompts him to take a less judgmental approach towards issues considered controversial by fundamentalists, such as homosexuality. "Frankly, many of us don't know what we should think about homosexuality."


Positions such as these have caused many participants in the ] such as ] to distance themselves from McLaren. Positions such as these have caused many participants in the ] such as ] to distance themselves from McLaren.

Revision as of 14:02, 11 March 2007

Brian McLaren (front) and Tony Jones (back), Yale Theological Conversation, Yale Divinity School, February 2006; Photograph: Virgil Vaduva

Brian D. McLaren is a prominent, controversial voice in the Emerging Church movement. He was recognized as one of TIME magazine's "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America," and is the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland.

Biography

Brian McLaren was born in 1956. He graduated from University of Maryland, College Park with degrees in English (BA, summa cum laude, 1978, and MA, 1981). His academic interests include Medieval drama, Romantic poets, modern philosophical literature, and the novels of Dr. Walker Percy. He is also a musician and songwriter.

After several years of teaching English and consulting in higher education, he left academia in 1986 to become the founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, a nondenominational church in the Baltimore-Washington region. The church has grown to involve several hundred people, many of whom were previously unchurched. In 2004, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Carey Theological Seminary in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Many of the books that McLaren has authored, including the "A New Kind of Christian" trilogy, deal with Christianity in the context of the cultural shift towards postmodernism. McLaren is a proponent of the emerging church movement, which rejects what emergents perceive to be the influence of modernism in the Evangelical church in favor of a postmodern epistemology which guides their faith and practice.

"I don’t like to use the word 'objective.' It’s not a Biblical word. I also find the word 'known' problematic." -- Brian McLaren

Applying this epistemology to his theology, McLaren concedes, on pp.80-81 of More Ready Than You Realize, that he does not know why Jesus had to die. His rejection of absolute truth also prevents McLaren from dogmatically stating that non-Christians must become Christians.

I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain within their Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish contexts … rather than resolving the paradox via pronouncements on the eternal destiny of people more convinced by or loyal to other religions than ours, we simply move on … To help Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, and everyone else experience life to the full in the way of Jesus (while learning it better myself), I would gladly become one of them (whoever they are), to whatever degree I can, to embrace them, to join them, to enter into their world without judgment but with saving love as mine has been entered by the Lord (A Generous Orthodoxy, 260, 262, 264).

McLaren's postmodern approach to hermeneutics and Biblical understanding prompts him to take a less judgmental approach towards issues considered controversial by fundamentalists, such as homosexuality. "Frankly, many of us don't know what we should think about homosexuality."

Positions such as these have caused many participants in the emerging church movement such as Mark Driscoll to distance themselves from McLaren.

In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network. But, I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake. -- Mark Driscoll

McLaren has been active in networking and mentoring church planters and pastors since the mid- 1980s; and has assisted in the development of several new churches. In spite of the intense criticism leveled at McLaren by Evangelical leaders, he remains a popular speaker for campus groups and retreats as well as a frequent guest lecturer at seminaries and conferences, nationally and internationally. His public speaking covers a broad range of topics including postmodernism, Biblical studies, evangelism, apologetics, leadership, global mission, church growth, church planting, art and music, pastoral survival and burnout, inter-religious dialog, ecology, and social justice.

McLaren favors what he calls a "generous" approach to biblical hermeneutics. His critics maintain that his apparent subjectivism leads to theological liberalism. MacLaren, however, claims that the foundational and objective hermeneutics of Evangelicals leads them to political conservatism. MacLaren has been an outspoken advocate of liberal social causes as evidenced in his opposition to the invasion of Iraq.

Though McLaren is opposed to what he asserts are oppressive, Evangelical, biblical hermeneutics, his own hermeneutic seems somewhat latent. In fact, McLaren's own view on interpreting the Bible seems to call for others to rethink the whole process of interpretation. In his book, A New Kind of Christian, McLaren writes (via his main character Neo),

"Our interpretations reveal less about God or the Bible than they do about ourselves. They reveal what we want to defend, what we want to attack, what we want to ignore, what we're unwilling to question..."

Quotes such as these reveal the influence Derrida and Foccault's postmodern philosophy of language has had on McLaren. For McLaren, the locus of meaning has shifted from the author or the text to the reader. As a postfoundationalist, he questions not only the evangelical claim to certainty in faith, but also the ability to interpret according to authorial intent.

MacLaren is on the international steering team and board of directors for Emergent Village; a growing, generative friendship among missional Christian leaders, and serves as a board member for Sojourners and "Orientacion Cristiana". He formerly served as board chair of International Teams, an innovative mission organization with 15 nationally registered members including the United States office based in Chicago, and has served on several other boards, including Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle, and Off The Map. When asked if he considers himself to be an evangelical, McLaren said:

"I don't want to give any impression that I want to stay where I'm not wanted."

McLaren is married and has four young adult children. He has traveled extensively in Europe, Latin America, and Africa, and his personal interests include ecology, fishing, hiking, kayaking, camping, songwriting, music, art, and literature.

Bibliography

  • The Church on the Other Side (Zondervan, 1998)
  • Finding Faith (Zondervan, 1999)
  • A New Kind of Christian (Jossey-Bass, 2001)
  • More Ready Than You Realize: Evangelism as Dance in the Postmodern Matrix (Zondervan, 2002)
  • A Is for Abductive (Zondervan, 2002)
  • Adventures in Missing the Point (Emergent/YS, 2003)
  • Church in Emerging Culture: Five Perspectives (Zondervan Emergent/YS, 2003) Leonard Sweet (General Editor), with contributors Andy Crouch, Brian D. McLaren, Erwin Raphael McManus, Michael Horton, Frederica Matthewes-Green
  • The Story We Find Ourselves In (Jossey-Bass, 2003)
  • A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN (Zondervan, 2004)
  • The Last Word and the Word After That (Jossey-Bass, 2005)
  • The New Kind of Christian Trilogy - Limited Edition Boxed Set (A New Kind of Christian; The Story We Find Ourselves In; The Last Word and the Word After That) (Jossey-Bass, 2005)
  • The Secret Message of Jesus : Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything (W Publishing Group, April 2006)

External references and links

Critical references

Newspaper Articles

  • "Evangelical Author Puts Progressive Spin On Traditional Faith" (Washington Post-September 10, 2006)

Notes

  1. The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right by Robert Lanham, Penguin/New American Library, 2006.
  2. The Sinner's Guide to the Evangelical Right by Robert Lanham, Penguin/New American Library, 2006.

See also

Categories: