About 10 years ago, I was wrestling with questions about the Church and Christianity (and still am to a lesser extent!). Not from a point of doubting, but more from a theological angle. I had become disillusioned with what I perceived as too much individualism, consumerism and shallowness in modern, American Christianity. Quite frankly, I was asking questions like ”what is the Church” and “how does the Church be the Church in our society?”

I wasn’t the only one doing so. Around that time, a good friend of mine gave me a book called “A New Kind of Christain” by Brian McClaren to read. I devoured it and was moved, and in many ways, undone by it. In it I found McClaren asking many of those questions and giving some thought provoking and challenging answers. Many of which I agreed with, although some made me uncomfortable. My friend and I had several indepth conversations over beer and coffee trying to sort it out. I even wrote McClaren a long email, to which he graciously responded.

McClaren has gone on to have a broad influence in evangelical Christianity, being one of the leaders in the “Emergent Church” movement. On the positive side, Emergents have challenged the “isms” I mentioned above and called the Church to be more intentional about living out the Gospel, and not just shouting it at people. They have stressed the importance of authentic relationships and ministering to the poor and needy of this world. For that, I am thankful. However, it is because he has gained such an influence, especially with the younger generation, that I am writing this post.

I have watched McClaren and the Emergent Church movement as more than just an observerer. While I never fully entered into it, I dialogued and studied it along the way. As I did I became more concerned as I watched McClaren and some other Emergent leaders move further away from orthordox Christiantiy. Last month, McClaren published his latest book called “A New Kind of Christianity.” In this book, he has taken off the gloves and, as far as I am concerned, walked away from the Essential Beliefs of Christianity.

I am not the only one saying this, by a long shot. I am excerpting a couple of quotes from two different reviews. The first is a quote from a review by Scott McNight in the latest Christiantiy Today. I am using McNight because he is a New Testament scholar,  a friend of McClaren and is some areas, more Emergent in his thinking than I am. He sums up McClarens move:

Brian’s devil is Western evangelicalism, which he caricatures often, and his poking is relentless enough to make me say that he needs to write a book that simply states in positive terms what he thinks without using evangelicalism as his foil…Brian is not only poking evangelicals, he is also calling everything about Christian orthodoxy—from the ecumenical creeds through the Reformation and up to present-day evangelicalism—into question.

One example is a theme that McClaren uses in his book of a “maturing” God. While doesn’t say that God changes, but that our understanding of Him matured through the Bible. In other words, the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New Testament:

This God comes to maturity in Jesus: “The images of God that most resemble Jesus, whether they originate in the Bible or elsewhere, are the more mature and complete images; the ones less similar to the character of Jesus are the more embryonic and incomplete, even though they may be celebrated for being better than the less complete images they replaced.”

McNight rightly observes that McClaren has a ”fatal flaw” in using this kind of analysis:

Reading the Bible through the lens of Jesus Christ is indeed the way to go. But to use Jesus against the God of Israel he worshiped and prayed to and loved and obeyed pits us against what Jesus himself is doing.

One must also ask the root question: How do we determine what is less or more “mature”?

McClaren, in rejecting the God of Noah, who caused the Flood, actually states, “a god who mandates an intentional, supernatural disaster leading to unparalled genocide is hardly worthy of belief, much less worship” (p. 99).

Kevin DeYoung, a Reformed Pastor, has a long, detailed critique that I highly recommend. Take some time and read it all. He finishes it up with this quote:

All that remains is to highlight one final irony…For all the talk of being new (xi) and at the same time ancient (255), McLarenism is neither. It is old fashioned liberalism.

The message of McLarenism is pretty simple: God is love and wants everyone to be kind and inclusive and care for the poor and the environment. This is what Jesus was like, and we should be like Jesus. This is, of course, not wrong in so far as it goes. The Liberal/McLaren emphasis on the kingdom is right, their concern for the “other” is right, much of their ethics is right. But McLarenism, like liberalism, cannot be right. It has its emphases all out of proportion, its right statements thrown out of whack by all that is missing.

In McLarenism there is no original sin, no wrath, no hell, no creation-fall-redemption, no definite future, no second coming that I can see, no clear statement on the deity of Christ, no mention of vicarious substitution or God’s holiness or divine sovereignty, no ethical demands except as they relate to being kind to others, no God-offendedness, no doctrine of justification, no unchanging apostolic deposit of truth, no absolute submission to the word of God, nary a mention of faith and worship, no doctrine of regeneration, no evangelistic impulse to save the lost, and nothing about God’s passion for his glory. This is surely a lot to leave out.

McLaren’s Christianity is not new and certainly not improved. I don’t believe you can even call it Christianity. It is liberalism dressed up for the 21^st century. We can only hope this wave of liberalism fades as dramatically as did the last.

Sadly, I find this to be the most ironic part. Ten years ago, McClaren whole intial premise was that we are no longer in a “Modern” world, but have become a “Post-Modern” one. This drove him to ask questions and come up with new answers. It’s too bad, that as DeYoung states, all of his answers are indeed “Modern” ones from a century ago. There is nothing “new” in McClaren’s “New Kind of Christianity.”

Shane+