February 23, 2011

Back in the 1970s comedian Flip Wilson had a shtick—Reverend Leroy of the Church of What's Happening Now. Part of the laugh was the notion that a church should focus itself entirely on the passions, fads, confusions, and issues that happen to be consuming us in the present moment. The problem with the Church of What's Happening Now is that tomorrow it is the Church of What Was Happening Yesterday. Rather than being linked to eternity, it is hopelessly shackled to the impulses of a "present" that are already on their way to becoming passé. There are few ideas as dated as those that try to keep up with the times.

All that having been said, the Church is always in need of renewal and growth. It always has been, and always will be. That is the condition of the Church Militant, the Church as it struggles through history toward the great culmination when history itself comes to a close and we find ourselves in a new heaven and a new earth. Part of that struggle consists in attending to what is going on now in the world, and to how the Gospel must be proclaimed under changing conditions without changing its own essence. As the entirely orthodox John Henry Newman famously wrote "Growth is the only evidence of life." Many do feel that they find themselves in a dead church.

So it was with Emergent Church champion Brian McLaren. According to his own story, as a pastor he found himself trapped in a kind of evangelical Christianity, repeating the same formulas and Bible passages, offering the same assurances, and all the while feeling as if the church he was leading, was, like a long-dead vine, leading nowhere, drooping downward, devoid of life. He longed for a living church, a living faith, and the growth that naturally goes with being alive. For him that meant a radical break with the past, and an even more zealous affirmation of the future. "The call to be a Christian and a follower of God and of Jesus, that call is a call to the future and not a call to the past." He now proclaims an "evolutionary Christianity."

Careful. While some of what bothers McLaren may have merit, one thing must be made clear: Christianity is a call to the past, or it ceases to be Christianity and becomes mere froth and foam gliding on the currents of current opinion. Christianity's link to the past is what keeps it from being submerged in the passions and fads of our own, very particular time. It is only by being surely anchored to its origins that it can lift us up above our contemporary confusions, and guide us to make the future better than the present.

So, what about this notion of evolutionary Christianity? McLaren is confusing two distinct notions: the development of Christianity and the evolution of Christianity, the growth of something and the mere change of something. Let's look at this important distinction.

A thing can develop significantly over time, yet still remain itself and true to its origins, that is, to its essence. An oak tree is firmly anchored in its having been an acorn. And the acorn in becoming an oak, is only becoming more of itself as it grows over time. The same thing is true of the Church, and that is what Newman meant when he said "Growth is the only evidence of life." The living Church develops, becoming more of itself as it grows over time, rather than continually changing into something different so it can keep up with the times. It has great branches stretching up and out precisely because it has deep roots.

But that is much, much different than the meandering change of Darwinian evolution—and McLaren bids his fellow Christians to accept both a changing church and Darwinism. But Darwinian evolution is a winding and aimless series of changes governed only by the current pressures of what allows something to survive. That "something," whether it is an organism or a church, will shed anything of its past that it now finds useless, and latch onto anything that will allow it to survive until tomorrow. But tomorrow? Who knows?

That isn't growth. It's mere change. The Church of What's Happening Now. Mere change is all that can happen to a form of Christianity that cuts itself off from its past. It can—and will—float anywhere and everywhere. And that, it seems, is where Brian McLaren wants to take his emergent, evolutionary Christianity.

Let's assess two particulars of his notion of Evolutionary Christianity. First of all, how new is it, really? McLaren's Emergent Church declares (a) that Christianity should give up its obsessions with the past and focus on the future, (b) that Christians should not be concerned about obsolete, cold dogmas but burning social issues, and (c) that Darwin should be considered an apostle along with St. Paul. With all due respect, these are so 19th century. In hearing them, I don't feel like I'm being drawn to the future, but sucked back into the past. It's been done before, and has a technical, historical name: 19th Liberal Christianity. The future of Liberal Christianity was short. That is, in a very short time it ceased to be Christianity and became entirely defined by secular Liberalism. In throwing itself into the intellectual movements of the time, it soon became indistinguishable from the movements themselves.

Second, McLaren is miffed that many evangelical conservatives dismiss evolution outright. He then thinks that the solution is to accept Darwinism as gospel, and model the church upon it. He believes that Christians don't have to choose between Jesus or Darwin, but can have both. But that is a fundamental error, a failure to distinguish between the solid facts of evolution and the theory of Darwin. Evolution isn't the problem; Darwinism is the problem. As I've argued at length in my Darwin Myth, Darwin offered a purely secular theory of evolution, one that fit within the larger, anti-Christian secular materialist philosophy of the day. It was not the only theory of evolution, even in his own time. There were promising theistic accounts of evolution that specifically rejected Darwinism. So, Christians don't have to choose between Jesus and evolution. But contrary to McLaren's view, they do have to choose between Jesus or Darwin. If Christians choose Darwinism, they choose their own demise.

All that having been said, McLaren is influential, and he seems to be hitting a nerve. We'd like to give him a fair hearing. So, we'll be coming back to a deeper consideration of his books in the very near future.

Responses to Moral Hazard and College Debt:

What about the moral hazard in starting a pre-emptive war for which the proffered justification proves bogus? The perpetrators go their merry ways, and like Rumsfeld and Bush, profit from books exonerating themselves. The rest of the world will suffer the consequences of their folly for generations to come. - F. N.

Great article! Use to be, one consideration of legislators was whether a proposed law would have a detrimental effect on the character of the American people. Fast-forward to today and it seems the very intent of many legislators is to “de-moralize” the citizenry. - B. B.