Much of what Brian McLaren says in his A New Kind of Christianity is appealing, some of what he says is truly insightful, but very little of what he says is new. I do not intend the last point as a criticism, but a simple statement of fact. As I noted in a previous tothesource email, McLaren's new kind of Christianity is easily identified as about a century and a half old. Anyone familiar with the history of Christianity would immediately recognize his views as in the tradition of 19th century liberal Christianity.
That doesn't mean that McLaren is wrong. It only means that what he proposes isn't new. Again, that isn't, in and of itself, a criticism. Newness isn't necessary or even ordinarily connected to trueness. Most of what is new blossoms quickly in the morning and withers by evening, passing away as yet another fad. So the question is, surely, not whether what McLaren proposes is new or not, but whether it is true or not.
The best way to go about this is to distinguish, very carefully, between diagnosis and the cure, between what is wrong with something and what to do about it. Errors can creep into our assessments of both. We can realize what is wrong (at least in part), but offer the wrong cure. ("This man is sick. Get me some leeches!") Or, at the other end, we can have a passion about a certain kind of cure, so fervent that it misguides our diagnosis of what's actually wrong. ("Killing things is wrong. If only everyone were a vegetarian, there would be no more wars.") McLaren commits both kinds of errors.
As to realizing what is wrong, McLaren makes clear that he has read about or experienced some real Christian lunkheads. He is rightly disturbed by Christians who quote the Bible as authority for everything from the support of slavery to a prop for the prosperity gospel and the rape of the environment, who rail against the destruction of marriage by homosexuals even while getting divorces at a rate that exceeds the pace for the general population, who conveniently forget all that stuff in the Old and New Testament about the poor and oppressed, who champion the wars of their own country as if they were the wars of God, and who cheerfully assume that they are marching toward heaven even as, without a shred of charity, they self-righteously condemn great swaths of humanity to hell.
I will not defend these types of lunkheads EXCEPT to say that Christianity was made for all lunkheads. And that exception proves the most important rule: Christianity is a religion for sinners. Lunkheads on the right; lunkheads on the left; lunkheads in the middle. I myself am a sinful lunkhead. We have a large organization dedicated to our ongoing healing, a kind of Lunkheads Anonymous. It is called the Church.
McLaren's cure is to declare a "new kind of Christianity" with a new church purified of the type of lunkheadedness that really bothers him. This purification is a matter of Providence. For McLaren, history is inevitably leading up to the fulfillment of his vision of what Christianity should be.
But we must note one very important thing: McLaren's passionate vision of the great cure actually determines his diagnosis of what is wrong in the first place (and hence who is and who is not a lunkhead). Let's begin with the vision, the great cure.
McLaren offers a vision that defines a new kind of Christianity embodying it, in which "tanks" will be "melted down into playground jungle gyms and machine guns…recast into swing sets," where "Christians and Jews and Muslims [will be] throwing a picnic together, and Lefties and Right-wingers [will be] forming a band and singing in harmony," and "nuclear weapons engineers [will be]…deployed to develop green energy." There will be no "gaps in the health-care system, so all can live a full life from childhood to senior citizenship." A generous social net at all levels will ensure that poverty itself is, if not eliminated, significantly reduced. In this new kingdom, both straight and gay marriage will be accepted [so he continually implies], and we will therefore leave behind the "binary and reactionary ideals of sexually repressive fundasexuality [i.e., heterosexual "fundamentalism"], on the one hand, and sexually unrestrained hedonism on the other." We will then be able to "pursue a practical, down-to-earth theology and an honest, fully embodied spirituality that speak truthfully and openly about our sexuality, in all its straight and gay complexity." We will also, at least ideally, all be vegetarians, and we will significantly reduce, if not eliminate, our dependence of fossil fuels. Most importantly, this is all not just a pious wish. This new Christianity will be—must be—embodied in history in this world. We therefore shall give up all notions of hell, and any notion of heaven or an afterlife that contradicts the this-worldly vision.
We note two things about the connection between his diagnosis and cure, between what he thinks is wrong with Christianity and his vision of what the new Christianity should be.
First, as was the case with liberal 19th century Christianity, McLaren's vision is indistinguishable from that of the secular left. He chides his fellow evangelicals for defining their understanding of Christianity in terms of the political far-right. But it doesn't take much effort to see that McLaren has defined his understanding of the new Christianity in terms of the political far-left. The fundamental error in both is this: since Christianity is merely being added on top, it can just as easily be subtracted. It is not essential; it adds nothing but religious veneer and enthusiasm. In short, if McLaren's vision is merely that of the secular left, Christianity is at best superfluous; at worst, it is being used as a convenient but ultimately disposable tool.
Second, his vision both defines and consequently distorts his diagnosis. McLaren is rightly disturbed that Christians have used the Bible to uphold slavery, but doesn't seem to be disturbed by the historical connection between liberal theology and support of abortion. He rightly cringes when Christians use the Bible for the uncritical support of capitalism, but not that other Christians have used the Bible for uncritical support of Marxism or socialism. He correctly rejects quoting the Bible as giving license for the rape of the environment, but seems unaware of the equally unbiblical danger of worshiping nature (thereby allowing debatable issues, like the need to combat global warming, to define his vision of Christian utopia). Certainly it is hypocritical for Christians to rail against the destruction of marriage by homosexuals even while getting divorces at record speed, but is the answer to embrace homosexual marriage? Granted it is shameful for Christians to conveniently forget all that stuff in the Old and New Testament about the poor and oppressed, but is the answer to support the welfare state? It is indeed wrong to cheerfully assume that we are marching toward heaven and all who disagree with us are marching toward hell, but is the answer to eliminate both and try (as so many did in 20th century utopias) to create a heaven on earth?
What if both sides were wrong, and not just, as each claims, the other side? What if Christianity, real Christianity, taught us exactly this very truth?
It would seem, then, that instead of collapsing Christianity into either a secular right or left political-economic program, we ought to dig down deeply and find out if the new kind of Christianity that we so desperately need is really the old kind that we've covered up with a this-worldly vision of what heaven should be like (if only all the lunkheads would step out of the way).
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