Echoes in Eternity

"The real future, as I see it, isn't an intramural conversation among Evangelicals (as many think), or even among Western Christians (as others think), but rather an expanding conversation among progressive evangelicals, missional mainline Protestants, progressive Catholics, and postcolonial Christians from around the world. Its future may or may not still use words like emergent, emerging, etc., but the cat is out of the bag. Deep questions are being raised, and when that happens, you can take two predictions to the bank, one of them being that you can't get the questions back in the bag, and the second being that some people will try.

The latter will say, "I was OK when we were talking about making church more up-to-date, culturally relevant, and successful (i.e. large), but when we start asking deeper questions - about theology and justice, for example - I'm checking out." Now I've never been against making the church more up-to-date, culturally relevant, and effective, as beset as that project is with dangers, toils, and snares. (The obvious alternative - keeping the church out-of-date and culturally irrelevant and ineffective - has its problems too.) But I've repeatedly laid my cards on the table: I don't think the problems in the Christian religion are cosmetic. I think we have some deep issues to deal with - issues of theology, justice, narrative, and identity." - Brian McLaren

So not only does McLaren think that traditional theologically conservative evangelicals aren't part of the solution but merely the problem, he also thinks the problem with Christianity is its foundation, rather than some of its fruit (or some of its members) and the methods involved. And here I thought he wanted a conversation with us. Instead, he admits that he only wants to talk in his own personal echo chamber where no one seriously questions his "progressive" form of Christianity. Didn't the whole Emerging Church movement grow around the premise that the problem with evangelical Christianity was that it had no room for dissenting questions or views?

The other sad thing I note is that he continually thinks he's original, like he is asking questions that no one has ever asked (or answered). Either he's intellectually dishonest or a solid seminary (or just an honest study of church history in general) would have done him a world of good. Probably a little of each.