NeoZine

He’s a worthy study:  he is complex, yet simple. Gracious, yet dogmatic. Novel, yet old-fashioned. So many listening were intrigued, but others were repulsed.

It was a live introduction to McLarenism: truly a one-of-a-kind, imaginative, entertaining speaker. He’s an activist par excellence for the Emergent Village, but oddly enough he loathes being called an “activist” or “spokesperson” in the Emergent Church movement.

“Nobody asked me to speak for them,” and the Emergent Church “is not a movement, it’s a Conversation,” he told a crowd of hundreds attending a Malone College event last night.¹ So really, this article should not be titled McLarenism, according to McLaren.

What a hooter! This reminds me of Microsoft. Remember when Mr. Gates tried to portray MS a benign member of the computing community? (We all know better today, I hope.)

Hopefully the listening audience knew better, too, about Mr. McLaren, since he’s on the Board of Directors at Emergent Village, and one of its founders. So when McLaren pretends to be a passive participant in the Emergent movement, he’s disingenuous at best (at worse, he’s lying). Here is a sample of the non-movement Conversation his organization promotes:

Emerging Theologians exists to produce scholarly thought that will shape Christian discourse, galvanizing women and men from a variety of ethic and geographic backgrounds who find themselves alienated within modern Christianity. — Emergent Village Website.

McLaren labels his activities a Conversation with Christianity (and other faiths). But Conversation is disingenuous, too.  It’s activism, pure and simple, not a Conversation.

1. He is clearly pushing an agenda (“Everything Must Change!”).
2. He is clearly dogmatic about his agenda (“If you think God has to hurt someone in order to forgive them, you really need to re-examine that…”).
3. He is clearly an activist—his own Web site says so, for goodness-gracious!
4. He repeatedly said he was an evangelist at the Malone College event.

How does he get away with it?

McLaren is an surely an activist, but with a camouflaged agenda. Salespeople do that if they can get away with it. (Remember this, young buyers of used autos: a salesperson pretends to have a friendly Conversation with you while, in fact, actually selling you a car!)

And camouflage is McLaren’s expertise. He is a skilled wordsmith.

Here is a wordsmith castigating the opposition: an entry on his Blog is titled “You’ve gotta love ‘em” (an endearing intro) where he ridicules a rather poor, uneducated Christian.² “Did the Lord make you a new creacher?” the writer asked McLaren. With a wink McLaren says “you gotta love” those ignorant “them” who don’t buy the Christianity he peddles. So why camouflage the disdain? Why pretend to be so magnanimous?

Such is McLarenism: it is an elitist philosophy with grand pontifications. And grand disdain.

A very kindly gentleman who certainly looks like father Abraham

He begins in gracious and gentle tones: “I hate putting pastors in that position of having to decide whether to join or not. The job is hard enough, just trying to love people and love God,” he told us. So McLaren is not a dogmatist? No, you think, here is a kind gentleman who looks like father Abraham. (Really!) Then suddenly disdain drips from his lips against “those people who have the idea that God can’t forgive anybody without hurting someone.” It was the Atonement he found so revolting. He called it “Penal Substitution”, emphasizing “Penal”. Such a devilish wordsmith! I’ve heard it called “Substitutionary Death” before, and maybe “Penal Justice”, but the twain combined rolls off his tongue emphasizing “Penal”.

• Listen to McLaren on “Penal Substitution”.

Would I cause offense if I said he’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? I hope we’re big enough to laugh at the pun. (But really, I mean it.)

Our own Michael Toth asked if there was any foundational truth that defines Christian belief. McLaren said “That’s a great question,” but then tossed it aside: “I’m not interested in a minimalist Christianity. I want to keep it all.” And with that erudite flourish, he dismissed the “great question”.

• Listen to The Michael Toth Question.

In a rather rude fashion he lied to Rick Yoerger. “Do you believe God communicates clearly with us in such a way that we can understand Him clearly?” Rick asked. “Yes,” McLaren answered curtly, and everyone chuckled. But he lied. He just spent an hour explaining how complicated it is to “get it right” and understand God’s Word. No, he does not think God communicates clearly.

Would I warn people against hearing McLaren? Absolutely not! McLarenism is a grand performance, like a magic act: a wink and a nod, a flourish, a twist and a turn, then viola! Which way did he go?

On the Other Hand…

Can I flip-flop a little, too? I am a sympathizer with this man’s agenda in many ways:

1. He rightfully criticizes Evangelical Christians for excluding women from significant ministry opportunities, as well as other ways that Christians have cozied-up to the Kosmos in the past.
2. He correctly identifies the Kingdom of God as the core message of Jesus, which is often downplayed among Evangelical Christians. (Although it’s not really the “Secret Message of Jesus” as he asserts.)
3. His burden to take the Church out of Church is highly laudable (although he doesn’t need to dump the Christian message in order to do it).

The tragedy of his life and message is that McLaren is just too old-fashioned! He may not even realize it, but his theology (and rhetoric) is old-school:

1. He is mostly Liberation Theology from the early 20th Century (which became popular in the 60s and 70s) among some Third World theologians (thus his interest in Third World theologians, poverty, justice, Kingdom of God, etc.).
2. His theology rehashes most of the old-Neo-Orthodoxy from the early 20th Century by Barth, Brunner and Bonhoffer, among others (they first developed “The Story”, not the Emergents).

Because McLarenism is so rooted in old-school liberal theology, the outcome will be the same: once the novelty and controversy wears off, it’s a whole bunch of ho-hum blah-blah-blah which really helps nobody, and most important—it has nothing to do with reaching Non-Christians, who could really give a sh** about The Conversation.

What I wish would happen is for McLaren to find his way to The Revolution which Jesus started. Now there’s something life-changing!

• Listen to The McLaren Debate.

Footnotes:

1. See Malone College, “Emerging Church Debate” –retrieved 3/31/2009. [↩]
2. See McLaren’s Blog, titled “you gotta love ‘em, cont’d.” – Retrieved 4/31/2009. [↩]

Related posts:

1. The Emergent Church