Nathan Gilmour, who knows way more about Greek philosophy than I ever will (and that is in fact saying something, since I actually do know quite a bit about Greek philosophy), recently raised some criticisms of Brian McLaren's treatment of Plato & Aristotle in A New Kind of Christianity. I thought about raising these same questions of Brian myself for part of the Q&R series we just did, but to be honest the questions were better coming from Nathan than from me anyway. Fortunately Brian was willing to respond to Nathan's concerns, and has posted his reply here.

Labels: A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren

Maybe it's because I'm in grad school, but it feels wrong to write a review of McLaren's book without citing all the other reviews I read in preparation for my own. I linked to a few in my post, but didn't even come close to scratching the surface of the ones out there that I looked at (which themselves were only a tiny fraction of all the ones out there now.) I've also included a few more decent reviews that have come out since I wrote my own. I certainly don't agree with all of these, and some even make me angry, but it is important to listen to people who think differently than yourself, and get multiple perspectives on any issue, so if you're interested in reading the good, the bad, and even the ugly, here you go:Mike Morrell - Brian & Spencer’s Excellent Adventure, On the McLaren Nay-sayers, The Excellency of Christ in ‘A New Kind of Christianity’, Brian McLaren: ‘I enthusiastically affirm the Apostles and Nicene Creeds. I’m a wholehearted Trinitarian.’

Labels: A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren

Here's the last of my questions for Brian McLaren about his most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity. You can read the rest here: Part I, Part II, Part III.

4) How do you respond to recent criticisms that you have mis-represented evangelical theology with your Greco-Roman six-line narrative?

Many forms of the real Christianity experienced on the ground by many people - in both Protestant and Catholic settings - has many of the negative elements of the six-line narrative I talked about. Of course there are positive elements right along with the negative ones, which brings us back to the "let's try to get beyond dualism, even though it's an ingrained habit for all of us" discussion we had earlier. Of course I'm not talking about the best idealized forms of the faith that every group holds in their hearts.

And of course, I said this in the book many, many times. Here's one example from p. 27:

Labels: A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren

Here's the third of my questions for Brian McLaren about his most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity. You can read the rest here: Part I, Part II.

Here's my third question:

3) In both your discussion of whether God is violent, and in your outline of the seven quests you seem to offer an evolutionary/developmental history of religions in which older, more primitive and more violent forms eventually progress and evolve into "higher" forms. I have a few concerns about this view. a) Doesn't this play into the Modern myth of progress whereby we believe our current forms of religion to be inherently superior to everyone else's (even if we admit that they're not yet fully evolved)? b) Is this even historically accurate? For instance, monotheism and polytheism have coexisted throughout history, many noble forms of polytheism still currently exist in our world today, and it doesn't seem as if one necessarily developed out of the other.

Great question. The other day I read through all the comments on a couple of blogs - well over two hundred - and several people brought this up, as did the CT review itself. First, as some people have already pointed out, to make a simple equation - evolution = modernistic progress - is pretty facile. There was a modernistic kind of evolutionary theory, and there are postmodern forms, and still other forms will follow no doubt. Similarly, to say that later is always superior or that more advanced is always good and less advanced is always bad is also simply ridiculous. That's like saying that lions are superior to grass, or that lions are good and grass is bad, when in fact lions can't survive without gazelles that eat grass, and when lions die, they fertilize grass that feeds gazelles. It's all connected and interdependent. So much of our us/them thinking flows from a set of modernist assumptions that a lot of us left behind a long time ago, or started trying to leave behind. Because they're deeply ingrained in all of us. And that's not bad! It's just there.

So let's talk about evolution. Evolution produces dinosaurs, ground sloths, and mastodons. My guess is that dinosaurs were more advanced in many ways than the primitive birds that outlived them and evolved into the birds we have today. And ground sloths could have been much more advanced in evolutionary terms - I'm just guessing here - than the tree sloths that still survive today, and mastodons may have been more advanced - I don't know - than the elephants that survive today. Many times, the more advanced forms become extinct and the more primitive forms survive. The key to survival isn't how advanced you are, but how adaptable you are, or how well suited you are to an environment that may or may not change. And on top of that, there are huge variables in how change happens ... like sudden meteor impacts and gradually advancing ice ages ... that mess up any simple schemas of progression.

So just as you said regarding monotheism and polytheism, when something new develops out of something else, it doesn't always replace it. Sometimes the two coexist for millennia. So you still have very primitive crocodiles that have hardly changed for millions of years, plus many species of lizards that have been evolving constantly into many new forms from common amphibian ancestors with the crocodiles - again, I'm just making this up, not knowing the details of crocodile and chameleon evolution. And there are times when adaptation involves losing features, losing previous advances, losing previous capacities ... so snakes lose their legs, and some cave species lose their eyes, and whales lose their legs and ability to walk on land.

That, to me, is a beautiful thing about evolution in God's creation, as opposed to a facile formulaic caricature of evolution. Survival of the fittest doesn't mean what so many people think it means - that everything moves towards one form surviving by eliminating all other forms. Evolution is this amazing random factory that produces novelty, interdependence, growth and challenge and development ... story as opposed to state.

I think it's a kind of fourth-grade understanding of evolution that makes all these false assumptions ... that newer is better, that newer replaces older, that advanced survive and primitive don't, that primitive is bad (or the reverse!) and so on. By the way, in an evolutionary mindset as I understand it, it could be that a hundred years from now, Evangelicalism, Mainline Protestantism, Catholicism, Pentecostalism, and Eastern Orthodoxy as we know them could all be tiny embattled minorities, having been largely replaced by vicious, ugly, and "primitive" forms of fundamentalism or magical prosperity theology ... Or Christianity and Islam and Judaism could be reduced to almost nothing through mutually assured nuclear destruction, and nearly everyone could have decided that it's just too dangerous to believe in one God. It makes me think of Paul in Romans and Jesus in John 15, reminding the early disciples that they shouldn't be arrogant: they're a branch that has been grafted in for a time, but if they don't bear good fruit, they won't remain in their blessed position.

Which brings some other factors into the mix: power, arrogance, and complacency. Let's say that you and I agree as Christians that theism is more true and "better" than atheism. Could it still be true that atheists have an important job to do, for some time at least - to keep theists from becoming too powerful, too arrogant, too complacent, and too challenge them to greater maturity? Or could it be that the doubts raised by atheists are the only thing that will push theists to a more mature understanding of God? (And of course, if atheists were in power, they would similarly need to be challenged by theists, or they would become no less powerful, arrogant, and complacent. And if atheism were in fact truer and better - as atheists believe, we theists could still bring some blessings and benefits to atheists they wouldn't have without us.)

I started watching this science fiction show Caprica recently, and I think they're playing with these kinds of questions in that series, with monotheists and polytheists squaring off. In that light, might we even be able to talk about how the doctrine of the trinity is a way of avoiding some of the dangers of an unmodified monotheism, by keeping alive in our concept of God the idea of otherness? It's very easy to have otherness without unity, or unity without otherness, but it seems to me that in the beauty of the trinity, we have oneness and one-anotherness.

I'm sure all of this will make no sense to some people, but you asked an interesting question that stimulated these thoughts.

Labels: A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren

Brian McLaren has graciously offered to answer some of the questions I have for him about his latest book, A New Kind of Christianity, which I reviewed here last week. Given the amount of misunderstanding and rather uncharitable accusations floating around out there about Brian's book, Brian and I agreed that this might be a great way to help bring some clarity to the conversation. I had a number of different questions for him, and he provided rather lengthy responses, so I'll be posting them here one question at a time over the next several days. You'll notice that as an aspiring church historian my questions tend to run in that vein, so I apologize if I didn't happen ask the questions most burning in your own mind, but I hope some of you will find these responses illuminating nonetheless.
1) More than a few times in the book you seemed to adopt the "Fall of the Church" narrative common to many Protestants (and especially Anabaptists and Restorationists, not to mention the Social Gospel folks), in which the mainstream of Christianity took a very bad detour shortly after the time of the apostles and only now are we rediscovering what the message of Jesus was really about. My questions for you about this are: a) Is it really so bad as all that? Aren't there any streams in Christian history where the gospel you describe in ANKoC can be found? What happened to a "generous orthodoxy"? b) If you really do think this is a wholly new rediscovery, isn't it a little bit arrogant to claim that we're the first ones to have been able to figure it out? And more importantly, wouldn't that imply a rather pessimistic view of the Holy Spirit and her work of guiding the church throughout the past 20 centuries? c) If you're not actually saying that, then what would be a better way to understand your own view of church history?

Brian responded to each part of my question separately:
Absolutely! I think it's everywhere to some degree, because the gospels were read in every church service through most of history - one of the great strengths of our liturgical churches, by the way. But I think it shines out very brightly in many beautiful resurgences, but none of them perfect or pristine (I just don't think in those terms when I think of creatures ... only the Creator is light in whom there is no darkness at all, and even more amazing, that light overcomes darkness!). I would point to Benedict, to the Celts, to St. Francis and the communities that he inspired, to the Anabaptists, to the Quakers, to the early Methodists and earliest Pentecostals, and to many others. But again, none of these groups are perfect or ideal, and the others aren't terrible and fallen. I don't buy into that unfallen/fallen dualism at all. We're all in this together.


I guess it must have seemed that I was being ungenerous to versions of Christianity that became violent in the Roman way? There I would want to echo Paul - the problem isn't flesh and blood people; the problem is a "spirit" in the Walter Wink sense, a spirit that, as Jesus said, motivates people to kill other people and think they're doing God a service. And I feel I need to be very direct when addressing that spirit, because it's still around, and frankly, I think if it were to express itself in today's world as it did in, say, racism or apartheid or anti-semitism or colonialism or crusades or inquisitions in the past, its beachhead would be in two places, first in the nation today that is most like Rome in the ancient world, and second, in the networks today that are most like the Zealots in the ancient world.


Of course that would be arrogant. But I never say anything like that. If there is a wholly new discovery, it's the revelation of God that comes through Jesus. That's been there all along, and it's up to us in every generation to receive that revelation and take in all of it we can. I'm sure I've only imbibed the tiniest fraction of it, so I would never ever claim to have "figured it out!" I do echo John Robinson's words, that the Lord always has more truth and light to show forth from his holy word. And I do believe that Jesus was right when he said that there are things that his disciples at any moment can't bear to hear, so the Holy Spirit brings us along as we're ready and able to learn - not just as individuals, but as churches, denominations, nations, civilizations. So I just want to be listening to what the Spirit is telling us now, just as our ancestors sought to hear what the Spirit was telling them then.

I try to make this clear in the book again and again - I'm not in any way saying we've arrived. Sheesh, that would be arrogant! (Although, ironically, those who are claiming that I say this seem in some ways to be saying it themselves - as in, "He hasn't arrived; We arrived a long time ago!") Again, we've got to get beyond that dualism that wants to say "we're right, they were wrong; we've arrived, they haven't." I try to model a different way of seeing things in the book, but it's notoriously hard to break old habits, both for me and for my readers, I'm sure. I try to make clear: my metaphor isn't dualistic statements/debates/states, but rather narrative questions/conversations/quests. So just because we're trying to get something through our heads now ... that doesn't mean we have any right to feel superior, that we're now in the "good" state and others are in the "bad" state. We wouldn't be getting what we're getting now unless our ancestors got what they got before us. We wouldn't be doing calculus if they hadn't created algebra. We wouldn't be doing Einstein if they hadn't done Newton. It's not us better-than them, but us because of them, us and them on a common quest across not only generations but millennia. It's not better and worse, good and bad.


I hope what I've just said addresses that. I'm not denying for a minute that the Holy Spirit was at work. I see the Spirit at work everywhere; today I'm listening, maybe tomorrow I won't be, which is why we all need to pay attention to our hearts, our receptivity, our repentance. This is so much about spirituality and heart, not just intellect and argument.

But I don't want to miss the importance of your question, so let's take the story of slavery, which I address in Chapter 7. Back in the 19th century, people could have said the same thing to the abolitionists. "Are you denying that the Holy Spirit has been at work in us all these centuries when we have accepted slavery as normative? Aren't you being pessimistic about the Holy Spirit? And arrogant too?" And of course, pro-slavery advocates did say exactly these things. For me the key is stepping out of the whole dualistic mindset that sees one group as perpetually right and another group as hopelessly wrong. I just don't see it that way. This also relates to the brief section where I talk about movements and institutions near the end of the book. I don't think that God is in movements and not in institutions, or the reverse. I think God is in both ... and God is trying to get each to contribute and listen to the other without becoming the other.


To me, it's a story of growth. But I think we'll get deeper into that in your question about evolution. For now, try this: what if the church sits in relation to God the way science sits in relation to the physical universe. Both are communities. Both are interacting with their appropriate subject. But are making their very best observations at any given moment. Both are filled with statement and counterstatement, theory and countertheory. And both are making painstaking progress over time. There are both breakthroughs and setbacks, advances and retreats. It's not smooth and neat or predestined. There are some rabbit trails and dead ends. Later forms don't mock their ancestors, but neither do they feel afraid to move beyond the assumptions of their ancestors to ask new questions and sometimes overturn old theories. Nobody says (today at least) that Einstein was unorthodox because he dared to see the world outside the lenses given him by Sir Isaac Newton. They see Einstein as the successor to Newton, as standing on his shoulders, so to speak. So I see church history as a kind of parallel to scientific history ... just as reality is always there for science to engage with, the Spirit of God is always present for us to engage with. And just as science can get so involved with its theories or internal politics or funding squabbles or pursuit of wealth that is sometimes loses its way, so can we. But reality - and God - are always waiting for us to return to, to engage with, to learn from, to be curious about. How does that work? (I wish I would have included something like this in the book, now that I think about it ...) No analogy is perfect, of course ...

By the way, this analogy would provide another reason why the Bible and the spiritual life are so important to me, which is one of the things that my most liberal friends might still see as conservative and evangelical. If stones and light and water and organisms are the realities that scientists engage with, it seems to me that the Scriptures and life in the presence of God are the realities that we Christians engage with. And that's why I appreciated in your review that you mentioned how the book has some engagement with Scripture in each question. I was shocked to see some of the commenters on the blogs completely ignore that, and actually claim that there was no Scriptural engagement. I guess we all see what we want to see, and find it hard to see what we don't want to see. I really hope that readers will take my engagement with Scripture seriously - grappling with Jonah, Job, John, Romans, Acts, Genesis, etc.

Labels: A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren

Brian McLaren doesn't get around to explaining his underlying motivations for writing this book until the very last chapter.* There he explains that while touring a few years ago for his Everything Must Change conferences, he realized that he couldn't get the crowd to discuss the things he was really passionate about (i.e. the four global crises he addresses in EMC) because all people wanted to talk about were his controversial theological ideas. As he put it:

"Gradually I realized that my conversation partners simply couldn't address life-and-death issues like poverty, the planet, and peace from within the conventional paradigms they inherited... Those inherited paradigms couldn't simply be outflanked; they needed to be confronted, questioned, and opened up, which then shaped the direction this book has taken."

In other words, A New Kind of Christianity is Brian's attempt to lay it all out there, to come clean about where he stands on all kinds of controversial topics so that, once he's done, those who are still listening can get on with addressing more important issues along with him. And indeed, this book is a remarkably clear exposition on where Brian stands on everything from the authority of scripture to homosexuality to religious pluralism, and a whole host of other controversial questions. Never again will critics be able to accuse Brian of dodging hard questions or refusing to be pinned down. With this book Brian lays all his cards on the table.

Ostensibly the book addresses 10 big questions:

Labels: A New Kind of Christianity, book reviews, Brian McLaren

The following is a paper I recently for a class on Dietrich Bonhoeffer:


Brian McLaren, one of the key influencers of the emerging church, recently responded to a seminary student’s query regarding whether Dietrich Bonhoeffer's thoughts on religionless Christianity are being worked out in that movement. He said:

“As you know, "the emerging church movement" is very diverse and maybe more of a conversation than a movement, so I'm quite certain many folks associated with things emerging wouldn't know much about Bonhoeffer, and others of us would be deeply interested in him and in this intriguing concept, and would see ourselves as trying to work it out in practice.”

McLaren’s reply speaks firstly to the fact that the emerging church is not just a singular, easily definable movement that would universally embrace a concept like “religionless Christianity.” However McLaren also suggests that there are streams of the emerging conversation that would be interested in this. I am interested in McLaren’s response here, since this seminarian’s question is the same as my own. I want to know both what Bonhoeffer likely meant by the phrase “religionless Christianity,” and also whether we can perhaps see an example of it being worked out within some elements of the emerging church.

This term, “religionless Christianity” is one of Bonhoeffer’s most provocative and enigmatic ideas, coming, as it does, in the prison letters written to his friend Eberhard Bethge, shortly before his execution by the Nazis. It first occurs in a letter dated April 30th, 1944, where Bonhoeffer writes:

“What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is, for us today… We are moving towards a completely religionless time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious any more… if therefore man becomes radically religionless what does that mean for ‘Christianity’?… How can Christ become the Lord of the religionless as well? Are there religionless Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity – and even this garment has looked very different at times – then what is a religionless Christianity?” (Bonhoeffer 1971, 279-280)

Bonhoeffer goes on to develop some of his own answers to these questions in his subsequent letters, and yet much of his thought on the matter remains skeletal at best. The crux of his discussion seems to hinge on three key terms: “religionlessness” or what he prefers to call the “world coming of age,” “religion” itself, and finally his “non-religious interpretation of Christian doctrine.” Much has been made of these terms over the past sixty years, and many writers tend to project their own ideas onto Bonhoeffer without carefully considering what he actually meant. Thus, in order to avoid falling into this trap myself, I thought it would be prudent to turn to the source closest to Bonhoeffer, namely Bethge, to see what he understood these terms to mean in their original context.

World Come of Age

The “world coming of age” is Bonhoeffer’s preferred term for what we would call the general trend of “secularization” in Western cultures over the past 500+ years. According to Bonhoeffer, the world no longer needs the “God hypothesis” to help us make sense of morality, politics, science, psychology, etc. (360) God, as a metaphysical concept that helps us bridge the gaps in those areas where human reason breaks down, has been increasingly pushed to the margins and made irrelevant and superfluous. For Bonhoeffer the point here is not merely blind faith in human “progress,” but rather “autonomy.” Humanity is “growing up” and becoming responsible, rational, autonomous “adults” who can think and judge for ourselves without the crutch of religion to fill in the gaps. (Bethge 1968, 98)

What is truly unique in Bonhoeffer’s thought, however, is that, in contrast to most other Christian thinkers, he sees secularization as a good thing – indeed as a culmination of the Christian worldview. (Bethge 1967, 77) As Bonhoeffer himself puts it, “Our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him… Before God and with God we live without God.” (Bonhoeffer, 360) For Bonhoeffer this coming of age meant liberation from all the idolatries of “religion,” and a restoration of God to the center of life, rather than its margins.

Religion

What then did Bonhoeffer mean by “religion?” For Bonhoeffer “religion” is a negative term, something that Christianity needs to move beyond, and while his use of it is nebulous and hard to pin down, (Wustenberg 1998, 29) Bethge indentifies five characteristics of religion that emerge from Bonhoeffer’s discussion in his Letters. First, religion is individualistic. According to Bonhoeffer, religion moves God from the world into the “personal” and “inner” and “private” sphere, (Bonhoeffer, 344) causing the religious person to become so preoccupied with their own interior states that they neglect caring for others. (Jenkins 1962, 34)

Second, religion is metaphysical, by which Bonhoeffer is referring to the elaborate conceptual framework developed in conjunction with both Greek philosophy and later with nineteenth century idealism by which God is described and defined as something separate and above and apart from this world. Bonhoeffer claims that this framework now primarily serves to insulate the believer from the truly revolutionary and this-worldly message of the gospel. (Bethge 1968, 54-55)

Third, religion is provincial. In a secular world, religion is increasingly pushed to the margins of life and society, called on occasionally for vestigial ceremonial functions – holidays and the like, but otherwise only occupying an ever diminishing sphere of human existence. (Bethge 1967, 79)

Fourth, religion is the deus ex machina. God is called in only when human reason or resources reach their limit. God becomes a god-of-the-gaps, a solution to life’s problems and turned to only out of weakness or need. However, as Bonhoeffer points out, this can only go on until humans push the boundaries of their limitations out a little further, making God that much more unnecessary and superfluous. (Bonhoeffer, 281-82)

Finally, religion creates a privileged class of insiders who see themselves as uniquely blessed by God and thereby set themselves over and against any outsiders – the reprobate, unbelievers, etc. This exclusivism gets expressed in “the patronizing, feudalistic character of Christian institutions and creeds [which] had transformed the freeing majesty of the powerless servanthood of Christ into power-structures of sterilizing dependencies.” (Bethge 1968, 56)

Non-religious Interpretation of Christian Doctrines

If Bethge is right about Bonhoeffer’s description of “religion”, then a “non-religious” Christianity would be non-individualistic, non-metaphysical, non-provincial, non-deus ex machina, and non-privileged. What it would be in a positive sense, on the other hand, is more difficult to define, especially since Bonhoeffer didn’t live long enough to fully flesh this out. A few things, however, can be gleaned from his letters. For instance, he talks about wanting to speak of God “not on the boundaries but at the centre, not in weakness but in strength; and therefore not in death and guilt but in man’s life and goodness.” (Bonhoeffer, 282) In other words, Bonhoeffer wanted to move beyond a provincial, god-of-the-gaps, to a God who was to be found in all aspects of life, whether overtly “religious” or not. Rather than the metaphysically transcendent God who is “beyond” this world, Bonhoeffer wanted to locate God’s transcendence in his very presence in this world and especially in the human other. (381-82)

Finding God in the midst of life also means, however, that God is present in our weaknesses and sufferings. Bonhoeffer’s non-religious interpretation is a theologia crucis insofar as the God who is found in the totality of life is also found on the cross. (Bethge 1967, 81) It is only in God’s powerlessness and suffering, not in omnipotence or control, that God can help us.

This leads to the third aspect of Bonhoeffer’s non-religious interpretation, which is its Christological focus on Jesus as the “man for others” through his participation in our humanity in all our limitations and weakness. This lifts Jesus out of a merely out of a merely speculative or metaphysical realm and places him squarely in an ethical, existential and theological context. (Bethge 1968, 69) It also defines our own relation to God – we are to live “a new life in ‘existence for others,’ through participation in the being of Jesus,” (Bonhoeffer, 381) both individually and communally. As Bonhoeffer says, “The church is the church only when it exists for others…The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving.” (382-83)

What Religionless Christianity Is Not

Given some of the incorrect ways the term “religionless Christianity has since been appropriated by others, it is also important to say what it is not. First, it is not pure secularism that rejects Christian belief altogether. As Bethge points out, Bonhoeffer’s non-religious interpretation was always a Christological interpretation, and “religionlessness” for him does not mean mere atheism, but a turning from a religion on the margins of life to Christ who is with and for us in the center of life.

Similarly, Bonhoeffer is not rejecting theology or doctrine, nor trying to replace these with a purely ethical Christianity. Instead, he is trying to reformulate Christian doctrine in a way that will be relevant for a world that has moved beyond the need for “religion.” (Lehmann 1968, 27-35)

Nor is Bonhoeffer merely rejecting the institution of church. While he does offer critiques of a church which is supported by and in collusion with the power of the State, the worship and sacraments of the church are still, as always, central for him. (Bethge 1967, 82) In all of this, then, Bonhoeffer is not merely offering a facile critique of Christian worship, institutions, or theology, but is instead presenting a far more thorough rethinking and reformulation of all of these for our secular world.


As McLaren suggested, there may be elements of the contemporary emerging movement engaged in this same kind of rethinking and reformulation that Bonhoeffer pointed to. But, to begin with, what exactly is this “emerging church”? Tony Jones, former National Coordinator for Emergent Village, defines it as “The specifically new forms of church life rising from the modern, American church of the twentieth century.” (Jones 2008, xix) He goes on to describe the emerging church as a mash-up of new kinds of faith communities and adventurous theology that seeks to engage with postmodern philosophy and culture and move beyond the weaknesses of both mainline and evangelical Christianity. (xviii-xix) As McLaren pointed out however, this means that the emerging church is not simply one thing, but a conversation consisting of many different streams depending on which aspects of contemporary Christianity are brought up for re-examination, whether worship practices, institutional structures, or theology. While often discreet, these streams do overlap, and indeed, as Phyllis Tickle has pointed out, the emerging church could also be called the converging church, inasmuch as it tends to embrace and recombine the many diverse traditions of Christianity in new ways. Thus, for instance, it is not uncommon to find charismatic Anglicans, Baptist Taize services, evangelicals for social justice, and Presbyterians holding jazz vesper services. As Tickle puts it, a new center is forming as Christians move beyond their former divisions to embrace more diverse expressions of the faith. (Tickle 2008, 123-144)

This convergence also points to the fact that the emerging church is not simply a new splinter group. Rather, it is a form of renewal that is happening at the outer edges of all segments of the Christian family, across denominations and among non-affiliated Christians, both inside and outside existing institutional structures. In fact, speaking of an emerging “church” may be misleading in this regard. It is perhaps more accurate to talk about emerging Christianity rather than a distinct emerging church.

For the purposes of this paper, then, I will focus on only the particular stream of emerging Christianity that seems most likely to be moving in the direction of Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity. For instance, McLaren points to Peter Rollins, a philosopher and emerging leader from Northern Ireland, as one example of someone who is explicitly trying to fill in and live out Bonhoeffer’s vision. Indeed, Rollins frequently cites Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity as a precursor to the kind of postmodern, emergent theology he himself is working on, (Rollins 2008, 102-104 and 2009, 62-64) and while he asserts that “other thinkers have done the work that Bonhoeffer signaled and hinted at,” Bonhoeffer is nonetheless an important transitional thinker who still has a prophetic voice for today. I propose that emerging thinkers like McLaren and Rollins, along with those influenced by them, reflect Bonhoeffer’s vision in at least three regards: theology, mission, and community.

Theology

Throughout his books Rollins develops an “a/theistic” theology where one is always in the position of disbelieving what they believe because God is always beyond what our theological propositions and metaphysical concepts can capture. (2006, 25-30) This is essentially the same direction Bonhoeffer is moving with his non-metaphysical Christianity. Similarly, Rollins, like Bonhoeffer, also locates God’s transcendence not in distance or remoteness or the unknown, but in immanence, in what Rollins calls “hyper-presence.” (23-25) Along with Bonhoeffer, Rollins affirms that God is found not at the margins of life, but at the center. The consequence of this for Rollins, as with Bonhoeffer, is that God’s presence and “power” is located in the weakness and suffering of Jesus. In this regard Rollins also moves us beyond provincial, deus ex machina religion, to a God who truly with and for us.

Mission

Emerging leaders like Rollins are not simply redefining our conception of God, they have also been speaking to how this conception informs the purpose of the church. If there is any term which unites almost all the various streams of the emerging conversation it is “missional,” which points to the idea that the church exists within the world for the sake of the world, not merely for its own sake. As McLaren puts it, “missional faith asserts that Jesus came to preach the good news of the kingdom of God to everyone… the gospel brings blessing to all, adherents and non-adherents alike.” (McLaren 2004, 110-111) This Christ-centered, missional approach directly parallels Bonhoeffer’s Christological vision of a non-privileged Christianity, a church that exists “for others” just as Jesus was the “man for others.”

Community

Emerging Christianity goes beyond simply talking about these ideas however. While Bonhoeffer opened the door to the possibility of a religionless Christianity, a whole host of emerging faith communities are currently engaged in trying to actually live it out. As Rollins asserts, “I believe that we are beginning to witness the development of dynamic faith collectives which Bonhoeffer would have recognised as concrete manifestations of his lonely prison thoughts.” Rollins specifically mentions a handful of these by name, including his own Ikon community in Belfast. I could also personally list scores of other emerging faith communities that, in my opinion, are, to lesser or greater degrees, expressions of Bonhoeffer’s “Religionless Christianity”. These communities are focused on exploring 1) new post-religious theological directions, 2) a missional vision, and 3) authentic, inclusive life-together. While emerging Christianity is certainly too diverse to say that these characteristics are universally found among all emerging churches, these particular streams of it at least are legitimately recognizable as expressions of Bonhoeffer’s religionless Christianity.

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Barth, Karl. “From a Letter to Superintendent Herrenbruck.” In World Come of Age, ed. Ronald Gregor Smith. 89-92. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967.

Bethge, Eberhard. “Bonhoeffer’s Christology and His ‘Religionless Christianity’.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 46-72. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

—. “The Challenge of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life and Theology.” In World Come of Age, ed. Ronald Gregor Smith. 22-88. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967.

—. “Turning Points in Bonhoeffer’s Life and Thought.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 46-72. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters & Papers from Prison. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971.

Greggs, Tom. “Religionless Christianity in a complexly religious and secular world: Thinking through and beyond Bonhoeffer.” In Religion, Religionlessness and Contemporary Western Culture, eds. Stephen Plant and Ralf K. Wustenberg. 111-125. Franfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008.

Jenkins, Daniel. Beyond Religion: The Truth and Error in ‘Religionless Christianity’. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962.

Lehmann, Paul L. “Faith and Worldliness in Bonhoeffer’s Thought.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 25-45. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

Prenter, Regin. “Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth’s Positivism of Revelation.” In World Come of Age, ed. Ronald Gregor Smith. 93-130. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967.

Pugh, Jeffrey C. Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Troubled Times. New York: Continuum, 2009.

van Buren, Paul M. “Bonhoeffer’s Paradox: Living With God Without God.” In Bonhoeffer in a World Come of Age, ed. Peter Vorkink. 1-24. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968.

Wustenberg, Ralf K. A Theology of Life: Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Religionless Christianity. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998.


Caputo, John D. The Weakness of God: A Theology of the Event. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006.

—. What Would Jesus Deconstruct?: The Good News of Postmodernity for the Church. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2007.

Clawson, Michael. “The Converging Church.” Emerging Pensees website. October 9, 2006.
http://emergingpensees.blogspot.com/2006/10/converging-church.html (accessed November 30, 2009).

—. “What is the Emerging Church?” Emerging Pensees website. September 25, 2006. http://emergingpensees.blogspot.com/2006/09/what-is-emerging-church_25.html (accessed November 30, 2009).

Jones, Tony. The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008.

McLaren, Brian. A Generous Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2004.

—. “Q & R: Bonhoeffer and ‘religionless Christianity’.” BrianMcLaren.net. http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/q-r-bonhoeffer-and-religionless.html (accessed December 9, 2009).

Rollins, Peter. How (Not) to Speak of God. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006.

—. “Religion, Fundamentalism and Christianity.” PeterRollins.net. June 26, 2008. http://peterrollins.net/blog/?p=54 (accessed November 30, 2009).

—. The Fidelity of Betrayal: Towards a Church Beyond Belief. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2008.

—. The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales. Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2009.

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Tickle, Phyllis. The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008.

Labels: Brian McLaren, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, emerging church, Peter Rollins, religionless Christianity

Another FYI for anyone in Austin. Brian McLaren will be here and speaking at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest this coming Monday (March 9). He'll be speaking on "Preparing Leaders for Tomorrow's Church Today". The event starts at 6:30 in the Knapp Auditorium (doors open at 6pm) and is free and open to the public. We'll be going. Hope to see you there!

Labels: Brian McLaren, events

Brian McLaren has an excellent blog post about why he's not just going to sit out this election as some of his friends and allies in the more Anabaptist streams of the emerging conversation seem to think that he (and the rest of us) should.

Labels: Brian McLaren, politics

The Washington Post just had an interview with Brian McLaren. He had a number of good responses, and despite the fact that once again the media tried to define the emerging church primarily in terms of "worship styles" Brian mostly managed to keep the discussion on more substantive issues. I especially liked his response to the question of whether he is a "liberal":

What do you mean by the term? If liberal means you believe ... you should help the poor, and your bias should be toward peacemaking rather than war-making, then I'm a liberal. But if liberal means that government can solve all of our problems and that secularism is better than faith, and that it doesn't matter what you do in your personal life and that morality is up for grabs, then I'm not a liberal. And I could say the same thing about conservative.

Yep, me too.

I also liked this response:

Q: Are you trying to create heaven on earth?

A: As a Christian, I'm just trying to be faithful. I'm trying to live out what I pray when I pray the Lord's prayer, 'May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth.' ... I'm not a utopian in any way.

Brian nailed it. Regardless of whether we can actually bring about heaven or the kingdom on earth, we are still called to live as if we will. It's not about creating utopia through our own efforts. It's simply about doing what Jesus told us to do.

Labels: Brian McLaren

Like I mentioned, I was at Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change Tour this past weekend here in Chicago. As with any of these sorts of events, the primary value for me is simply in making connections with new and old friends. In fact, to be honest, Brian presented very little content that I hadn't heard before. The conference was essentially a review of his book (albeit with more time to reflect and react to it with others). I think this was good for what seemed to be the majority of audience members who hadn't read it yet anyway. As for me, I always enjoy hearing Brian speak, even if it's not new content, and I certainly found new ways to apply the ideas to my own thinking anyway.

As the main coordinator for the Chicago area Emergent cohort, up/rooted, and as a member of the National Cohorts Team, I was one of the primary behind-the-scenes volunteers for the event, rounding up a dozen or so other volunteers to help with driving Brian and his team around Chicagoland, and staffing the bookstore. This meant that I got to show up early on Friday about 6 hours before the conference started and just hang out and pitch in as needed. This gave me plenty of time to chat with friends like Rebecca and meet some interesting new people like Tommy from Cafe Justo, a developer of Fair Trade coffee co-ops in Mexico and Haiti.

Once the conference got under way that evening I was able to connect with many more friends, so many it was hard to keep up: Sarah and Ryan Notton from the Indianapolis cohort, who were our partners in pulling off the Midwest Emergent Gathering this past summer; Chad Farrand from the Mid-Michigan Emergent cohort; Helen Mildenhall, a blog and conference buddy who lives here in Chicago; Bill Yaccino from Catalyst and Wedding Pastors USA; Linnea and Jo, Brian's tour coordinators whom I've been working with for months now, but only just met in person this weekend; even a couple of friends from my old conservative Baptist church, one of whom used to be in my youth group (I guess I corrupted him ;-)! I was also glad that several people from my own church were able to be there, even though Oak Park was a good hour and a half from Yorkville during rush hour.

Another highlight of the conference for me was the Saturday morning Q&A session with Brian that he did specifically for cohort people and church planters (though given that over 50 people showed up, most of whom I didn't recognize, I'm doubtful that this limitation was sufficiently communicated). Brian answered a wide range of questions, including why institutions aren't all bad, how evangelicals effectively use labels like "liberal" to marginalize voices like Brian's and why the decline of mainline denominations has more to do with increased college attendance rates and less to do with their "liberal" theology or "dead ritualism".

The sessions on Saturday were great, especially the point when Brian responded directly to comments made by Mark Driscoll (though Brian didn't name names) about Jesus being a "prize fighter with a tattoo down His leg, a sword in His hand and the commitment to make someone bleed." In contrast Brian shows how the New Testament presents Jesus as bringing peace and salvation not through the sword but through a commitment to let his own blood be shed. Whereas Driscoll says "I cannot worship a guy I can beat up", Brian reminded us that Jesus did let us beat him up, and that it was precisely though this non-violent act of love that the character of God's Kingdom was fully demonstrated.

Brian also had an excellent panel discussion later that morning with some local Chicagoans who were involved in various ministries connected to the issues Brian was addressing this weekend. I was especially impressed with Lynne Hybels, wife of Bill Hybels, the founding pastor of Willow Creek Community Church. She just told her story, and it turns out that she had gone through a very similar process of questioning and re-evaluating her faith that many of us emergent folks have, and was helped by Brian's books in the same way that many of us have as well. She described finding renewal of her faith by meeting Jesus in two new ways: 1) as a lover/resting place for her soul, and 2) as a social revolutionary. This combination of both the contemplative/mystical, and social activism is a common stream for many people, and it's encouraging to know that the leaders of one of the most influential churches in the nation are moving in this direction and consider people like Brian a friend and major influence.

Throughout the weekend we were also given opportunities to meditate and reflect on an artistic interpretation of the poetry of Denise Levertov entitled Nude Truths (done by the sisters Mary Ylvisaker Nilsen and Kristi Ylvisaker). I found this to be an excellent way to process some of the things we were hearing and thinking during the conference. I appreciated that Brian and Linnea took time to incorporate these sorts of experiences into what was ultimately a very short event, rather than just cramming it full of content.

That being said, I was rather disappointed that more time wasn't spent focusing on specific ways that we can bring about the kind of change that is necessary in the world. Because the panel discussion ran long, Brian was left with only about 20 minutes to run through seven diverse and complex ways that we can help change the world, which was not nearly enough time to let it really sink in or to engage with the possibilities. Personally I would have devoted at least an entire session to the question.

Hopefully we'll make up for it though in the upcoming weeks as our up/rooted cohort meets in several different places around the city to follow up on the ideas presented at the conference and to talk about how to actually put them into practical action. We had an overwhelming response at our cohort sign-up table this weekend. Over 40 people signed up for more info about up/rooted, and I think we'll also be able to help start a Southeast Wisconsin Cohort and an Evanston branch of up/rooted as well (not to mention re-starting our up/rooted.south branch down in the Joliet-Mokena-Tinley Park area.) As the official Emergent Village rep, I got to do a short presentation on cohorts during one of the conference sessions as well as host a lunch discussion about cohorts for those interested, and probably the best part of the whole conference for me was simply chatting and connecting with all those new people who were excited to meet others in their area who have been thinking in similar ways about their faith recently. As we repeated many times during the conference, "you're not the only crazy one out there!"

If you haven't yet attended the Tour, and can make it to Seattle this weekend, or Kansas City, New York City, or Goshen IN in the next month, I'd definitely recommend signing-up.

Labels: Brian McLaren, conferences, emerging church

I spent this past weekend helping to coordinate the Everything Must Change Tour in Chicago. I love doing this sort of thing, helping plans come together and networking with new and old friends. Of course I've gotten very little sleep, spent yesterday mostly recovering from the event (I think I'm coming down with something), and today I have to get caught up on work that was put off for the conference, so I probably won't post a full recap of the event until tomorrow. In the meantime here are some articles and reviews on other blogs that you should check out if you're curious:

First an article written just before the conference in Oak Park's Wednesday Journal that I was interviewed for. I got to meet the author, Tom Holmes, briefly at the conference.

As usual Helen has a great play-by-play review of the conference. (And she gets the credit for the picture above. I forgot to bring my camera.)

Also check out some of Jason's raw notes on the sessions.

Chad Farrand, leader of the Mid-Michigan cohort whom I met for the first time this weekend, has a good recap of his experience as well.

And for a totally unique, very personal take in her usual "wonderfully rambling" style, check out my friend Rebecca's posts.

Also, regardless of whether you were there, you can contribute to this revolution and share ideas about how to bring real change over at the Everything Must Change web community.

And if you live near Seattle, Kansas City, Goshen IN, or New York City it's not too late to sign up to attend the Tour yourself.

Labels: Brian McLaren, conferences, emerging church, social justice

I know I should just be ignoring these guys, but sometimes they're good for a laugh. Slice of Laodicea, one of those extreme fundamentalist "watchdog" sites, recently posted a warning about the "emergent takeover" of Cedarville University. The only reason I'm pointing it out is because it contains probably the funniest insult I've ever heard leveled at someone in the emerging church. Regarding a book endorsement by Brian McLaren, Slice had this to say:

Cedarville’s chapel speaker, Brad Kallenberg, is called “…this important theologian of the emerging church,” by the First Grand Cyclops of the emerging church.

Did they just call Brian McLaren "the First Grand Cyclops of the emerging church"? What the...?

Seriously, how do they come up with this stuff? I think that's the funniest thing I've read all week!

(Full disclosure: I actually ran for the post of "First Grand Cyclops" but after a scandal involving me, Tony Jones, a Volvo and a plunger back at the Glorieta Gathering, I was forced to withdraw my name from consideration. I'm still bitter.)

Labels: Brian McLaren, emerging church, fun