This weekend, I read McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian and Tomlinson’s The Post-Evangelical. Both books contain some thoughts that resonate deeply with me. Both also raise some theological and doctrinal issues that scare me. Read on for a table that expresses some of my thoughts and feelings.
An interesting sidebar here that I hope to explore another time: I wonder how much of this truly is about “postmodern” versus “modern” thinking, and how much is simply overemphasis within the Evangelical sub-culture on some doctrines and practices to the exclusion of others. If the emerging movement draws often from pre-modern sources (as, for example, in the writings of some of the Catholic and Eastern Christian mystics), is the concern really one of escaping foundationalism, or is it more one of recovering a theological and cultural balance that was jettisoned as the Reformation splintered and the Church in America went through the Great Awakenings and the many other transitions that led to Fundamentalism? Nearly everything I express in my table (not that I claim my table to be exaustive or myself to be an expert) doesn’t necessarily require any reference to modern vs. postmodern. I suppose that is a definitional issue as well, as McLaren discusses “postmodernism” as more a set of cultural attitudes than a particular epistemology.
| Resonates | Scares Me |
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Evangelicals are overly certain about who will be in heaven and who will not. We also are overly certain about what the eschaton ultimately will be like, based on hyper-literal readings of Biblical imagery. And we place too much emphasis on sudden conversion experiences. Finally, we rarely truly confront the consequences of our beliefs about the nature of Hell, God’s Love and Justice, and the mind boggling number of people throughout history, Christian and non-Christian alike, who have had no conception of faith bearing any resemblance to ours.
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The revisioning of typical current understandings of "hell" in McLaren’s book smacks of a notion of "purgatory," if not universalism. Further, I haven’t yet seen in any emerging books or websites any exploration of the nature of God’s wrath, which clearly is a theme throughout scripture (whether read propositionally or as a "story"). The realities of original sin, Hell, the need for justification, and salvation in Christ alone can’t be escaped without jettisoning the faith. Nevertheless, the idea that 99% of the billions of people created in God’s image and loved by Him have no real chance, while we Evangelicals are among the happy few who correctly understand things like the concept of justification and therefore will escape, has unsettled me since I was a child. (It’s interesting that many Emerging church leaders seem to have Bretheren backgrounds, as I do, as many of the Brethern seem to think only the Bretheren will ever see heaven. Perhaps others who have grown up in somewhat broader Evanglical traditions don’t struggle with this issue as much as I do).
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| Evangelicals tend to reduce scriptural truth to sets of disembodied systematic propositions. We miss the richness, complexity and mystery of the Biblical text as a set of stories God tells us about Himself and ourselves in relation to Him. |
Regardless of one’s view of verbal inspiration, the words of scripture seem to provide the only sure structure on which to rest an understanding of how the Spirit is speaking through the text to the Church. It seems that some tendencies within the emergent movement might throw out the baby with the bathwater regarding the nature and authority of scripture.
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| Evangelicals tend to reduce the Church’s mission to one of collecting "decisions" of faith. |
Here I think the emerging movement is utterly right in calling the Evangelical Church to account for its reductionism of the gospel. The Church indeed exists to bless the world, not merely to collect decisions.
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| Evangelicals have created a sub-culture that presents a sterilized version of American pop culture rather than engaging and transforming culture. |
Again, I think this is dead on. I particularly resonated, nearly to the point of laughing and crying out loud on a crowded airplane where I was reading the book, with McLaren’s portrayal of an Evangelical who never feels "comfortable" around non-Christian friends because he feels he should be "witnessing" to them. Oh, for the freedom to be honest, warts and all, and to trust God that He will speak through us in the ordinary course of life to those who do not yet have faith.
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| Evangelicals marginalize the contributions of the arts, symbolism, and other non-analytical forms of communication in how we understand scripture and how we conduct personal and corporate worship. |
Once again, I say a loud amen! There is a valid concern here about mere subjectivism, particularly without an adequate notion of scriptural authority.. However, I like the suggestion in McLaren’s book that we ought to have greater faith in how the Spirit will guide the Church in proper practices. Fear can’t govern our faithfulness.
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| Evangelicalism reduces life to what happens after death, embracing a sort of quasi-existentialism. | Again, amen! Here the emerging movement isn’t really new. In fact, McLaren draws much on C.S. Lewis in discussing that right now each of us is in the process of becoming what we one day will fully be, so that life right now is pregnant with meaning. |