Yep, those are all Baptists… yet those that I “apparently have in mind” are PI due to the fact that Mike is posting about PI folks. So I am writing with that context in mind.

If you spend time with our local Emergent cohort you will find every single one comes of out the Baptist or Born Again movement (several from your church). Why not examine if the PI activities with which we struggle are not actually the end result of our foundational concepts?

I’d never heard of Brian till today, after an American friend advised me of his Scottish lecture. So your ETS handout is helpful. What strikes me as significant is that I’m coming across all of your points A to F in the Yahoo! Questions & Answers website (Religion & Spirituality section). There’s a fairly massive public protest going on, all of those points being raised as objections to orthodox Christian belief. The usual evangelical responses leave much to be desired, I’m afraid. Therefore I hope you will be agreeable to my using some of your points in future answers I provide for the site. The difficulty is the short attention span of many participants on the site but if I can include your web-link, perhaps those wishing to explore matters more thoroughly will do so.

Blessings, Annsan

What about another plausible purpose for the work Mike (and others) are doing in terms of critiquing the ideas of people like Brian McLaren?…namely, giving guidance to those who are not sure what to think of McLaren. At one time, McLaren was a pastor, and while I understand that this is not his current role in a specific local church setting, he still continues to position himself as a teacher (via his writing and speaking) in Christ’s Church.

Isn’t it part of the larger pastoral task to ‘guard’ and to ‘warn’? I’ve read and appreciated much of your work. But my question is, why isn’t the onus of responsibility on a person like Mr. McLaren — if he is going to presume to function in the role of teacher (Jas.3:1ff.) — to demonstrate his comprehensive, consistent faithfulness to Biblical teaching (in terms of, say, a passage like Titus 1:9)?

Cordially,
Doug Phillips

Thank you for your questions and insights. Regarding my intent, my purpose is descriptive–to show that declaring oneself to be postmodern does not automatically liberate that person from the old liberal-conservative paradigms. This should not be a surprise, as many people think that postmodernism is in important ways an intensified, hyper form of modernity. You also seem to agree, as you say that McLaren’s theological predecessor is Rauschenbusch–precisely the kind of liberal, if not the man himself, that Machen addressed in “Christianity and Liberalism.” So how exactly do you disagree with my point?

I am careful in the paper and in my presentation to also distinguish McLaren from classical liberalism (observe that my title asks whether he is a new kind of liberal), so I don’t accept the premise that I unfairly paint him with a broad brush. My purpose in the paper–and in “Don’t Stop Believing,” is to kindly warn many of these “postmodern innovators” (my word) that they are trending perilously close to making the same mistakes of liberalism (the most important being that believing in Jesus is not necessarily essential for salvation). You may be right that they may not be persuaded, but I feel compelled to try.

Regarding your essential question, “Does his [McLaren's] expansion fit the biblical and historic positions of the Church?”, I believe the answer, as it was with Rauschenbusch, is no. Of course McLaren is right to emphasize our Christian social responsibility, but he is wrong that we can get there without requiring belief in the specific, historic doctrines of the faith.

My main point, which is the repeated emphasis of “Don’t Stop Believing,” is that we need to both believe and practice our Christian faith. McLaren and other leading postmodern innovators seem intent on giving up belief, which I think, as Machen said in 1923, will ultimately produce a religion which is different than authentic Christianity.

In sum, I am not trying to alienate anyone and am extremely careful not to say anything unkind about Brian or any postmodern innovator. Emergent reviewers of “Don’t Stop Believing” have said that, while they disagree with my traditional beliefs, they do appreciate how I sympathetically listen and fairly represent their views. I read my paper at an academic conference–and if you can’t discuss a person’s views there without causing offense, then where can you? I simply want to have an honest and open conversation about what we Christians believe, in the hope that we might preserve the faith for the next generation.

We’ve been down some of these paths before, but a few points.

The issue I have with these kinds of pieces about Brian McLaren is one of intent: Why this piece?

Is it to say: “McLaren fits Machen’s worries, therefore McLaren is a liberal; we all know everything liberals say is wrong”?

Is it to say: “McLaren needs to be exposed for the liberal he is. We all know liberals are wrong”?

Is it to say: “Brian, you’ve got some ideas out there that I think are denying historic evangelicalism. What do you think of my concerns”?

The issue of intent really concerns me in the criticisms of emerging/emergent folks. I’m not persuaded that this kind of expose will do much more than convince the convinced and alienate those who are being criticized.

If I were to trace a connection of McLaren back to historic liberalism it would be to Rauschenbusch. But such comparisons always require historic finesse and nuance and all kinds of caveats, not the least of which is that Machen’s own work was vested deeply in the power of modernity to prove the truth of the Bible and that vestment makes even Machen’s criticisms of liberalism a different order.

McLaren’s project, as I tried to sketch in the CT piece, is an expansion of the gospel into social categories. The question for us is this: Does his expansion fit the biblical and historic positions of the Church?