Tag: A New Kind of Christianity

How can we translate our quest into action? Brian closes his book by calling us to follow his lead and evolve to a higher community which consists of “Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, and others” and “welcomes all people to mature and advance in the human quest.”  He warns that those of us who haven’t…

“Can we find a better way of viewing the future?” and “How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?” These two questions feed one another, and for time’s sake I will take them together.  Brian’s “participatory eschatology” seems to be a version of postmillennialism.  He criticizes postmillennialism for its “triumphalistic determinism” but…

Can we find a way to address human sexuality? This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the trajectory of Brian’s career, but in this chapter he finally defends the rightness of homosexual practice.  He begins and ends with a couple of red herrings, describing those opposed to…

What do we do about the church? After examining Brian’s unchristian biases in his first 5 theological questions, I am reconsidering my commitment to working through each of his 5 practical questions (but I will keep slogging away, as it’s almost Lent). If Brian’s theological commitments place him outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, why…

What is the gospel? This section illustrates the confounding and purposeful ambiguity of liberalism, which uses many of the same terms we do but means something different by them.  I’m reminded of the liberal pastor’s advice to Peter Fromm in The Flight of Peter Fromm, that liberals must learn to become “loyal liars” who use…

Who is Jesus and Why is he important? Brian begins this section with a good reminder that we must beware of the temptation to remake Jesus into our own image.  I wish he had followed his own advice, for his Jesus ends up looking a lot like a beefed up Brian McLaren.  This section reminded…

Is God violent? Brian begins this section by admitting that he has a big problem.  It helped his new kind of Christianity to assert that the Bible is our cultural library rather than authoritative constitution, but he still has to wrestle with the fact that this library contains many bloody books.  In Brian’s words, he…

The Defining Issue Before I examine Brian’s next question, I think it is important to interact with the foundational thesis which grounds everything else he says in this book.  Brian’s underlying point is that what Christians call the Creation-Fall-Redemption narrative actually starts with Plato and was adopted later by imperial Rome.  It is this “Greco-Roman…

I read the introductory three chapters of A New Kind of Christianity, and so far it’s an updated version of the Brian we’ve seen before.  He claims to be “a mild-mannered guy” who is only looking for a new way to be a Christian that will boost the declining numbers in our churches, and he…