SERIOUS QUESTIONS
Controversies in the church over worship styles (oh the battles over hymns versus praise songs), how persons best connect with God (the zeal of Charismatics challenging the quiet confidence of those who live by liturgy), alignment with social-political causes (“moral values” competing with compassion for the needy), and other issues that stirred debate in the past half century in the western Christian world are all mild compared to the controversy coming out now. This is over the very essence of Christianity and it involves debates about fundamental doctrines of the church. A leading voice stirring this debate is Brian McLaren, and the book which most forces the issue is A New Kind of Christianity. Ten Questions That Are Transforming The Faith (HarperOne, 2010). The questions asked in the recent past are about what the church should look like. The questions McLaren and others are asking are about the nature of Christianity, about what believing means. The challenge these folks engage is to the root of the way we think about Christianity. They want to move “from 'right belief to believing in the right way'” (Peter Rollins, in How (Not) to Speak of God, referenced by McLaren), and they are willing to question every established position in the church in order to discover a “new quest, … a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christianity,” (McLaren, p.18).
Do we need a new kind of Christianity? Not just new kinds of churches, not just new strategies for building churches and doing missions, not just renewal of commitment (meaning working harder at old practices), but a new understanding of the faith we hold? In the present massive upheaval of the social-religious landscape is it the responsibility of pastors and church leaders to beckon or pressure people back into a set of beliefs – and so disconnect them more with life outside the church building – or to engage this social reality as a move of the Spirit of God? Is this a moment like transition moments in the history of the church when social realities brought substantive change at the core of its way of believing and acting? Like the shift to accept “Gentiles” on the same basis as Jews, eventually shifting both location and ethnicity of church leadership? Like the shift from a persecuted minority to the dominant religion of the Roman Empire. with its attendant sources of power? Like the shift of social structures in the Middle Ages that brought into being a middle class, a primary factor in the Reformation?
The questions posed by McLaren, Rollins and others are controversial and are drawing strong attack from established church leaders, but I sense that these questions reflect what is really going in the minds of people in the pews and chairs of churches. These questions may reflect what church goers actually believe, or question, more than church leaders will admit. Do most Christians really believe that hell is a place of eternal torment for those who do not recognize Jesus? Are they doing their own pick-and-chose way of believing the Bible (thus applying a different “doctrine” of authority)? Do they really hold to the family model of one father, one mother and biological children as the final and full image of God-in-society? Is the imminent return of Christ the great hope on which they set their future? Does the presence of such “unbeliefs” among Christians represent a falling away or, possibly, the emergence of “a new kind of Christianity”?
The strength of McLaren's book, for me, is that he is not discarding the doctrines of the church nor tossing over the values of the faith. Nor is he trying to reinterpret forms or language into something “relevant.”He is calling for a different way of thinking about these issues while holding to the importance of fundamentals. He is looking for a truly Christian faith, a Christ-centered faith, and sets the questions on this foundation. On what basis can we see the violent portrayal of God in the Old Testament differently? On what basis can we take the interpretation and authority of the Bible differently? On what basis can we consider a different understanding of the return of Christ? All the doctrines questioned in McLaren's book have been questioned in the past – and usually tossed out by the questioners – but McLaren gives directions toward answers that remain authentic to the God of the Bible and the historic Christian faith. He says, “I do not say our quest is for new things to believe, in contrast to old things, but rather new ways to believe.” This is a quest that ignites enthusiasm and hope in me that we can see, can be, a Christianity that is meaningful in the world, the world that is.
