A recent Religious Herald included a review of Brian McLaren’s new book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? I first encountered McLaren in college through his book, A New Kind of Christian. Here, through the vehicle of a narrative about a pastor struggling with defining his faith and the role it should play in his life, an enigmatic character named Neo (get it?) leads him to the place where he understands that faith is more about the journey we are on with God than believing a certain set of well-defined doctrinal statements.
My immediate reaction to the book was excitement. McLaren made the faith sound so organic and intimate. It’s more about a journey than wrapping our minds and hearts around a certain set of doctrines. Besides, all doctrine really does is divide people.
Jonathan Waits
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After some more thought over the course of the next several years, though, a few things began to occur to me. First, I began to grapple with what exactly doctrine is in the first place. Is Christian doctrine not merely a set of propositional truth statements laying out exactly what followers of Jesus believe? McLaren was one of the early voices in the Emergent Church’s general crusade against doctrinal statements. Their advice was and is to downplay doctrine in favor of a greater emphasis on loving actions in our quest to advance the kingdom of God. In fact, it’s probably better to not even use kingdom language at all. Speaking in terms of something entirely more organic — a journey, a quest, a movement — is preferable.
Second, I had the opportunity to hear Jim Wallis speak in seminary (McLaren is on the board for Sojourners). Over the course of his talk it occurred to me that this emphasis on redefining the whole concept of doctrine in favor a radical focus on loving others in Jesus’ name had been tried before, in the Social Gospel movement of the early part of the 20th century. There are a number of similarities between the two movements. Unfortunately the Social Gospel movement and the liberal theology propelling it rather quickly left the rails of orthodoxy and the whole thing collapsed under its own weight. It still exists in some places today as in some mainline churches, but it should perhaps be revealing that on the whole, mainline churches across the world are a dying breed.
Third, the rhetorical approach of McLaren and Wallis and others like them has been to create a false dichotomy in order to make their approach look like the most reasonable option on the block. They do this by framing the current scene as marked by two extreme positions. For example, as the book review says, when it comes to Christians involved in interfaith dialogue, McLaren identifies those who “bring a strong Christian identity that responds negatively to other faiths and tends to emphasize differences,” and those “positive and accepting of other religions, minimizing differences and maximizing what they hold in common.”
Characteristically, McLaren advocates for a third way that rises above the fray and is more representative of the way of Jesus. He argues for a strong, kind Christianity. It is strong by being “vigorous, vital, durable, motivating, faithful, attractive and defining.” Yet what exactly makes Christianity all of these things but our practically-applied doctrinal distinctions? As evidence, consider that the most vigorous, vital, durable, motivating, faithful, attractive and defining expressions of Christianity throughout the world today are consistently theologically and doctrinally very conservative — just the opposite of the expression of Christianity for which McLaren seems to be advocating.
What then should we make of all of this? First, McLaren absolutely believes what he says and is a powerful, creative, convincing communicator. God has given him a clear gift there. But, contrary to what he seems to suggest, doctrine matters a great deal and traditional, orthodox doctrine is not in need of a “profound rethinking.” History simply doesn’t bear out the oft-leveled charge that the current expression of orthodox Christian doctrine is merely a mutation of the original Jesus movement foisted on the world by Western culture. On the whole, modern evangelicals are very consistent with the earliest framers and defenders of orthodoxy.
Furthermore, McLaren seems to place the greatest blame for the breakdown of interfaith dialogue at the feet of Christians, completely overlooking the fact that other worldviews may contribute a great deal more to the breakdown than us. For example, as very conservative expressions of Islam continue coming to power in the Middle East, Christians are being violently driven out of historically Christian areas in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Libya and others. Persecution against Christians even in supposedly tolerant and enlightened Western nations is on the rise.
Finally, I absolutely agree that Jesus was entirely clear that we should love everyone with his perfect love whether they are his followers or not. McLaren’s questioning characterizations of Jesus at the beginning of the article are obviously false. But Jesus was also abundantly clear that every path but his leads away from God and toward death. And how do we recognize his path? Clear, well-defined, love-rooted doctrine.
The question, then, becomes which doctrine best clarifies for Jesus followers the path we should be walking. McLaren, as it turns out, doesn’t really dislike doctrine. His “healing teachings” are merely doctrines by another name. He simply doesn’t like classical, conservative, orthodox, evangelical doctrine. While I disagree with him, this is a perfectly reasonable position and one on which I wish he would be more explicit.
In the end, Jesus certainly would have been more loving to the other religion-founders than his followers have sometimes been, but he would have also asked them to subscribe to a set of clearly-defined propositional truths (i.e. doctrines) and adjust their behavior accordingly in order to enter into a relationship with the One True God and leave their current path of destruction. Contrary to McLaren’s suggestion, we need not fear to go and do likewise.
Jonathan Waits ([email protected]) is pastor of Central Baptist Church in Church Road, Va.