A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [127]
In some ways, I wish I didn’t have to use those five words. For starters, I’m uncomfortable using “a new kind,” because, really, this thing comes in many new kinds, not just one. The word “new” concerns me too, because as we’ve seen, this thing is not only new; it’s also very ancient. I guess it’s an ancient quest for newness, but just calling it “new” obscures that fact. I’m also ambivalent about the word “Christianity” since, as I’ve said, I don’t believe Jesus came to start a new religion, nor do I believe Christianity (or any religion) is the answer in itself. Of course, I believe it can be part of the answer, but only if it doesn’t see itself as the answer.
And regarding the term “Christianity,” if I didn’t believe that with God all things are redeemable, I’d be worried whether the term is redeemable. As we’ve seen, the term “Christianity” (like its cousin “orthodoxy”) has too often camouflaged something quite foreign to Christ and his message, something that is more the problem than the solution—a fusion of Greek philosophy and Roman power, alloyed or adorned with elements drawn from the Bible, which is interpreted and applied in ways that often betray Jesus’s life and teaching. Its defenders have unofficially mandated that when people try to modify that Greco-Roman orthodoxy, they must wear an adjective that brands them as aberrant, like a scarlet “A” sewn on their soul. For example, when theologians read the Bible through the lens of the Exodus narrative, they are called “liberation theologians,” but their counterparts who read it through the Greco-Roman narrative are never labeled “domination theologians” or “colonization theologians.” Similarly, we have “black theology” and “feminist theology,” but Greco-Roman orthodoxy is never called “white theology” or “male theology.” Having become utterly normative for most of us, it’s just “theology.” By modifying “Christianity” with “a new kind of,” I wonder, are we just playing into that same ongoing game whose rules aren’t fair from the first move?
Are we just falling into the same patterns of the past, creating Protestant Christianity 2.0, or Reformed Christianity 2.0, or Catholic Non-Roman Christianity 3.0? Is what is trying to be born in and through us simply another spin on that familiar cycle? Or is it more creative and subversive than that?
It’s true that what is trying to be born today echoes the Great Reformation in many ways. “Out of love for the truth and desire to bring it to light,” intrepid people of faith today continue to dialogue about our contemporary issues and struggles. We may not nail theses to the door, but we post hypotheses on a Web site or publish questions and reflections in a book. We may not gather in secret around a table in a German castle, but we raise questions in conversations between sips of Kenyan coffee, Belgian or Mexican beer, or Australian, Chilean, or South African wine. We may not argue about which propositions should serve as major and minor premises in formal debate, but we lovingly proposition people to consider secret liaisons with truths and dreams that the “authorities” have outlawed.
Luther’s posting in 1517 and the debate that ensued helped create the religious conditions in which we have lived for many generations. But now, nearly five centuries later, increasing numbers of us feel that we must again, “out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light,” raise new questions and open up new generative conversations—and these conversations will in turn raise many new questions and open up many, many more conversations. Just as Luther addressed urgent and emergent issues of corruption and confusion in the church in Europe in the early sixteenth century, today’s young Luthers raise questions about equally urgent and emergent issues in our time, seeking honest, open, and charitable dialogue.
You will notice that I have not tried to answer these questions definitively, but only responded to them provisionally, seeking to open up conversation, not close it down. And you will no doubt