A New Kind of Christianity - Brian McLaren [8]
The Age of Belief marked the Christianization of the empire and the imperialization (or Greco-Romanization) of Christianity. The fusion was problematic from the beginning, because during its first two hundred fifty years, the bishops of the church participated in the identification and execution of about twenty-five thousand people as heretics. Do you see the irony of this? Perhaps “tragedy” or “atrocity” would be a better word. The religion that was ostensibly founded by a nonviolent man of peace had now embraced the very violence he rejected. The religion that grew in response to a man who was tortured and killed by the Roman Empire was now torturing and killing others in league with that empire. Dynamic faith that moves mountains was out; static belief that burns or banishes heretics was in. Catalytic faith as an agent of social transformation was out; codified belief as a tool of social control was in. And that kind of belief has stayed “in” ever since. As I ponder what this atrocity has meant in our world, I recall Woody Allen’s statement that if Jesus could see what people have done in his name, he would “never stop throwing up.”
For these reasons and more, Cox does not mourn the demise of the Age of Belief. He sees, emerging in its place, what he calls the Age of the Spirit, an approach to Christian faith that tries to preserve the treasures of previous eras and face and embrace the challenges of the twenty-first century. So something is happening. Something is afoot. A change is in the wind. Whether we call it the Great Emergence with Tickle or the Age of the Spirit with Cox, whether we call it a Christianity worth believing with Doug Pagitt or the new Christians with Tony Jones, whether we call it generative Christianity with church historian Diana Butler Bass or emerging mission with Marcus Borg, or a generous orthodoxy with Hans Frei or integral mission with René Padilla10—whatever we call it, something is trying to be born among those of us who believe and follow Jesus Christ. That’s what a new kind of Christianity in this book’s title points toward.
And that’s what I’d like to help you understand in these pages. But not just understand it. I hope to inspire you to join together with others to help create it, guided by God’s creative Spirit.
Of course, as evidenced by those canary yellow fliers flapping under windshield wipers in that English car park, not everyone agrees with Phyllis, Harvey, Doug, Tony, Diana, Marcus, and the rest of us. Not everyone wants to join the quest for a new kind of Christianity. But that’s okay. Skeptics’ resistance, suspicion, and opposition are actually a gift, and through their critique we on the quest will grow wiser and stronger. In this way, even they will contribute to what is trying to be born in, through, and among us.
But giving birth, any mother will tell you, is no Sunday school picnic. So before we go any farther, we’d better get realistic about the obstacles we face.
2
The Quest and the Questions
Imagine it’s 1775. You are a young citizen in the Thirteen Colonies, listening to early statesmen like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson dream aloud about a new nation—a government without a king, they say. “Of, by, and for the people,” they say. “Don’t kings rule by divine right?” you wonder. “Isn’t monarchy God’s way, reflecting in human society the sacred hierarchy of heaven? Is some new democratic arrangement theologically permissible, not to mention politically possible?” How would you respond when either