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1.0 Thesis

To survey harsh criticisms against Brian Douglas McLaren (1956‒), readers gain the inaccurate impression that he is a heretical relativist who denies objective truth and logic.1 While McLaren’s inflammatory and provocative writing style is partly to blame, this study also suspects that his critics base much of their analyses on only small portions of his overall corpus. The result becomes a caricature of McLaren’s actual philosophy of religion. The thesis of this book is simple: McLaren is, in fact, a rationalist and empiricist, who utilizes irony, humor, generalization, and ridicule to disturb those expressions of faith common to mainstream, Western institutional Christianity (i.e., “conventional Christian paradigms”). The difference is that McLaren is an abductive rationalist and a phenomenological empiricist, who objects to the Enlightenment’s over emphasis on analytical rationalism because it overlooks ethereal elements such as intuition, mysticism, and personal experience. This “analytic” approach to religion has since created “notional” Christians who focus almost entirely on cerebral and abstract elements of faith while ignoring its real-world impact on daily living (cf. GO §13, 205; SMJ §4, 34). This study will show that what appear to be the musings of an unlearned and unnuanced writer are actually the tactics of a skilled rhetorician trying to expose the limitations (and even impropriety) of an overly analytic approach to faith. Indeed, McLaren’s goal is to establish a robust paradigm through which believers can acquire more than just knowledge; they can live in solidarity with creation and Creator, as well. There will be three main divisions to support this thesis.

1.0.1 Outline of the Study

In the first division, this study will catalog several socio-historical influences that were vital to McLaren’s philosophical development. For example, chapter 2 will detail different biographical experiences, chapter 3 will describe his moral identity crisis, and chapter 4 will trace his intellectual disillusionment with conventional Christianity. The second division will then explain McLaren’s abductive reasoning processes (chapter 5), which he uses to expound upon the implications of the incarnation (chapter 6). Finally, the third division will explore the consequences of his logic: chapter 7 clarifies his deconstruction of conventional paradigms while chapter 8 systematizes his philosophy of religion.

In more detail, chapter 2 (“McLaren the Man”) will reveal how McLaren’s experiences with Christian fundamentalism encouraged him to pursue a new spiritual paradigm. Likewise, chapter 3 (“McLaren the Activist”) will contend that his philosophy of religion is intricately tied to his observations of the Religious Right and dogmatic neoconservatism, which he believes turned Christianity into a tribalistic culture-religion. Chapter 4 (“McLaren the Iconoclast”) will address his intellectual denial of Enlightenment-based paradigms that have caused both liberal and conservative Christians to become intransigent devotees to a bygone era. From these different socio-historical developments, McLaren subsequently established an idiosyncratic line of reasoning with which to approach Christian faith. Chapter 5 (“McLaren and Abduction”) will argue that he employs logical inference-building to emphasize the pragmatic and aesthetic aspects of religiosity. Significantly, however, McLaren often masks his abductive reasoning through deliberate provocations and satirical writings. Chapter 6 (“McLaren and Christology”) will then expose how he applies his abductive logic to the incarnation of Christ, suggesting that McLaren is distinctively attracted to Jesus as the paradoxical Divine Revealer. The result is a stress on divine mystery and the impression that Christianity is a faith-based, suprarational belief in God’s loving solidarity with the universe.

Having concluded that conventional paradigms are ineffective at discipleship (chapters 2‒4) and having, subsequently, inferred certain beliefs about the incarnation (chapters 5‒6), McLaren formed a unique philosophy of religion that he believes can help alleviate many of the problems associated with Western spirituality. Chapter 7 (“McLaren’s Deconstructive Rationale”) will trace his exploration into the legitimacy of institutional Christianity and the church’s articulation of Jesus’ gospel message. He concludes that Neoplatonism and imperialism usurped Jesus’ Jewish manifesto about God’s kingdom, which has since caused Christians to misinterpret the essence of Christ’s message. Chapter 8 (“McLaren’s Existential Intersubjectivity”) will demonstrate how McLaren seeks to overcome this foreign Greco-Roman framework, surmising that Christ’s incarnation demands an existentially intersubjective relationship with (and obedience to) Jesus’ kingdom ethics. Before discussing the significance of McLaren’s religio-philosophy, however, a prefatory word is needed about referencing his many publications in this book.

1.1 Introductory Notes

Due to the large number of McLaren’s writings, it has become standard practice to reference his book publications using parenthetical citations.2 His less formal work (e.g., magazine articles, interviews, blog posts, YouTube videos, etc.) will appear in footnotes primarily because there is no standardization for referencing this material. However, researchers will quickly discover that some of McLaren’s books have different page numbers depending on their edition and format (e.g., paperback or hardback). Thus, the page numbers cited in this study are solely those of the book editions listed in the abbreviations section. To help researchers locate material in their version of McLaren’s work, this study will also include (where necessary) a section number (§) immediately following the book’s abbreviation. For example, EMC §6, 45 references Everything Must Change, chapter 6, page forty-five.3 This information will become useful as readers explore the purpose for studying McLaren’s philosophy of religion.

1.2 Purpose and Need of Study

Rudolph Bultmann once quoted Karl Barth as saying, “There is always the possibility that in one sense or another we may be in particular need of wholly unexpected voices, and that among them there may be voices which are at first entirely unwelcome.”4 By the late twentieth century, many Christians from diverse backgrounds began to recognize the need for a new approach to Christianity, one that accentuates human solidarity and interreligious collaboration. Carol Merritt remarks, “Writers like Brian McLaren put [this] longing into words.”5 Described as a “paradigm shifter” with a “kinder and gentler brand of religion,” Time magazine included McLaren in its top twenty-five “most influential evangelicals in America.”6 To this day, he is considered the most controversial and influential representative of Emergence Christianity, particularly since “a whole sector of professing evangelicals gives considerable weight to his opinions.”7 According to D. A. Carson, McLaren is “probably the most articulate speaker in the emerging movement,” further noting, “Most emergent leaders regard [him] as their preeminent thinker and writer.”8 Not surprisingly, then, McLaren has become the symbolic pastor for newer generations of believers and spiritual seekers.9 The problem is that McLaren’s line of reasoning and philosophical rationale are not apparent to much of his readership.

For example, Scot McKnight once commented, “I want to voice the frustration of many: McLaren’s willingness to muddy the waters . . . goes only so far. Many of us would like to see greater clarity on a variety of questions he raises.”10 This book argues that there exists, in fact, a discernable logic behind McLaren’s belief system, which spans the entirety of his writing career, albeit in an unstructured and veiled way. Nevertheless, his obscure writing style makes discerning this rationale difficult and, thus, is partly to blame for people’s vexation. Therefore, since no resource systematizes McLaren’s philosophy of religion, as expressed across his numerous publications, the purpose of this book is to arrange his line of reasoning into a coherent whole. The study’s objective is to make McLaren’s reasoning plain in order to help future readers decipher his veiled rationale. This book offers the first exhaustive examination of McLaren’s entire writing career to date, which he himself has personally read, reviewed, and ratified prior to publication (see the foreword to this book). Here, the goal is to understand and articulate how McLaren perceives the current shifts within conventional Christianity.

1.2.1 Christian Paradigm Shifts

Historical Jesus scholar, Dale Allison, writes, “It has been said that science progresses one funeral at a time, that a new theory does not always triumph by convincing its opponents but because the opponents die and a new generation, uncommitted to the past, comes along.”11 In 1962, theoretical physicist Thomas Kuhn published his groundbreaking research on the kinds of paradigms that supersede older scientific models. However, Kuhn observed that specialists tend to react negatively to newer models by dogmatically defending conventional wisdom. Rather than view science as the amassing of new data, Kuhn argued that theoretical advancements (“paradigm shifts”) occur only after arousing conflict within the prevailing establishment.12 Kuhn’s work is, thus, representative of the shift presently occurring in Western Christianity and the religious establishment’s reaction to emerging voices, such as Brian McLaren. According to Phyllis Tickle, these kinds of shifts in Christian faith occur about every 500 years.13

Part of the shift presently happening today is the realization that Christendom’s control over Western culture has come to an end.14 In fact, Ken Howard’s demographic research on Christian growth trends reveals that institutional Christianity is in a state of total destabilization, having become more proficient at internal discord than actual discipleship (cf. AIFA, 21; NKOCY §1, 10).15 With evangelicalism in particular, younger believers are either abandoning church entirely or are seeking to reform its expression of faith from within.16 McLaren notes a pattern with regard to how Christians have historically reacted to these paradigm shifts. First, believers resist and denounce the changes, then they make small concessions before retreating into silence, and finally they eventually assent to the emerging paradigms (NKOCY §17, 177‒78).

According to Barna Group’s 2016 report, 48 percent of Americans are now “post-Christian,” meaning they have no lasting involvement with Christianity or they have abandoned faith altogether.17 Gallup research from 2017 reveals that nearly three-in-four Americans believe religion is losing its influence. Likewise, almost half of Americans are not members of a church, the majority of people rarely attend services, roughly two-in-five Americans do not believe religion can help solve today’s problems, and one-in-five have no religious affiliation whatsoever. In 2018, three-in-five Americans have little to no confidence in Christianity, and 43 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with how religion has affected the culture.18 In total, there exists a growing disdain for how conventional paradigms have conditioned believers to behave in society (cf. BMF, 293; SWFOI §34, 258‒59).19 McLaren observes that despite the growth of church plants, religious entertainment, and religious publications, Christianity is still losing its cultural influence. For him, the answer is not more churches: the answer is adapting to the church’s natural evolution through different stages of faith.20

1.2.1.1 Stages of Faith

In essence, Western Christianity has experienced what James Fowler labels the six “stages of faith,” only on a wider social scale. In the first stage (“intuitive-projective faith”), believers view their religion in magical terms and use it to explain life’s mysteries. In stage two (“mythic-literal faith”), people uncritically accept folklore as literal truths. With stage three (“synthetic-conventional faith”), believers focus on what feels right and comfortable over what is intellectually sound. In the fourth stage (“individual-reflective faith”), believers question conventional paradigms, relying on their own experiences to develop a personalized belief system. Stage five (“conjunctive faith”) is a synthesis of affective and rational elements where people simply accept the existence of divine mystery. Finally, the sixth stage (“universalizing faith”) focuses almost exclusively on universal principles of love, justice, and compassion as religion’s defining goal.21 Significantly, McLaren delineates four parallel stages: 1) the “simplicity” phase is dichotomistic and naïve; 2) “complexity” then focuses on the pursuit for absolute truth; 3) “perplexity” is the disillusionment that results from this pursuit; and 4) “maturity” is accepting epistemic humility and divine mystery (AMP §16, 249). For McLaren, Western Christianity’s current paradigm shift is the natural growth toward a more universalizing religion that seeks to reverse the ossification of earlier stages of faith (cf. FFR §9, 172, 183).22

1.2.1.2 Reversing Christian Ossification

In his pursuit of a “mature” faith (NKOCY §1, 6), McLaren asks several questions: “What kind of God do we believe exists? What kind of life should we live in response? How does our view of God affect the way we see and treat other people?” (LWWAT §Intro, xii). For him, what has most atrophied the church is its repeated suppression of paradigm shifts (FFS §1, 41‒46). For centuries, Bible-appealing Christians had endorsed patently wrong ideas, such as white supremacy, Ptolemaic geocentrism, slavery, and apartheid, which has caused McLaren to question if there are other sacredly-held beliefs that are also false (GSM, 41). He reasons that if Christians today can engage in (or tolerate) torture, war, and sexual abuse, then something must be wrong with conventional Christianity (COOS1 §2, 29). “A message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this. The religion’s results are not commensurate with the bold claims it makes. Truly good news . . . would confront systemic injustice, target significant global dysfunctions, and provide hope and resources for making a better world—along with helping individuals experience a full life” (EMC §5, 34; italics in original).23 McLaren’s solution is that believers ought to reinvest the church with interpretations that are socially relevant and reflect a more mature understanding of God (cf. CIEC, 208‒9).

Here, McLaren highlights the evolutionary nature of Christian beliefs over time (COOS1 §5, 65‒71), insisting that the church is, in fact, a complex organism of interdependent relationships (AIFA, 272‒74, 277; GO §12, 191‒93). Hence, as a “living tradition” (LWWAT §15, 93; cf. NKOC §4, 49), Christianity ought to appropriate new insights and new moral sensibilities (GO §12, 191‒92). “To be a living tradition, a living way, [Christianity] must forever open itself forward and forever remain unfinished—even as it forever cherishes and learns from the growing treasury of its past” (WMRBW, xii). He clarifies further,

An important question today: if the Gospel of Jesus, a Jew, could be radically reinterpreted in the framework of Greek philosophy and Roman politics in the church’s first five centuries, is it forever bound . . . to function within those exclusive parameters? Or is it free to enter and engage with new cultures and thought patterns, including our own—learning both positive and negative lessons from its earlier engagements?24

As an organic body, the church will either mature and grow or it will stagnate and regress (cf. WMRBW, xi). Labeling this growth as a “continuing conversion,” McLaren concludes that without repeated change, believers will increasingly become arrogant, selfish, inflexible, and fraudulent in their claims to represent Christ (GSM, 13). The result is a loss of credibility with younger generations for being impractical and unrelatable (SWFOI §34, 258‒59). “The point isn’t to replace one mandated structure with another, but rather to realize that structures need to be created, adapted, outgrown, replaced, and reinvented as needed” (AIFA, 93). Hence, the significance of studying McLaren’s philosophy of religion centers on correctly understanding how he wants to “change the framework” through which Christians approach their faith.25 In so doing, readers can then comprehend and, perhaps, even empathize with how McLaren’s new paradigm applies to the current socio-political destabilization of institutional Christianity.

1.2.2 Broader Socio-Political Context

In 2006, almost one-in-four Americans identified as white evangelical; but by 2016, that number dropped to less than one-in-five. Today, the religiously unaffiliated are seven percentage points higher than white evangelicals.26 According to Gallup, in 1951, only 1 percent of Americans had no religious preference; by 2017, one-in-five Americans now list “none” as their affiliation, and 25 percent say religion is “not very important.” However, the vast majority (87 percent) of Americans still believe in God, and the top two reasons why people seldom attend church is because they prefer to worship in private or because they dislike institutional religion.27 Rather than being anti-God, the reality is that a sizable portion of the population simply favors the label “spiritual” instead of “religious.”28 Thus, it is no surprise that McLaren describes his audience as “the seeking mind” (COOS1§6, 79), who are “spiritual questioners” and “spiritual seekers” (AMP §6, 105; MRTYR §4, 48; italics original to both). He writes, “If you’re like a lot of people I meet, you might describe yourself as ‘more spiritual than religious.’ You’re seeking meaning and depth in your life . . . but you don’t feel that traditional ‘organized religion’ helps very much” (NS §Intro., 1).29 McLaren’s goal is to help people embrace Christ without swearing allegiance to obsolete paradigms. “I’m especially hopeful that [I] will be helpful to people who consider themselves spiritual but not religious, or interested in Jesus but not Christianity” (SMJ §Intro, xvii).

Not surprisingly, Christian disillusionment has only been exacerbated because of America’s polarized political environment. “We feel as if our founder [Jesus] has been kidnapped and held hostage by extremists. . . .he often comes across as antipoor, antienvironment, antigay, anti-intellectual, anti-immigrant, and antiscience (not to mention protorture, pro-inequality, proviolence, pro-death penalty, and prowar). That’s not the Jesus we met in the Gospels!” (GSM, 6).30 Here, McLaren’s earlier warnings about right-wing authoritarianism have now manifested in what he labels the “Trumpcult,” an uncritical allegiance to President Donald J. Trump, where conservatives now proclaim, “We have no king but Caesar.”31 The question is then raised, How could conservatives, the “moral majority” advocating for “family values” (cf. COOS1 §11, 147), so easily embrace someone who boastfully flaunts his sexual immorality, misogyny, bigotry, corruption, and cruelty toward others? As Mark Labberton writes,

The ease with which some on the right could affirm an evangelical faith connected to campaign rhetoric that was racist, sexist, and nationalist was disorienting to an extreme. It left many evangelical people of color gasping in despair and disorientation that so many white brothers and sisters in Christ could vote for someone whose words and actions were so overtly inconsistent with their common faith in Christ.32

The disillusionment continues as McLaren cites Robert Cunningham, whose article on the evangelical “love” for Trump actually reflects their love for wealth and political dominance, fueled by paranoia and American nationalism (GSM, 240n16).33 Regardless of how evangelicals rationalize their initial endorsement of President Trump, the fact that “Trumpism” continues unhindered indicates that many churches are causing irreparable damage to Christian identity.34 As R. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, once remarked,

I hope every one of evangelical Christians in America thinks about what it’s going to mean to vote for someone, much less to publicly support someone, that we would not allow our children to be around. . . .Can we put up with someone and can we offer them our vote and support when we know that that person [is] . . . a sexual predator? This is so far over the line that I think we have to recognize we wouldn’t want this man as our next-door neighbor, much less as the inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And long term, I’m afraid people are going to remember evangelicals in this election for supporting the unsupportable and defending the absolutely indefensible.35

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has also rebuked evangelicals for endorsing what psychiatrists are labeling malignant narcissism:36

To back Mr. Trump, these voters must repudiate everything they believe. . . . His personal morality is clear, not because of tabloid exposés but because of his own boasts. His attitude toward women is that of a Bronze Age warlord. . . . In the 1990s, some of these social conservatives argued that “If Bill Clinton’s wife can’t trust him, neither can we.” If character matters, character matters. Today’s evangelicals should ask, “Whatever happened to our commitment to ‘traditional family values’?.” . . .Mr. Trump incites division, with slurs against Hispanic immigrants and with protectionist jargon that preys on turning economic insecurity into ugly “us versus them” identity politics. When evangelicals should be leading the way on racial reconciliation . . . are we really ready to trade unity with our black and brown brothers and sisters for this angry politician?37

Eventually, even the evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, officially announced that President Trump ought to be removed from office out of “loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.” Mark Galli, the editorial’s author, explains further, “President Trump has abused his authority for personal gain and betrayed his constitutional oath. . . . None of the president’s positives can balance the moral and political danger we face under a leader of such grossly immoral character.”38 Christianity Today then offered a sobering warning to evangelicals supporting President Trump:

Remember who you are and whom you serve. Consider how your justification of Mr. Trump influences your witness to your Lord and Savior. Consider what an unbelieving world will say if you continue to brush off Mr. Trump’s immoral words and behavior in the cause of political expediency. If we don’t reverse course now, will anyone take anything we say about justice and righteousness with any seriousness for decades to come? Can we say with a straight face that abortion is a great evil that cannot be tolerated and, with the same straight face, say that the bent and broken character of our nation’s leader doesn’t really matter in the end?39

Sadly, this warning was quickly rejected within days as The Christian Post had nearly 200 evangelical leaders openly denounce Christianity Today for their editorial, self-righteously claiming that their continued support of Mr. Trump is in keeping with Jesus’ own behavior in the first century (while never once explaining how their Christian witness remains unspoiled by defending a man who, in Galli’s words, “is morally lost and confused”).40 As McLaren would say in response, “[Jesus] was very compassionate toward many groups of people, but there is one group he had an absolute and uncompromising commitment to confront and expose, and it was those who dishonor themselves and others as humans made in the image of God.”41 This cult-like devotion to President Trump then prompted the international research institute and academic society, Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR), to respond with an open letter of its own (of which McLaren signed):

It is with great sadness that we, the undersigned faith leaders, biblical scholars, philosophers, and other academics, many of whom began our walks of faith in the evangelical tradition, hereby call on all American evangelical Christians of moral conscience who recognize and regret the corrupting and corrosive influence of Donald J. Trump, to join us in repudiating those evangelical leaders and institutions that have politically entangled themselves with him. We believe this action to be an urgent moral imperative because these leaders and institutions, which have unfortunately become the dominant voice of modern American evangelicalism, have shown themselves to be obstinately bound to the control of influences overtly opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ and have resisted repeated pleas to disentangle themselves.42

The point here is that there exists a deep sense of betrayal among many who believe evangelicals have sold out their faith to anti-Christ personalities (cf. TWLE). The impression is that these Christians will overlook or minimize any politician’s egregious immorality, but only so long as they are Republican.43 With these criticisms in mind, McLaren’s activist role against political and social cruelty has increased as “Trumpianity” further replaces Christian identity (cf. GDT):

Watching Trumpism’s near total takeover of white American Evangelicalism . . . I think it’s time for all white Evangelicals of conscience to consider withholding their consent from churches that aren’t vocally and actively resisting, and then re-invest their time, intelligence, money, and energy where they will benefit the common good rather than the narrow, conservative, patriarchal, right-wing agenda of Evangelical whiteness and religious supremacy. . . .Evangelical leadership is [simply] too compromised.44

In order to understand this socio-political context further, several key terms require delineation.

1.3 Definitions and Terms

evangelical/evangelicalism (lowercase ‘e’): a transdenominational confederation of Protestant and free-church Christians, who share three essential axioms: 1) an emphasis on Christ’s atoning death on the cross; 2) sola gratia and sola fide as the necessary channels for salvation; and 3) sola scriptura as the singular source of religious authority.45

Existential/Existentialism: as used in this book, an “existential” lifestyle denotes the resolute and personally meaningful embodiment of Christian faith while reflecting on its pragmatic relevance for daily living and real-world dilemmas. Existentialism here parallels McLaren’s other term, “aliveness” (WMRBW, xv), which aligns with Kierkegaardian and Percyean existentialism, as opposed to Tillichian or Sartrean existentialism (see §8.2.2).

Fundamentalism (Christian): George Marsden defines Christian fundamentalism as “a loose, diverse, and changing federation of cobelligerents united by their fierce opposition to modernist attempts to bring Christianity into line with modern thought.”46 Militancy, sectarianism, and dogmatic absolutism are its most distinctive characteristics (AIFA, 131; FFS §3, 92).47

Institutional Christianity: organized religion or “belief-system Christianity” that is often reluctant to change the status quo (FOWA §6, 52‒53; GSM, 3, 13, 180). Institutionalism is a form of faith that has a highly developed sense of doctrinal standardization, particularly within each denomination’s ministerium hierarchy, doctrinal or creedal adherence, sanctioned cultic practices, and prescribed social mores.48

Intersubjectivity: empathic communication; the sharing of subjective experiences, thoughts, and emotions among people within a group, which works to co-create the group’s perception of objective events and ontological reality (see §8.2.1).

Neoconservatism: Whereas classical conservatism intends to curb impulsive societal changes, dogmatic conservatism adds an unhealthy veneration for previous eras, most notably when white heterosexual males dominated the economy, government, and culture. Neoconservatism is the renewal of this dogmatic strain in the form of obstructionist policies, inflexible absolutism, refusal to compromise with opposing viewpoints, and a goal to revert society back to antiquated power structures (GSM, 41‒42; LWWAT §2, 14).49

Neo-Evangelical/Neo-Evangelicalism (capital ‘E’): popularly labeled “fundegelicals”; in this book, “neo-Evangelicalism” is the continuation of fundamentalist militancy, sectarianism, and absolutism with the addition of neoconservative political activism (GSM, xi).50 Neo-Evangelicals are often hostile toward notions of social action and divergent viewpoints, becoming overly judgmental in the process (GO §6, 119). This offshoot of evangelical faith is synonymous with unquestioning sycophants of the Republican Party and the Religious Right (cf. TWLE).51

1.4 Problem Statement

With these definitions in mind, it becomes evident that McLaren believes the existentially intersubjective nature of Christianity (as defined above) has yielded to the fundamentalist tactics of neoconservatism and neo-Evangelicalism. Thus, McLaren endeavors to introduce a new paradigm through which people can approach faith in Christ. The problem, however, is that mainly conservative Christians either do not attempt to understand the socio-political rationale for his philosophy of religion or they misjudge it completely, resulting in vitriolic ad hominem attacks. This gap in understanding is exasperated when realizing that while very few writings give only passing reference to McLaren’s internal logic, the volumes of reactionary critiques against him are not fully accurate in their assessments. Oftentimes, they have failed to appreciate the nuances of McLaren’s actual belief system. This book will correct this gap in knowledge by answering two simple questions: if systematized, how does Brian McLaren hope to reform people’s approach to Christian faith and how did he come to this conclusion? Consequently, what is not widely recognized (and what this book will demonstrate) is fivefold:

1.McLaren adopts post-objective intersubjectivity (not subjectivity);

2.he expands upon Kierkegaardian existentialism (not fideism);

3.he emphasizes a constructivist epistemology (not relativism);

4.he integrates multivocal alterity (not philosophical pluralism);

5.and he cherishes Jamesian pragmatism (not nihilism).

1.4.1 Attacks on McLaren

McLaren once commented, “I’ve been shocked by the venom and unfairness of many responses. Often, it’s clear that they have not even read my books, or else they have only read them seeking to find fault, not really trying to understand what I’m saying.”52 Gerald Gauthier further comments, “His books have triggered a wave of criticism from fundamentalist Christians who view him and his work as a threat to the foundations of their faith. He’s been labelled a heretic and a son of Satan.”53 In many cases, these critics argue that McLaren has no allegiance to Christ (cf. GO §17, 260, 264).54 Many conservatives have dismissed him as a diabolical nonbeliever, a heretical liar, or a manipulative pagan trying to destroy the true gospel.55 Denny Burk remarks “[McLaren] has more in common with the spirit of antichrist than with the spirit of Jesus (1 John 4:3).”56 One North Carolina church even held a public book burning of McLaren’s literature.57 Tony Jones explains, “Entire Web sites [sic] are devoted to listing his heresies. Recently, Brian has been disinvited from several conferences at which he was scheduled to speak, usually after nasty letter-writing and blogging campaigns by his critics.”58 Intriguingly, however, McLaren concludes that these criticisms are an indication he is on the right path:

What did I expect when I wrote about ‘a new kind of Christian’ or ‘a new kind of Christianity’ or ‘a generous orthodoxy’—a standing ovation?. . . .Of course they would see anyone issuing such a call as a traitor, a threat, an outsider, a compromiser, an apostate, a revisionist, a heretic, and an infidel. Of course they would do all they could to marginalize, bypass, reject, discredit, and defund anyone advocating such radical change. Of course!. . . .If I were driven by the need to be right—or to be thought right by others—I would show how little I had experienced the liberation to which I was calling others! (GSM, 188‒89; emphasis in original)

What is argued here in this book is that the biggest failure of these reactionary critiques is a lack of understanding McLaren’s actual religio-philosophy (cf. GO §8, 138; WMRBW, 102). While people may continue to disagree with his conclusions, it is still possible to respect the reasoning process by which he approaches faith.59 Thus, to understand these vitriolic attacks, it is necessary to elaborate briefly on McLaren’s more controversial adherence to semper reformanda.

1.4.2 Introducing Semper Reformanda

McLaren recalls an incident when protestors distributed hundreds of flyers declaring him “dangerous” and “unbiblical.” He subsequently asked himself, “How did a mild-mannered guy like me get into so much trouble?” (NKOCY §1, 2‒3).60 The answer is simple: McLaren’s version of semper reformanda, which is his provoking belief that Christianity should continually change how it manifests within society (GO §12, 193).61 For instance, McLaren states, “We must never again preach Christianity or promote Christianity. Instead, we must seek to see, learn, and live [God’s] ways, which can never be owned or contained by any human label or organization.”62 Elsewhere, he remarks, “You have permission to redefine what it means to be a Christian. Other people might put the definition on you—you [have to] believe this, hate this—but you can say, ‘Well, you can call me whatever you want, but I’d like to become a more compassionate person’” (cf. NKOCY §Book Two, 159‒60).63 Accordingly, the specific problem that this book addresses is the identification of McLaren’s rationale behind his semper reformanda, particularly since he notes that it is this concept that causes him so many problems:

What’s gotten me into trouble, though, is my suspicion that a person can be a follower of the way of Jesus without affiliating with the Christian religion, and my simultaneous lament that a person can be accepted and even celebrated as a card-carrying member of the Christian club but not actually be a follower of the way of Jesus. And even worse, I’ve proposed that I would rather be a follower of the way of Jesus and not be affiliated with the Christian religion than the reverse. (FOWA §4, 33)

Nevertheless, because of the large amount of writings by McLaren and in response to his work, it is important to set limitations on the scope of this investigation.

1.4.3 Research Limitations

McLaren has an extensive writing career and presence online, most notably through his blog posts and other social media platforms (cf. AIFA, 155‒56; COOS1 §7, 89), which have generated a surplus of interactions with his work.64 Consequently, this study will consult McLaren’s many informal sources; yet, it will only prioritize his published work over other mediums with the assumption that his official publications reflect his most thought-out concepts. All other online material will be cited only if they introduce new content or help clarify McLaren’s overall philosophy of religion. As an academic study, however, this book does not intend to be an apologetic defense of or polemical attack against McLaren’s approach to faith. Instead, the investigation is merely a clarification of his philosophy of religion. Therefore, this study will address issues pertaining specifically to the academic study of the philosophy of religion, such as spiritual experiences, morality, metaphysics, and epistemology. More generally, the task of the philosophy of religion here is to provide a synoptic view of McLaren’s approach to Christian religion in a systematic fashion. Hence, this book will not provide an in-depth engagement with his theological inferences nor the assertions of his critics. However, a brief literature review is still needed to understand how others have interpreted McLaren’s ideas.

1.4.4 Literature Review

Since his earliest writings, numerous book reviews, editorials, magazine articles, conference papers, interviews, newspaper headlines, peer-reviewed journals, academic theses, dissertations, book chapters, and book publications have been written on McLaren and his affiliations.65 The following is a selective list of writings that typify the lack of attention to McLaren’s philosophy of religion and the reactionary attacks that have ensued.66 For instance, in the Master’s Seminary Journal, and later in the book, The Truth War, John MacArthur describes McLaren as a self-righteous hypocrite masquerading as a believer, declaring that anyone following him will not inherit eternal life because they must hate God and God’s truth (§8.3.1).67 In Spring 2008, the Christian Apologetics Journal devoted an entire issue to attacking leaders of Emergence Christianity. In one article, Thomas Howe offers an overtly hostile review of McLaren’s work, scoffing at the notion of him being orthodox, biblical, and evangelical (§6.1.1). Howe ends his review by accusing McLaren of being a liar and then deliberately insults anyone who disagrees with his review.68 Howe later co-authored an article with Norman Geisler, becoming a chapter entry in Evangelicals Engaging Emergent, where they both charge McLaren with being dishonest (§2.3), manipulative (§5.4), relativistic (§8.3.3), and sacrilegious (§6.2). For them, true Christianity must entail absolutism, foundationalism, propositionalism, and infallibilism; otherwise, it is not orthodox Christianity (§8.2).69

In late 2011, Mark Christy completed his dissertation on what he labels McLaren’s “neoorthopraxy,” meaning McLaren undermines orthodox Christianity and replaces it with a call for social action. Christy contends that McLaren rejects the exclusivity of salvation through Christ (§8.4.1.1) and maintains a heretical Christology (§6.1.1). Christy describes McLaren’s belief that orthodoxy (right beliefs) is inseparably related to orthopraxy (right practices). The issue for Christy is that McLaren engages in relativistic syncretism with the postmodern culture (§8.3.3). McLaren denies Scripture as an objective source of divine authority (§7.3.1), making him both dangerous and misguided.70 Likewise, a 2013 dissertation by Joe Stewart explores the influence of Lesslie Newbigin on McLaren’s missiology. Labeling McLaren a “revisionist,” Stewart distinguishes McLaren’s ambiguous and provocative writing style from Newbigin’s work, claiming McLaren prevents readers from comprehending his line of reasoning (§5.4).71

In a 2015 dissertation by Gary Blackwell on McLaren’s spirituality, Blackwell investigated whether McLaren’s piety is authentic to the practices of the ancient church (§6.2.2.3). He concludes that McLaren is a religious deconstructionist (§6.1), who incorrectly uses Medieval mysticism to combat modernistic forms of Christianity (§4.2.3.1). His spirituality is a creative “bricolage” of various source material and religious beliefs that combine together, without regard for consistency or accuracy, to produce a mosaic of culturally acceptable attitudes and practices (§8.4).72 In the same year, John Hatch analyzed McLaren’s bibliology, explaining that his hermeneutic is an innovative approach that views the Bible as an inspired library of divergent voices (§7.3) dialoguing over important social issues (§8.4.1). Using the insights of Mikhail Bakhtin’s “centrifugal-centripetal dialectic,” Hatch describes McLaren’s hermeneutic as emphasizing Scripture’s “heteroglossia,” the appearance of multiple viewpoints, which he views as an embrace of competing voices (“polyphony”) in order to stimulate conversation (§8.4.1.2).73

To date, the most extensive treatment of McLaren’s work originally appeared in a 2014 dissertation by Scott Burson, which later became a book in 2016. Aiming to provide a critical examination of McLaren’s postmodern apologetic method, Burson details McLaren’s antagonism for the foundationalist-derived theology of Calvinism (§4.2.2). Using John Wesley’s quadrilateral, Burson evaluates McLaren’s defense of Christianity with a special emphasis on his use of moral intuition (§5.2). He ultimately agrees with McLaren’s concern that analytic Christianity has deviated from its original social and moral obligations, though he does not embrace all of McLaren’s ideas. Instead, Burson believes the solution to modernity is, in fact, an Arminian theology.74 From this review, it is evident that McLaren elicits both outrage and praise from his readers, something the author of this book has observed in various contexts.

1.5 Locating Self as a Researcher

I was first exposed to Brian McLaren’s writings in the Fall of 2014 when I took a doctoral class on Emergence Christianity. It did not take long before a polarization occurred among the students. Those who openly advocated for tolerance toward divergent political and religious perspectives had also appreciated the aims of McLaren and the Emergent Church.75 Those students who vociferously protested McLaren’s work tended to be older, opposed to diversity, and ultraconservative (politically and religiously). Despite being younger in age, I was originally intolerant of McLaren and other so-called “liberal” agendas. Soon, however, my religious prejudice diminished once professional and personal experiences forced me to confront what I perceived to be an increasingly radicalized and abusive evangelical culture. Unexpectedly, I found myself being able to discern the rationale behind McLaren’s work while many other students simply refused to entertain his insights or contentions.76 I likewise observed that the students who disavowed McLaren’s beliefs were also hostile to his work’s underlying principle. That is to say, instead of attempting to be intellectually incorrigible, McLaren believes it is spiritually and morally superior to withhold absolute judgment, maintain epistemic humility, and cultivate a willingness to doubt religious beliefs. Hence, those who are less troubled by McLaren, including myself, tend not to possess the same “uncertainty-phobia” (EMC §6, 44) as exhibited among his harshest critics. Consequently, I developed a research method that sought to answer one question as I read through his publications: If systematized, what would be the logical precursor or rationale for each of McLaren’s religious contentions?

1.6 Research Methodology

The research methodology for this book is exploratory, meaning it examines the basis for McLaren’s philosophy of religion and then organizes the results into a coherent system.77 The methodology does recognize, however, that McLaren’s reflexive reasoning processes likely did not occur in the same logical order of discovery as presented in this study. Historiographically, the book will appropriate an “integral-developmental” model, which will attempt an exposition of current philosophical developments leading to Christianity’s present paradigm shift. As an approach to religious history, it will chronicle the dominant theo-political issues affecting McLaren by recognizing the interchange between his socio-political experiences and missiological concerns.78 Likewise, the study will capitalize on Brian McLaren’s agreement to review the final product so as to ensure the study accurately portrays his religio-philosophy.79 In this sense, the book is a type of historical theology, with a “history of Christian theology” approach, that examines the interconnecting beliefs of a particular theologian and his relationship to the surrounding milieu.80 Nevertheless, taking an exploratory approach requires several nuances for the study of the philosophy of religion.

1.6.1 The Philosophy of Religion

The most basic assumption of this study is that McLaren is, in fact, a philosopher of religion.81 Being different from an academic study of theology, the philosophy of religion systematizes the logical and philosophical rationale underlying a belief system’s basic ideas, as well as the criteria used to evaluate those beliefs.82 In the West, this undertaking has traditionally employed logical formulas to justify religious assumptions.83 However, with McLaren’s philosophy of Christian religion (often termed a “religio-philosophy” in this book), an academic survey of his beliefs must specifically investigate how McLaren approaches his Christian faith, the rationale for why, and the evaluative criteria he uses to assess Christian paradigms. The assumption here is that McLaren’s belief system actually resembles a “body politic” where his beliefs and practices unite him to a particular subculture within American Christianity, being the overarching ideology that permeates his perceptions and interpretations of reality.84

Underlying this method is what Howard Kee refers to as social interior-exterior dimensions: “(1) the interior dimensions of social groups, by which groups form, merge, evolve, and by which leadership and group goals emerge and change; and (2) exterior aspects by which group identity develops in relation to the wider culture.”85 From these dimensions, this investigation will utilize social-scientific data (where appropriate) to identify the evolutionary development of McLaren’s religiosity.86 Nonetheless, because of its academic nature, the study will remain theologically impartial regarding his beliefs in order to focus on discovering, simplifying, and systematizing his reasoning processes within their socio-historical context.87 As expected, however, any discussion of McLaren’s work must also address his fictional novels.

1.6.2 McLaren’s Fictional Writings

By acknowledging that his writing style is closely aligned with Søren Kierkegaard (cf. MRTYR §1, 27‒28; PTP, 125), McLaren makes an explicit distinction between his nonfictional material (“signed” discourses) and his fictional “dialogs.” This book views McLaren’s novels as an indirect method for challenging the status quo of American religiosity by disturbing its culture-religion and exposing readers to the strengths and weaknesses of divergent approaches to faith.88 The trouble is with how to identify McLaren’s actual viewpoints from the fictional interactions of his characters. Mimicking Kierkegaard, McLaren states in one novel, “Please don’t assume that any of these characters can be fully identified with the ‘I’ who wrote this Introduction” (NKOC §Intro., xxvi).89 In a separate novel, however, McLaren explains, “Nearly all [the book’s] conversations were drawn from the many real-life conversations I have participated in over recent years” (SWFOI §Pref., xiv).90 Therefore, applying the “principle of coherence” derived from historical Jesus research, this study will presume McLaren agrees with a fictional character’s contention if it coheres to one of his signed discourses.91

Underlying this method is a distinction between the historical (or “empirical”) author and the aesthetic (“implied”) persona of McLaren’s veiled arguments. Narrative literary critics often argue that the “implied author” of a story can never truly be identical to the “empirical author” because the book’s narrator, as well as the varied fictional characters, embody different cultural and emotional dimensions. The implied author becomes the voice behind the story, who regulates which information to consider, which questions to ask, and which value judgments to accept concerning particular plot points and ethical decisions. Stated differently, McLaren reasonably expects his audience to allow the embedded persona of his novels to guide readers toward self-reflection over their own beliefs. This tactic allows readers to appreciate the ethical-religious world of the plot’s narrative and to understand the perspective of its characters, even if the reader does not ultimately agree with the book’s conclusions.92

1.7 Summary

Ultimately, McLaren contends that there exists an incongruity between what Christians profess to be true and what Christians demonstrate to be true in their personal lives. For him, conventional paradigms have capitulated to modernity, which has tarnished the way believers express their faith in both word and deed. Here, conventional paradigms have prioritized arguments about God so much that believers now cognitively declare their religion “true” but live as though their faith is not real enough to transform them personally. As McLaren explains,

What many experience in religious communities on a popular level seems closer to the opposite of love. Religion as they experience it promotes conflict and selfishness rather than generosity and otherliness. It teaches them to prioritize their own personal salvation and religiosity over the well-being of others. It teaches practices and beliefs that make some fear, dehumanize, and judge others. (NS §2, 15)

In this sense, Christianity has become more of a culture-religion than an embodied relationship with the divine. Thus, the thesis of this book is that McLaren is an abductive rationalist and phenomenological empiricist, who deliberately creates controversy through rhetoric and satirical provocations to stimulate the rethinking of conventional paradigms, such as when he questions whether God himself is an atheist (GI, 200). Here, McLaren is not anti-conventionalism; he is simply post-conventionalism, meaning he wants to retain what is good in older paradigms while jettisoning what is bad.

Significantly, both conservative and postmodern Christians alike object to McLaren’s ideas and his provocative writing style. The problem for many is that McLaren is deliberately ambiguous and controversial in his writings, which often leads to distortions about his actual beliefs, such as when McLaren writes, “As I get older, I confess that talking about God is getting increasingly uncomfortable, even painful at times” (GI, 178). Moreover, he purposely complicates his philosophy in order to be scandalous, capitalizing on inflammatory rhetoric in order to capture his readers’ attention. One problem is that many of his critics do not realize he is intentionally engaging in generalizations, irony, and humor when critiquing conventional Western Christianity. Thus, his critics often complain that he merely reflects an increasingly hostile culture without the proper nuance of actual scholarship.

In short, what is argued here is that McLaren’s philosophy of religion suggests a faith-based intersubjective relationship with the divine ought to result in an existential appropriation of Christ’s religio-ethical teachings. When subjectively internalized, this appropriation will lead to the assimilation of Jesus’ kingdom priorities, thereby transforming the believer’s identity into one that actualizes Jesus’ kingdom ideals.93 To accomplish this new paradigm, McLaren enlarges empirical categories to include mysticism and divergent theological perspectives. In other words, numinous experiences become a type of “empirical” evidence for McLaren because they involve sensory data. Since many derive their religious beliefs from these sensory encounters, McLaren seeks to utilize both his own intuition and experiences, as well as the intuition and experiences of others, in developing a new philosophy of Christian religion.

In axiomatic structure, which will be elaborated and clarified in the following chapters, McLaren’s religio-philosophy is divisible into two main sections:

A.An authentically beautiful and plausible Christian belief system that is both objectively true and subjectively meaningful will derive from the faith-based paradoxy of the incarnation, signifying that

i.Jesus Christ is the ineffable embodiment of transcendent Truth,

a.who stimulates divergent theological perspectives to correct the myopia of human dogmatism, thereby compelling

b.an intersubjective relationship with the Creator and his creation

c.in pursuit of existentially embodying Christ’s kingdom values,

ii.which reprioritizes Christianity from a system of doctrinal esoterica to a suprarational organism that

a.evolves over time as people’s experiential intimacy with Christ deepens their spiritual knowledge of the divine.

B.To evaluate whether a Christian belief system is beautiful and plausible, its proponents ought to attain

i.firsthand corroboration,

ii.a transformative internalization,

iii.and an emulative actualization of Christ’s incarnation,

a.with the goal of creating human solidarity in defiance of an unjust and unequal status quo.

The hope is that by tracing McLaren’s philosophy of Christian religion, future researchers will not only be able to comprehend (and perhaps empathize with) McLaren’s line of reasoning, but they will also possess a more nuanced discernment of where they agree and disagree with his overall rationale. To accomplish this objective, researchers must first understand the socio-historical context that influenced McLaren’s personality and religious temperament.

1. See for example, Johnson, “You Can’t Handle the Truth,” 219‒45; Dixon, “Whatever Happened to Heresy?,” 219; Blount, “A New Kind of Interpretation,” 125; and the accusations of Albert Mohler, D.A. Carson, John Frame, and Michael Wittmer referenced in Burson, “Apologetics and the New Kind of Christian,” 151.

2. The abbreviations section for this book is an expansion and revision of those found in Burson, Brian McLaren in Focus, 9 and Reed, “Emerging Treason?,” 66‒85. Where needed, these modifications are meant to reflect a more precise, updated, and enumerated catalogue of McLaren’s publications.

3. This citation practice should not be confused with this study’s internal references to other sections of the book, such as the listing §7.4.1.2, which designates a particular subheading in chapter 7.

4. Quoted in Bultmann, “Introduction,” ix.

5. Merritt, “The Church’s New Foundation,” 45.

6. Van Biema et al., “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America,” 34‒45. In response to the Time magazine article, McLaren explained to Larry King Live, “I probably represent a lot of people who are not terribly comfortable with the direction that a lot of Christian discourse in relation to politics has been going in recent years” (McLaren, “America’s Most Influential Evangelicals”).

7. Burk, “Why Evangelicals Should Ignore Brian McLaren,” 212. See also, MacArthur, “Perspicuity of Scripture,” 143‒44; King, “Emerging Issues for the Emerging Church,” 34; and Sinitiere, “Embracing the Early Church,” 27.

8. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church, 28, 157. See also, Mayhue, “The Emerging Church,” 191.

9. Webber, The Younger Evangelicals, 92; Crouch, “The Emergent Mystique,” 38; Taylor, “An Introduction to Postconservative Evangelicalism,” 22‒24.

10. McKnight, “McLaren Emerging,” 62. R. Scott Smith concurs, “I also would love to see McLaren discuss the philosophical views that inform his own views. I think he owes his readers a candid discussion of them, as well as an assessment of where they might lead for the faith” (Smith, “Some Suggestions for Brian McLaren,” 85). These annoyances are also echoed by Reed, “Emerging Treason?,” 76‒77 and, ironically, McLaren himself in McLaren, foreword to The Holy No, ix‒x.

11. Allison, “Jesus was an Apocalyptic Prophet,” 19.

12. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; cf. NKOCY §2, 14‒19; SWFOI §31, 229‒30.

13. See Tickle, The Great Emergence, esp. 13‒40. For McLaren, these negative reactions are reminiscent of the Catholic Church’s rejection of Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) or Protestantism’s resistance against the abolition movement. For him, Christians are still following their predecessors by staunchly defending outdated paradigms (FOWA §14, 133).

14. Smith, “The Work of the Holy Spirit,” 20‒31. See also, Jenkins, The Next Christendom, esp. 79‒105 and McLaren, “Brian McLaren on How to Build the NSP,” 67‒68.

15. Howard, “The Religion Singularity,” 77‒93. McLaren appears to recognize this same trend, “The existence of thousands of denominations today is in part the fruit of this Protestant dividing frenzy” (GO §7, 125). See also, Smith, Christian America?, 88 and McLaren, “Interview: Brian McLaren on Anglicans.”

16. Brow, “Evangelical Megashift,” 12‒14; Neff, “Has God Been Held Hostage by Philosophy?,” 30‒34; Streett, “An Interview with Brian McLaren,” 10; Tomlinson, The Post Evangelical, 69‒84; Stewart, In Search of Ancient Roots, 12‒13.

17. The State of the Church 2016 (Barna Group).

18. Religion (Gallup, 2018). Cf. Kohut et al., Some Social Conservative Disillusionment, 35. As one 2009 Newsweek article explained, the percentage of people who believe religion benefits humanity is at an historic low of just under half the population (Meacham and Gray, “The End of Christian America,” 34‒38).

19. See Bass, Christianity After Religion, esp. 11‒99. For McLaren’s perspective on this disdain, see McLaren, “Beyond Business-as-Usual Christianity.”

20. McLaren, “Brian McLaren on Outreach,” 122‒23; “Church Emerging,” 149.

21. Fowler, Stages of Faith, 117‒213. As Kathleen Berger explains, “If Fowler is correct, faith, like other aspects of cognition, progresses from a simple, self-centered, one-sided perspective to a more complex, altruistic (unselfish), and many-sided view” (Berger, The Developing Person, 531).

22. McLaren details some of this maturation process, “First they lose faith in the 6-day creationist god, then in the bible-dictation god, then in the male-supremacy god, then in the European-supremacy/western-civilization/colonialist god, then in the anti-gay god, then in the pro-war god, then in the American-exceptionalism/manifest-destiny god . . .” (McLaren, “Ask Brian McLaren. . .”).

23. McLaren explains further, “Questioning widely held assumptions about God can be a dangerous venture indeed. But if our assumptions aren’t sometimes questioned, belief in God becomes less and less plausible” (WMRBW, 29). Ron Sider concludes something similar: “Born-again Christians divorce at about the same rate as everyone else. Self-centered materialism is seducing evangelicals and rapidly destroying our earlier, slightly more generous giving. Only 6 percent of born-again Christians tithe. Born-again Christians justify and engage in sexual promiscuity (both premarital sex and adultery) at astonishing rates. Racism and perhaps physical abuse of wives seem to be worse in evangelical circles than elsewhere. This is scandalous behavior for people who claim to be born-again by the Holy Spirit” (Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, 27‒28).

24. McLaren, “Q and R: Hints of Kierkegaard.”

25. McLaren, “Brian McLaren Reflects on ‘Seizing An Alternative’ Conference,” 01:12‒02:00. After all, McLaren asserts, this rethinking of old paradigms is the essence of Jesus’ command to “repent” (WMRBW, 88).

26. See Jones and Cox, America’s Changing Religious Identity. As McLaren explains, droves of Christians are leaving the church in order to improve their spiritual lives (McLaren, foreword to The Way of Jesus, xi).

27. Religion (Gallup, 2018). As McLaren comments, “For a variety of reasons, organized religion, including Christianity, seemed to have lost its power to satisfy us in the late old world. It seemed ingrown, tired, petty, crotchety, and out of touch” (COOS1 §Intro, 14). In fact, McLaren is writing for those “who love God or want to love God or are seeking for a God to love but have been repulsed by ugly, unworthy images of a cruel, capricious, merciless, tyrannical deity” (LWWAT §Dedication, vii).

28. See Lipka and Gecewicz, More Americans Now Say They’re Spiritual; Wright, Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites, 43; and Luntz, What Americans Really Want, 158.

29. According to McLaren, being “spiritual” is just another way for people to say they are “seeking aliveness” (WMRBW, xv). See also, McLaren, “Brian McLaren Rebuilds Spirituality” and his foreword to The Emerging Church, 9‒10.

30. Jerry Falwell Jr.’s call for Liberty University students to shoot and “end those Muslims” who come on campus is a case in point. McLaren writes to Falwell, “How would you feel if you saw the president, faculty, and students in a radicalized Muslim university somewhere applauding and laughing about killing Christians and ‘teaching them a lesson?’ Do you see how you are helping your students become the mirror image of such a scene?” (McLaren, “An Open Letter to Jerry Falwell”).

31. McLaren, “Q and R: Belief VERSUS Practice.”

32. Labberton, “Introduction,” 9. This “Trumpcult” becomes evident as one supporter stated during a CNN interview, “If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is [colluding] with Russia, I would tell him, hold on a second, I need to check with the president if it is true” (“Trump Supporter Admits He Believes Trump”). Jerry Falwell Jr. echoed this sentiment when he declared that nothing could make him forgo his support for Mr. Trump, claiming it “may be immoral” for evangelicals to refuse offering the same type of support (Heim, “Jerry Falwell Jr. Can’t Imagine”).

33. See Cunningham, “In Love with Donald Trump.” McLaren’s fictional character, Old Skunk, captures the fear-based rhetoric of the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign, “When people are worried or afraid . . . you just have to give them somebody different to blame for their problems. If they call somebody else dirty or bad, they will feel clean and good. If they hurt somebody who won’t hurt them back, they will feel very powerful, important, and safe. It works every time” (CSS, 13; cf. TSS, 20).

34. According to Baylor University, “Trumpism” is a type of anti-government nationalism that combines pro-Christian rhetoric with overt xenophobia, misogyny, and a tribalistic fear of diversity. Those upholding Trumpism describe themselves as “very religious,” are typically white evangelical, believe the United States is a Christian nation, and believe God is an authoritative and judgmental deity. They believe Muslims are a threat to national security, men should run the government and earn more than women, working women are defective mothers, and the LGBTQ community should not have equal rights. See Froese et al., American Values, 7‒27.

35. Mohler, “Mohler, Jr. Discusses Evangelical Support for Trump,” 00:29‒01:21; emphasis in original. Roger Olson parallels these sentiments, “My fellow evangelicals who continue to support and even defend Trump in spite of everything he has said about the weak and vulnerable people of the world: It is time to admit you have been wrong and stop defending the indefensible” (Olson, “An Open Letter”).

36. For details on Mr. Trump’s mental instability, immoral behavior, corrupt practices, and connection to multiple crime syndicates, see Lee, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump; Woodward, Fear; and Brockenbrough, Unpresidented.

37. Moore, “Have Evangelicals Who Support Trump Lost Their Values?” Interestingly, McLaren notes that President Trump’s mother was, in fact, an impoverished migrant to America who tried to escape economic hardship, the very kind of people that Mr. Trump has vociferously vilified during his campaign and presidency (McLaren, foreword to Poacher’s Pilgrimage, xvii‒xxii).

38. Galli, “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”

39. Galli, “Trump Should Be Removed from Office.”

40. Barnhart, “Nearly 200 Evangelical Leaders.” What is interesting, though not surprising, is just how Christian leaders on both sides will appeal to Jesus’ communion with sinners in the first century to support certain theological beliefs. See for example, McLaren, foreword to Love is an Orientation, 9‒11.

41. McLaren, foreword to Love is an Orientation, 10‒11.

42. Global Center for Religious Research, “An Open Letter to Evangelicals.”

43. For instance, in an open letter dated September 1998, James Dobson demanded that Christians abandon support for President William J. Clinton for his consensual affair with a White House intern. Most of Dobson’s remarks would apply directly to President Trump today, but Dobson has remained steadfast in his support for Mr. Trump regardless and has not demanded Christians abandon their support (see Dobson, “Dedicated to the Preservation of the Home”; italics in original). As McLaren writes, “The things we are against often define us, so we are easily manipulated in this way. Consider some of the conservative political pundits who have never espoused any inclination toward Christianity. They gain millions of Christian followers by opposing the political enemies of conservative Christians” (VA, 106).

44. McLaren, “Q and R: When Do I Leave.” McLaren writes elsewhere, “The ugliness of this ungenerous pseudo-orthodoxy is driving young people away from faith in unprecedented numbers, and it threatens to leave major sectors of organized religion a bastion of regressive and reactionary angry old men, along with the women and young people who defer to them” (McLaren, foreword to Generous Orthodoxies, xvi).

45. See Henry, “Who are the Evangelicals,” 69‒94; Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, esp. 2‒17; Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, 1:13‒18; and Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story, 17‒25.

46. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 4.

47. McCune, “The Self-Identity of Fundamentalism,” 9‒34; Balmer, “Critical Junctures in American Evangelicalism,” 55‒66; Blythe, “Missouri Synod,” 31‒51. Cf. McLaren, “A Brief History of the 21st Century,” 16.

48. Cf. Rodes, “Last Days of Erastianism,” 301‒48; McMullen, “Institutional Church as House Church,” 1‒18; Schmitz, “The Authority of Institutions,” 6‒24; and MacCulloch, Christianity, 112‒54. According to McLaren, this “organizationalism” is the mechanistic process of making believers mere cogs in a larger assembly line of commercialization. Promoting Christianity as an “organized religion” becomes the bête noire for those who simply want to join a “spiritual community” (COOS1 §12c, 196).

49. Huntington, “Robust Nationalism,” 31‒40; Aronowitz, “Considerations on the Origins of Neoconservatism,” 56‒70.

50. What is deemed neo-Evangelical in this study is often identified merely as “Evangelical” (capital ‘E’), the “Religious Right,” or “fundamentalist” throughout McLaren’s corpus. Significantly, McLaren still identifies as an “evangelical” (lowercase ‘e’) in the sense of being committed to the canonical Jesus’ preaching of the evangelium (cf. §7.4.2). “I am happy and honored to consider myself an evangelical . . . the more modest ‘small e’ evangelical” (GO §6, 116). For him, if other “evangelicals” behave in ways contrary to the good news of Jesus Christ, they become “betrayers” of the gospel (AMP §Intro, 12). See also, McLaren, “Between Mixed Martial Arts.”

51. See Marsden, “Fundamentalism and American Evangelicalism,” 22‒35; Olson, Reformed and Always Reforming, 15‒26; Catherwood, The Evangelicals, 91‒144; Collins, Power, Politics and the Fragmentation of Evangelicalism, 54‒86; Quebedeaux, The Young Evangelicals, 5‒17; Fitch, The End of Evangelicalism?, 48‒122; and Balmer, “Critical Junctures in American Evangelicalism,” 67‒75.

52. Streett, “An Interview with Brian McLaren,” 8.

53. McLaren, “Making Waves,” 29. As McLaren remarks, “[Evangelical] activists may use the word ‘love’ to justify their behavior, but those who disagree with them are seldom treated with love. Many of us have already faced the scorn of the activists who promote this chosen lifestyle and defend it as legitimate and even godly. For doing so, we have received hate mail peppered with a wide range of threats and abusive speech” (NKOCY §17, 174).

54. Cf. Pettegrew, “Evangelicalism,” 175; Woodbridge, “Evaluating the Changing Face,” 185‒205; Horton, Christless Christianity, 64; and Rhodes, “The Maze of Mysticism,” 7.

55. See for example, Geisler and Howe, “A Postmodern View of Scripture,” 92‒108; Gray, “The Emergence of The Emerging Church,” 27‒62; and Johnson, “You Can’t Handle the Truth,” 219‒45; Dixon, “Whatever Happened to Heresy?,” 219‒20.

56. Burk, “Editorial,” 3. Cf. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant, 86‒87.

57. Winner, “Houses of Worship.” Significantly, McLaren does disclose to his readers that he intends to create controversy in order to challenge the semiotic paradigms of conventional Christianity (COOS1 §Pref., 8; GO §Intro., 22‒23).

58. Jones, The New Christians, 51. See also, Christian Century, McLaren Talk Canceled, 15.

59. Cf. McLaren, “Seeking to Do One Thing Well, 121‒40 and “An Interview with Brian McLaren,” interview by Rachel Held Evans.

60. McLaren writes elsewhere, “I’m not by nature a controversialist, so I didn’t look forward to a hornet’s nest being stirred up” (McLaren, “Brian McLaren’s Post”).

61. Mohler even complains, “This author’s purpose is transparent and consistent. Following the worldview of the postmodern age, he embraces relativism at the cost of clarity in matters of truth and intends to redefine Christianity for this new age, largely in terms of an eccentric mixture of elements he would take from virtually every theological position and variant” (Mohler, The Disappearance of God, 99). See also, Hagerty, “Jesus, Reconsidered” and Murphy, “Evangelical Author.”

62. McLaren, “Instead of Ruling,” 228.

63. McLaren and Schaeffer, “Brian McLaren Talks with Frank Schaeffer,” 00:14:14‒00:14:28.

64. McLaren writes, “Originally, as an author, I used social media as a way to communicate between books and about my books. Gradually, as I began to see my role as a ‘public theologian,’ I sometimes felt that my social media work was as important as or more important than my published work. Now I feel that much of my work is movement building, and for this, social media is paramount” (McLaren, “Public Theology,” 290). As Robert Webber explains, “The new postmodern shape of communications. . . .is knowledge gained through personal participation in a community” (Webber, Ancient-Future Faith, 24). See further, McLaren, foreword to The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, 9‒11.

65. Cf. Swanson, “Bibliography of Works,” 223‒29.

66. Section numbers (§) to other portions of the book are also included in this literature review to identify those portions of the study that directly relate to or address the contentions of these interactions with McLaren’s writings. For an extended literature review, see Appendix A at the end of the study.

67. See MacArthur, The Truth War, esp. x, 18‒19, 34‒40, 139, 144‒45, 169 and “Perspicuity of Scripture,” 141‒58.

68. Howe, “A Review of A Generous Orthodoxy,” 81‒102. Howe ends his article by stating, “Some may disagree with my review, but if they do, that just means they are Postmodern, unthinking, wishy-washy, McLarenites” (p. 102).

69. Geisler and Howe, “A Postmodern View of Scripture,” 63‒79; “A Postmodern View of Scripture,” in Evangelicals Engaging Emergent, 92–108.

70. Christy, “Neoorthopraxy and Brian D. McLaren.”

71. See Stewart, “The Influence of Newbigin’s Missiology,” esp. 25‒27, 86‒111, 225‒26, 238, 255.

72. Blackwell, “Return or Rereading.”

73. Hatch, “Hearing God Amid Many Voices,” 23‒47.

74. Burson, “Apologetics and the New Kind of Christian.”

75. For a history and schematization of Emergent Christianity, see Clawson, “A Brief History of the Emerging Church,” 17‒44; “Emerging from What?”; and Burson, Brian McLaren in Focus, 273‒83.

76. As Tony Jones amusingly quips, “Evangelical pastors have to read [McLaren’s] A New Kind of Christian wrapped in a Playboy cover” (Jones, The New Christians, 51).

77. Gibbs and Bolger, Emerging Churches, 329.

78. Bradley and Muller, Church History, 29‒31.

79. Brian D. McLaren, email to author, January 24, 2018. As an informal consultant, McLaren was able to provide guidance and further insights into his thought processes. However, this book’s assertions and judgments (in their final form) are solely mine and, thus, any errors or misrepresentations of McLaren’s work are solely those of this author and not of anyone else.

80. Clark, To Know and Love God, 172‒73.

81. This assumption is not unjustified since McLaren seeks to “discuss questions like what faith is, how faith and knowledge are related, whether God exists, and how thinking people can explore and evaluate various ideas about God” (FFS §Intro, 25). As Scott Burson remarks, “In 1974, [McLaren] enrolled at the University of Maryland originally as a philosophy major, but soon shifted to English while maintaining an interest in the aesthetic dimensions of philosophy” (Burson, “Apologetics and the New Kind of Christian,” 272).

82. Peterson et al., Reason and Religious Belief, 10; Rowe, Philosophy of Religion, 1‒2; Clark, To Know and Love God, 297.

83. See for example, Aldwinckle, “Is There a Christian Philosophy?,” 233‒42.

84. Fitch, The End of Evangelicalism?, 8‒9.

85. Kee, Christian Origins in Sociological Perspective, 26.

86. Cf. Gleason, “How St. Mary’s College,” 257‒60; Turcotte, “Sociologie et historie des religions,” 43‒73; and Marti and Ganiel, The Deconstructed Church, 197‒208.

87. Unlike most other interactions with McLaren’s work, this study recognizes that a simple scrutiny of his theological deductions is inadequate without consideration of the cultural and practical contexts within which McLaren must live out his religious beliefs. In other words, religion is ultimately a lived experience that must work in reality apart from the theoretical musings of the intellectual mind; and since McLaren does not endorse an analytic approach to religiosity anyway, investigations into his beliefs would be incomplete without relating his philosophy to the sociocultural, historical, and practical contexts of everyday life. See Cottingham, Philosophy of Religion, 1‒24. For an elaboration on socio-historical investigations, see Slade, “What is the Socio-Historical Method,” 1‒15.

88. As Kierkegaard once wrote, “A pseudonym is excellent for accentuating a point, a stance, a position. He is a poetic person. Therefore, it is not as if I personally said: This is what I am fighting for” (Hong and Hong, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 6:6421). Cf. Clowney, “A Critical Estimate,” 32‒33; Vardy, The SPCK Introduction to Kierkegaard, 49; Roberts, Emerging Prophet, 10n21.

89. Kierkegaard wrote something similar: “Thus in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me. . . .if it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the books, it is my wish, my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, not mine” (Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:626‒27).

90. Likewise, in the introduction to A New Kind of Christian, McLaren admits that his fictitious story incorporates numerous aspects from his personal life (NKOC §Intro., xvi‒xviii). Thus, these books are semi-autobiographical without McLaren explicitly claiming ownership of the viewpoints expressed therein (see “Becoming Convergent”).

91. Cf. Bohannon, “Preaching and the Emerging Church,” 61n1.

92. For detailed explorations of the difference between the “empirical author” and the “implied author” within narrative literature, see Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge; “What Is an Author?,” 141‒60; Suleiman, The Reader in the Text, Booth, Critical Understanding; The Rhetoric of Fiction; The Company We Keep; and Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction.

93. Though McLaren does not argue that his beliefs are self-evident or incorrigible, he does conclude that his philosophy is not self-referentially incoherent, either, especially because of its pragmatic worth for Christian faith (cf. AMP §18, 278; FOWA §1, 4; SMJ §9, 72‒89).