The New Age Religion: How 'emerging church' movement could change or destroy the U.S. religious landscape
Pastor Dale Morgan
The New Age Religion: How 'emerging church' movement could change or
destroy the U.S. religious landscape*
Influential New Age author Brian McLaren wants churches to move beyond
charity toward systemic New Age changes.
NEW YORK (AP) — Author Brian McLaren is among the most influential
American religious thinkers of the last decade.
His break with rigid orthodoxy and embrace of new age worship styles is
at the center of what is called the emerging church — a movement that
has gone viral. The emerging church reclaims ancient practices and
prayers and creates new ones, while re-examining Scripture to learn how
modern-day Christians should live.
Since no particular denomination is dominant in the view of McLaren and
evangelical thinkers like him, their views have been embraced by a wide
range of religious groups, including both conservative and liberal
Protestants along with Roman Catholic congregations.
Emerging church leaders have earned praise as innovators, especially in
their ability to inspire young people. Yet, many conservative Christians
remain rightfully suspicious of the movement and its approach to
theology. Emerging new age thinkers contend that evangelicals and others
have been too influenced by the broader culture in their reading of
Scripture. The emerging church says this has marginalized important
Bible teachings and hurt the faith.
McLaren has explained his thoughts in more than 10 books. His latest,
Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope,
argues that Christians must move beyond traditional charity and work for
systemic change that addresses the causes of human suffering.
McLaren recently sat down with The Associated Press to talk about the
book and the future of emerging churches. Here are his answers in
condensed form:
Q: How is what you recommend different than the humanitarian work
churches do already?
A: It's not working within the paradigm that a lot of Christians work —
which is all that God is ultimately interested in is extracting souls
for heaven. And we might do some good works here on earth, but we don't
really expect any of it to work, because the world is sort of, the
toilet has been flushed and it's going down.
Q: What do you mean by systemic change?
A: You can make incremental changes within a subsystem but in order to
actually change a whole system you have to get a lot of the parts
changing all at once. ... You can pour money into building a school, but
then if there's a war, the war wipes out all the benefit you got from
the school and the school shuts down. You can improve agriculture, but
if HIV runs through, then there's so much upheaval, then you can't
maintain the advances in agriculture.
Q: But there's an impression churches are already so active on these
issues. Why does anyone need to urge churches to do this?
A: One of the really important concepts is the difference between mercy
and justice. There's that famous passage from Micah 6, "Do justice, love
kindness, walk humbly with God." One way to describe it is unjust
systems throw people into misery and mercy brings us to relieve some of
their misery, but until we confront the unjust systems by doing justice
we're never going to make a change. ... I think what churches in
America, especially evangelical churches, are just waking up to is the
way they have to deal with systemic injustice, not just charitable
giving to people in misery.
Q: Are you a dominionist , trying to create heaven on earth?
A: As a Christian, I'm just trying to be faithful. I'm trying to live
out what I pray when I pray the Lord's prayer, 'May your kingdom come.
May your will be done on earth.' ... I'm not a utopian in any way.
Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that
there's an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that
churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?
A: Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look
at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops
covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their
claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly
support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war
with Iran. ... Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say,
'You're wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to
post-modernity.' I say, 'No, I really don't want to do that. But what I
do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we've already watered down
the Gospel to accommodate modernity.' ... I think the naivetDe of some
of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine
understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of
screwing up.
Q: Can you talk about where the emerging movement is now?
A: The first of these sort of emerging gatherings that I was ever
involved with was 10 years ago and we weren't even using the word
emerging yet. ... None of us ever guessed in our wildest dreams that we
were onto something that would become a big deal. We were trying to
survive really. Ten years ago, I was a 42-year-old pastor who loved God,
but was having deep questions about the kind of standard evangelical way
of being a Christian I'd been devoted to. And I was so relieved to find
that other people were asking the same questions. ... There are still
people who are just entering into the conversation at that level, so
there are people who, for them this is all new.
Q: What comes next for emerging churches?
A: Ten years ago, the question was, why are Gen-Xers dropping out of
church? .. So we've been grappling with these very deep theological
questions over the last five or seven years. What is the Gospel? What
was Jesus really trying to do? ... Emergent Village
(emergentvillage.com) created this kind of safe space for people to
talk. Now what's happened is all of these affiliated groups are forming
— Presby-mergent, Anglo-mergent. ... A Catholic network is forming. ...
It's breathtaking to hear all the creative thinking going on about the
future.
Q: What are the weaknesses of the movement?
A: Nobody had a master strategy for this. That creates weaknesses as
well as strengths. It means you don't have anybody calling the shots and
it means that things happen in a somewhat haphazard way. And I think
there's a huge range of responses. ... Among evangelicals you have
people who are not doing any theological rethinking at all. The theology
that they inherited, they're staying with 100%. They're trying to do
sort of methodological innovation (in styles of worship). And my
personal feeling is that's great. Those'll be steps in a good
direction... I'm not a purist about anything. I think it's all good.
We're all trying to stumble along and take some steps in the right
direction. Others of us are asking theological questions and that's
always messy.
Q: You reject the word liberal to describe yourself.
A: What do you mean by the term? If liberal means you believe ... you
should help the poor, and your bias should be toward peacemaking rather
than war-making, then I'm a liberal. But if liberal means that
government can solve all of our problems and that secularism is better
than faith, and that it doesn't matter what you do in your personal life
and that morality is up for grabs, then I'm not a liberal. And I could
say the same thing about conservative.