A New Kind of Christianity

By Josh Olds

GENRE: THEOLOGY/CHRISTIAN LIVING
PUBLISHER: HARPER ONE
PUBLICATION DATE: FEBRUARY 9, 2010

A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren. Well, it’s about time! I thought. There’s certainly something wrong with the current kind! Before I begin my actual review, let’s be honest. Western Christianity is in need of a major overhaul. There is less and less a distinction between those who claim to be followers of Christ and those who do not, and Christ’s power is not seen in those who brandish His name. So is it time for a new kind of Christianity? Yes. Do we find it in Brian McLaren and the Emergent Church? I can’t say that we do.

First to discuss the book. As an exposition of the beliefs of the Emergent Church, A New Kind of Christianity fares quite well. For those interested in learning more about the movement (or “conversation” as McLaren would like it put), this is definitely a book to read. It asks ten questions of itself, and then proceeds to answer each one. McLaren sets forth his case well, giving us a picture of the so-called deconstructed Jesus, one not read through the lens of Paul or Augustine or Luther, providing us with a good idea of how the Emergent Church thinks on issues like heaven, hell, God’s justice, Jesus, pluralism, and so on. It’s a coherent and well-written insight into what many would consider an enigma in late 20^th – early 21^st century evangelicalism. But that’s the only reason I can recommend it.

McLaren takes the tone of a martyr, constantly bringing up how he’s been criticized, just like the abolitionists of the 19^th century (a discussion that actually covers several pages). And yet while in all of that he begs for honest dialogue, he constantly caricatures modern evangelicalism. While, yes, he does pinpoint issues within the church, to portray it as such is broad strokes is a classic straw man. McLaren also plays a good cop/bad cop routine throughout the book, alternately reminding us that he himself is in a search for answers, then denouncing those that believe differently than he. At one point he calls the God of evangelicalism “a damnable idol” (65). Such a tone hardly invites the dialogue he pretends to want.

On the level of theology, McLaren denies the Fall and thus the need for redemption. There is no wrath, no hell, no second coming. He makes no clear statements on Christ’s deity, no mention of justification, no doctrine of regeneration. He gives us no reason to save the lost (because they’re not lost, just on another path) and says little about faith and worship. McLaren’s Gospel is this: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the work of a Christ without a cross.”

It’s not a new kind of Christianity. It’s the old kind of Christianity that first found fruition in the 19^th century German “history of religion” school of thought under Adolph Harnack and currently peddled in various iterations by liberal scholars such as Marcus Borg and Jesus Seminar founder John Crossan. Had McLaren any training in theology he might have realized this. In an effort to be culturally relevant, McLaren has jumped ship and now paddles in a lifeboat that I’m not positive can be called Christian. In the end, this is a good book. But I say good in the sense that it was, for me, an intellectual exercise in the defense of the faith, and certainly not due to its theology.

Review title sent courtesy of Harper One