Everything must change

I've been wondering whether having a go at summarising and reflecting on books as I read them could be helpful to me, and maybe to readers. So I thought I'd give it a go with Brian McLaren's latest. Here are my reflections on the first half-dozen chapters.

McLaren starts by recognising that a number of potential readers could be put off because of a cultural skepticism about the kinds of themes he's dealing with. I wonder whether this is true; in my case, I want to read this book because those themes are being dealt with. Nevertheless, the skepticism is real and forms a backdrop for all of us. It seems to me that for McLaren the more important potential audience are those who are more fully aware of the difficulties with organised Christian religion, particularly in its north American forms and who may be rejecting it because of its failure to be or embody good news.

McLaren was an English teacher and it shows, arguably, in some really nice soundbites. And I write 'nice' because they express my own thinking well. For example,
I couldn't help asking other questions: why do we need to have singular and firm opinions on the protection of the unborn, but not about how to help poor people and how to avoid killing people labelled enemies who are already born? Or why we are so concerned about the legitimacy of homosexual marriage but not about the legitimacy of fossil fuels or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (and in particular, our weapons as opposed to theirs)? Or why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of species but so few concerned about the extinction of species? [pp.3-4]
The first chapter alerts us to the need to come up with a better Christian “framing story”. And the importance of doing so is well put and alluded to when McLaren writes,
The popular and domesticated Jesus who has become little more than a chrome-plated hood ornament on the guzzling Hummer of western civilisation, can thus be replaced with a more radical, saving, and, I believe, more real Jesus. [p.6]
Chapter two begins by confessing the two big questions that have stayed with McLaren since his twenties: what are the biggest problems in the world and what does Jesus have to say about them? For me, it is significant that a third question arises for him from those, because, again, it is mine. Why hasn't the Christian religion made a difference commensurate with its message, size and resources?

He outlines about a trip he took, on invitation, to Burundi and the word amahoro, 'peace'. In moving to chapter 3 we are introduced to the 'one' sermon that McLaren's host Claude had heard growing up in church: you're a sinner, unless you believe in Jesus you're going to hell. Claude pointed out to his Burundian, Rwandan and Congolese audience that none of them had heard anything about Hutus, Tutsis and Twa being reconciled. But this is not just an central African issue: all too often the Church, Christians have not been about reconciliation and welfare, though the world has sorely needed them. A recovery of the message of Jesus about the Kingdom is needed.

Chapter five brings us a scene from a meeting with South African pastors in a township where unemployment and AIDS are chronic. A health worker challenges them that their preaching of healing, being born again, colluding with not talking about sex and of tithing for prosperity are contributing to the problems not alleviating them. He outlines some of the kinds of programmes they could be developing but haven't been. McLaren characterises this kind of preaching and way of being church as chaplaincy to a dysfunctional and failing culture and a PR dept for a destructive ideology. To be sure he also mentions some areas where churches are becoming part of the solution, but the challenge remains.

It's probably helpful that McLaren makes these points in narrative and so via the voice of others directly affected. The health worker had to put up with accusations of heresy, though he was a committed pentecostal Christian. McLaren helps the presentation of his case by being more indirect at this point.

In chapter six we are introduced to post-modernism very helpfully and accessibly first by some historical placing to do with post-colonialism and the experience of two world wars and then very succinctly by reference to the roots of overweening certainty found in Descartes' foundationalism. I had to admire his adroit choice of examples and core issues as well as the presentation of them in well-crafted language and accessible thought.