Review: Brian McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christian”
I just finished a quick read of Brian McLaren’s “A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey” Book 1. It’s a fictional account of two friends, well, on a spiritual journey. One is an unrepentant and ridiculously thoughtful post-modern named — get this — Neo. The other is a pastor — evangelical, one figures — going through a sort of mid-life-crisis-of-faith having very much to do with what Neo happens to have thought through for years: how one negotiates post-modernism and Christianity.
The conceit of the book is the narrative between Neo and pastor Dan, which frankly, really annoyed me. I know narrative is very pomo, but I got tired of reading pages and pages of dialogue (at points, simply emails back and forth between the character), but the issues the delves into are crucial to our time and tackled really well. Neo is a walking, talking, post-modern explain-a-person. He’s fascinating, but I think in the case of the story, form gets into the way of function.
That said, McLaren is more on top of such questions of the modern life, evangelicalism, and post-modernity (and other “posts”) than almost anyone publishing these days, and the re-release of the A New Kind of Christian trilogy is a welcome conversation partner in the milieu of 2009.
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I’ve read some things that say McLaren is dangerous and he is veering away from Christianity. What would you say about his theology, Adam?
A New Kind of Christian is fictional, so McLaren’s personal theology is not transparent. But no, from what I’ve read of him he’s not veering away from Christianity. Actually, most of his stuff seems to be veering towards a truer more faithful Christianity than ever before.
ANKOC is not in any way new and the author’s attempt at tossing centuries of theology and biblical interpretation aside would be laughable if it weren’t so sadly dangerous. Seems as if it is just easier to reinvent God to satisfy our Western cultural sensitivities than to accept the mysterious, and seemingly inconsistent descriptions of his actions that the bible presents. McLaren is guilty of exactly what he accuses modern Christianity of doing- superimposing his own worldview on top of scripture and editing out the uncomfortable and incomprehensible. Apparently God can’t communicate his story clearly throughout scripture, so it’s up to us to add layers of vagueness to explain the true meaning. What’s next, proposing that Jesus didn’t physically die for our sins, it’s just a metaphor for how much he really cares about us? Don’t drink the kool-aid.