Selma: A Stations of the Cross for Our Time
We see the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, played by David Oyelowo, in close-up, as he prepares to give his acceptance speech for the…
We see the face of Dr. Martin Luther King, played by David Oyelowo, in close-up, as he prepares to give his acceptance speech for the…
I have been dying to write this post. Over the past month or so, you’ve probably noticed an abundance of Easter candy on store shelves…
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the Sabbath day. He stood up…
Spend some time today thinking about an aspect of your faith that causes serious doubt in you and pray for deeper faith, not despite it…
Brian McLaren, Protestant pastor, author and theological gadfly is one of the most influential figures associated with the Emerging Church movement, a loosely defined network made up in large part of younger evangelical Christians seeking to reinterpret traditional beliefs and practices for the 21st century. Movement participants, stressing their intellectual and spiritual diversity, think of themselves as engaged in an open-ended “dialogue” or “conversation,” much of which takes place on the internet at sites such as emergentvillage.com, where McLaren’s podcasts help set the tone.
In more than a dozen highly influential books, McLaren has championed a progressive approach to evangelicism, stressing social justice and rejecting the traditionally conservative politics of the mainstream evangelical movement. McLaren told an interviewer in 2006, “When we present Jesus as a pro-war, anti-poor, anti-homosexual, anti-environment, pro-nuclear weapons authority figure draped in an American flag, I think we are making a travesty of the portrait of Jesus we find in the Gospels.” He has worked closely with the evangelical anti-poverty activist Jim Wallis, whose Busted Halo interview can be read here.
McLaren’s politics are best understood as an outgrowth of his religious thinking. His most recent book, A New Kind of Christianity, published in early 2010, sets out to reread the Bible from a 21st-century perspective, deconstructing the book’s Greco-Roman narrative, emphasizing the Jewish context of early Christian belief, and proposing a more open-ended view of Christianity’s sacred text as “an inspired library” rather than a “constitution.”
Novelist Clyde Edgerton and Reverend Eric Porterfield, pastor of Winter Park Baptist Church in Wilmington, North Carolina, went to speak with McLaren at his home in Maryland. This is the first of a series of excerpts from their conversation; it focuses on McLaren’s idea of “prophetic confrontation” and the difficulty of promoting social change. The entire interview can be found here.
When I read the following apology written by Brian McLaren in his new book, A New Kind of Christianity, I figured Mr. McLaren probably didn’t…
Return to the Lent calendar. Lent Quotable To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.— Martin Luther…
[EDITOR’S NOTE — While MLK Day is celebrated next Monday, January 15 is Dr. King’s birthday. He would have been 80 today. This article was…
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths…