Eyre Lines

An apology to Brian McLaren, Rob Bell and others

I have only very recently started reading things written by these two and quite a few other writers who, these days, are often labelled “Progressive Christians”.  I wish I had read them some years earlier, although in conscience, as I have only just emerged from a very long term clinical depression, I am not sure what I would have been able to do with the information.

The last time I thought of these names, they were labelled “Emergent”, and I looked at what “Emergent” seemed to mean – and it was clearly based in American Evangelical (and therefore probably Charismatic and probably Fundamentalist) Christianity. The writing I did find seemed to me heavily tinged with those tendencies.

There was no way I could have found real identity with the Evangelical-Charismatic-Fundamentalist tendency from the States. Yes, I have found pleasure and some occasional insight from debating with them over the years on The Religion Forum, and in trying to encourage some form of civilised exchanges between them and the members of other denominations and tendencies in Christianity and those of other religions and none (especially those of no religion!).

However, those exchanges have frequently been punctuated by cries of “heresy”, “false doctrine” “false prophet”, “agent of Satan” and on one occasion “Antichrist” (which I confess I initially read as “AntiChris”). I got used to these things online, and they are really water off a ducks back these days.

However I did not think these attitudes were likely to ensure me a warm welcome in the flesh, and had some experience of much less than warm physical welcome (involving shouting and fists) from Evangelicals in this country, admittedly nondenominational Evangelicals. Happily there are not such large numbers of those here that they cannot be easily avoided, and my heart goes out to those who are not in that position.

You may ask “Why were you ever putting yourself in that position, Chris?” Well, the answer is found in a phrase I first read recently from Brian McLaren, though he does not claim credit – he said that the choice in Christianity had been between “reason on ice and ignorance on fire”. Clearly he is equating Evangelical/Charismatic/Fundamentalist as ignorance, and mainline to liberal churches as on ice, i.e. with no “get up and go”, no spirit (possibly in either sense), no real commitment.

I could easily agree with ignorance in right-wing Christianity (for the most part – there are exceptions to every rule!).  If I cease for a moment to restrain myse lf:-

I find their doctrines ill-founded and frequently positively psychologically damaging, their exegetics  and hermaneutics lamentable and their grasp of biblical history non-existent,

I find their grasp of the nature of physical reality seriously flawed, their practices cult-like, their understanding of what Jesus actually taught minimal (and, at that, sidelined), their relationships with other churches let alone other religions hostile, their attitude to the disadvantaged, the different and any sexual orientation other than heterosexual and any gender other than male to be counter-scriptural and their politics the antithesis of everything Jesus stood for.

I believe that they are actively hastening the end of the world as we know it in at least two ways, faster than the rest of us would be likely to do it unaided

If I were at all interested in looking for modern application in John of Patmos’ symbol-laden and theologically confused outpourings, I would identify their churches as Babylon and their leaders as – well, exactly the way I’ve been described by them.

It’s a pity, because some of them are lovely people when shorn of their beliefs or, at least, when not acting on them.

But I don’t do that because Jesus told me not to. I acknowledge that I need to be extraordiarily careful about being prejudiced against them. I try my best to welcome them not only as fellow human beings, but also as brothers and (less often) sisters in Christ, and then try to use a little scripture – well, a lot really – for instruction reproof and correction. Training in righteousness may have to come later, Rome wasn’t built in a day. I try to love them as I love myself, in fact.

[For the last seventeen years that hasn’t been saying much, actually, as I didn’t love myself. At all.

Latterly I couldn’t actually feel love or any other positive emotion except very dimly, and with the exception of a low level generalised compassion which never entirely left me; eventually I couldn’t even be bothered to hate myself, which did at least make me a bit safer. No matter, for seventeen years I’ve been interpreting “Love your neighbour as yourself” as “treat others as you’d have liked them to treat you before you stopped caring and/or started hating yourself”. If you my reader is a bit depressed, imagine what it was like before that, if seriously depressed, ask what Jesus would do. Having emerged from the depression, I can actually love them.]

So I hope you can excuse me for treating anything smacking of this with a little caution, because I can’t. I was prejudiced, which is something I abhor in others.

However, they are definitely on fire in many cases. I need that. Here’s the reason.

Firstly, if nothing else, I am a social gospel man, and want to be involved somewhere which actually has the people and energy to outreach this way. I may even be verging on being a John Vincent style Radical.

My theology takes me to somewhere around the John Shelby Spong or even Don Cupitt area, but that doesn’t fit the bill for me because in going that far left they leave behind all which has any supernatural tinge, talks of prophecy of the future or deals in metaphysics, really. And I need that, because in there, if you don’t take it literally at all, are the parts which speak to me as a practising contemplative and mystic. Most of the more liberal end of analysis of scripture has the same problem.

(Of course, if you take it literally you end up with doctrine, about which I expect to be blogging shortly).

When I wasn’t looking, interesting things have started happening in a move from evangelical through emerging to something called Progressive Christianity. Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, Tony Jones, Diana Butler Bass, Christian Piatt, Eric Elnes, James McGrath and Bruce Epperly are all identified as Progressive. (It was Bruce Epperly who suggested some names and got me looking… thanks, Bruce, and I’ll be gentle on the pre-reading of your next book!)

These guys are talking my language again, or, at least, they’re close enough to me in attitude that I can have productive relationships. I might even have found a single label which describes me without me having to have a “but…” inserted. Sadly, there seem to me none in my vicinity, but at the point of writing, I’m hopeful that I’ve actually found my home.

So, I admit prejudice, and it has damaged me, as such things often do, and I will try to do better in future.