A New Kind of Christian E-Book

Brian D. McLaren

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: J-B Leadership Network Series
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 445

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

A Leadership Network Publication A New Kind of Christian's conversation between a pastor and his daughter's high school science teacher reveals that wisdom for life's most pressing spiritual questions can come from the most unlikely sources. This stirring fable captures a new spirit of Christianity--where personal, daily interaction with God is more important than institutional church structures, where faith is more about a way of life than a system of belief, where being authentically good is more important than being doctrinally "right," and where one's direction is more important than one's present location. Brian McLaren's delightful account offers a wise and wondrous approach for revitalizing Christian spiritual life and Christian congregations. If you are interested in joining a discussion group devoted to a A New Kind of Christian please visit groups.yahoo.com/group/NKOC.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Only Two Alternatives?

Understanding My Frustration

On to Something

Secrets and Sparks

An Apology

Three Points of Orientation

CHAPTER 1 - Sometime the Peacock Wish to Be the Seagull

CHAPTER 2 - Entering That Awkward Age, or Does Jonah Eat Bagels?

CHAPTER 3 - Dan Discovers Where the Cross Meets the Dream Catcher

CHAPTER 4 - What a Difference a Worldview Makes

CHAPTER 5 - Neo Worries About Keeping Up with Jesus

CHAPTER 6 - Hot Words About Biblical Interpretation

CHAPTER 7 - Letting the Bible Read Us

CHAPTER 8 - Yeah, But What About the Other Guys?

CHAPTER 9 - Redeeming Our Culture over Dinner

CHAPTER 10 - C. S. Lewis in the Pulpit, or What is Heaven About Anyway?

CHAPTER 11 - Getting Beyond Righteousness

CHAPTER 12 - French Fries and the Kingdom of God

CHAPTER 13 - Spiritual Practices: Secret and Shared

CHAPTER 14 - It’s None of Your Business Who Goes to Hell

CHAPTER 15 - Beginning the Journey into Terra Nova

CHAPTER 16 - Notes on Church Leadership from One Certified Nobody to Another

Afterword

Notes

About Leadership Network

Leadership Network Titles

The Author

Teaser chapter

OTHER BOOKS BY BRIAN D. MCLAREN

The Story We Find Ourselves In

The Last Word and the Word After That

The Church on the Other Side

A Search for What Makes Sense: Finding Faith

A Search for What Is Real: Finding Faith

More Ready Than You Realize

A Generous Orthodoxy

The Secret Message of Jesus

Everything Must Change

Finding Our Way Again

Copyright © 2001 by Brian D. McLaren. All rights reserved.

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Excerpt from The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McLaren, Brian D., date

A new kind of Christian : a tale of two friends on a spiritual journey / Brian D. McLaren.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN-13 978-0-7879-5599-1 (alk. paper) ISBN-10 0-7879-5599-X (alk. paper) ISBN-13 978-0-4702-4840-9 (paperback) ISBN-10 0-4702-4840-8 (paperback)

1. Christian life. 2. Spiritual life. I. Title.

BV4501.2 .M43577 2001

248.4—dc21

00-012490

HB Printing

PB Printing

Preface to the Paperback Edition

WHEN I BEGAN WRITING A New Kind of Christian, I had no idea it would become the first of a trilogy or that now, nearly a decade later, all three books would still be finding a growing audience—not just in North America, but on every continent, in a growing number of translations. Just in the last twenty-four hours, I’ve heard from readers in Germany, Brazil, East Africa, and India, thankful that the trilogy had put into words what they had been feeling in these very different settings. What can I feel but surprise, humility, and gratitude in light of these responses?

Of course, the books have evoked a bit of ire along with interest. But the wrath of the books’ critics now seems well worth enduring in exchange for the privilege of helping the people for whom the books were written—people for whom the religious status quo simply isn’t working. “I wouldn’t be in ministry today if it weren’t for A New Kind of Christian”—“I wouldn’t be a Christian anymore if it weren’t for The Story We Find Ourselves In”—“I was about to give up on the Bible and God together, but then someone gave me The Last Word and the Word After That”—these kinds of responses repeatedly touch me and give me the courage to risk another round of critique from the people who can’t figure out why “a new kind of Christian” is needed at all: the old kind is good enough for them, thank you very much.

The books’ popularity has shown the simultaneous discontent and hope simmering beneath the surface in and around many of our faith communities—from the center among leaders to the fringes among younger and marginalized members, to beyond the fringes among those who have left the church.

Just today I received an e-mail from a young woman in the latter category who said it like this: “As a graduate student at Berkeley, where “Christian” automatically means “Christian Right” and “Christian Right” stands for pretty much everything against which the academy sees itself as pushing, I have struggled to even begin articulating how faith might produce the kind of life I want for myself and for the world. . . . [For] the first time in a long time I feel like I want, again, to identify as a Christian. So thank you very much for the work you are doing.”

I’ve been asked, with this new edition, to answer the question whether I would change anything in A New Kind of Christian if I got a “do-over.” Maybe one small thing. Maybe I would de-emphasize the word “postmodern” some and emphasize other post- words more—words like postcolonial, post-Enlightenment, post-Holocaust, post-Industrial, and so on. As I’ve explained elsewhere, in the last few years I’ve come to see more deeply how our epistemology or theory of knowledge is inseparable from our ethics and politics. Or to put it more simply, I’ve seen how our search for truth can’t be unhinged from our desire to seek justice. The word “postmodern” has been limited (by some anyway) to an intellectual conversation about truth and knowing, while the word “postcolonial” and its cousins are associated more with an ethical conversation about power and justice and way of life. So if I were writing the book now, I would be unable to deal with the former subject without dealing more extensively and explicitly with the latter ones.

Of course, A New Kind of Christian implicitly grapples with postcolonial issues. For example, in Neo, a black man of Jamaican descent, the history of colonialism and its discontents finds embodiment. The story of the Native Americans (Chapter Nine) similarly resonates with postcolonial sensibilities. Neo’s desire at the book’s end to travel around the world reflects an impulse to get a global perspective and break out from what I will later call the echo chamber of the United States.

Beyond that small adjustment, I think A New Kind of Christian was an honest book and I feel one dominant emotion now at its release in a paperback edition: grateful that I have been given the opportunity to think and write freely, and grateful to find I was not alone in my discontent and hope, and grateful to think that it may be of value to another wave of readers in its new form. Thanks be to God!

This book is dedicated to Grace, my wife of twenty-one years. She has been a true partner and friend on this spiritual journey, and together we have enjoyed four of life’s greatest privileges and pleasures . . . raising Rachel, Brett,Trevor, and Jodi.

Acknowledgments

OF THE MANY, MANY PEOPLE deserving thanks for their role in the production of this book, four groups of people stand out.

First, my spiritual mentors from my early days engaged me in many conversations like the ones in this book. I am deeply grateful for the hours that Rod Conover, Rev. David Miller, Dave Rickert, Dr. David Dunbar, Tom Willett, and several others have invested answering my questions, sharpening my thoughts, challenging my blind spots, giving me good books, exposing me to ministry opportunities, and being my friends. Back in the 1970s, they believed in a thin, raggedy-looking, blue-jeaned, guitar-playing, long-haired and bearded young guy without standard credentials. They echoed to me Paul’s words to Timothy: “Let no one despise your youth. . . .” Now, as a balding, unthin, and middle-aged guy (still blue-jeaned whenever possible), I realize that without their encouragement back then, I wouldn’t have much to say, or the confidence to say it, today.

Second, my colleagues in the emergent conversation (emergentvillage.com, including Jeff Bailey, Rudy Carrasco, Brad Cecil, Tim Conder, Todd Hunter, Ron Johnson, Andrew Jones, Tony Jones, Jason Mitchell, Sally Morgenthaler, Doug Pagitt, Dr. Alan Roxburgh, Chris Seay, Danielle Shroyer, Molly Smallen, Brad Smith) have been “Neo” to me in many ways in recent years, as have many other conversation partners (including Dr. John Franke, Dr. Stan Grenz, Chuck Smith Jr., Brent Brooks, Dr. Skip Smith, Tim Ayers, Stephen Freed, Doug Koenigsburg, Neil and Renea Livingstone, Dr. Dallas Willard, Dr. Len Sweet, Robert Kang, Pamela Bateman, Stephen Shields, Doug Flather, Lisa Holloway). Special thanks to Dr. Dave Dunbar, Dr. Alan Roxburgh, Todd Hunter, and Chuck Smith Jr.; they read an early version of the manuscript and gave me needed and helpful feedback and encouragement. When friends and colleagues truly communicate and collaborate, it’s hard to tell where one person’s thinking ends and another’s begins; I feel that these pages reflect our best thoughts, not just mine.

Third, the congregation I belong to and serve among, Cedar Ridge Community Church, deserves my deepest thanks. It can be scary having a pastor who asks questions like those found in this book. Some congregations would restrict their shepherd to tending them in familiar pastures in their own backyard. But the staff and members of Cedar Ridge have explored new territory with me far beyond the backyard fence, and they have accepted me not just as a pastor, but also as a growing Christian, a human being, a quirky and curious guy who is by nature (and perhaps calling) drawn to innovation. They’ve prayed for me, encouraged me, challenged me, and taught me more than I’ve taught them.

Finally, the people of Jossey-Bass and Leadership Network have been an unmitigated delight to work with on this project.

Of course, in naming these names, I want credit for any value this book has to be shared among all. But any blame (for faults, errors, episodes of ignorance or naiveté, and other reckless stupidities) belongs to the author alone.

—B.D.M.

INTRODUCTION

The True Story Behind This Story

SOMETIME IN 1994, at the age of thirty-eight, I got sick of being a pastor. Frankly, I was almost sick of being a Christian. My crisis of faith deteriorated to the point that one beautiful August afternoon a year later, in the Pennsylvania mountains—on a day with one of those high-pressure Canadian air masses coming in from the northwest on a cool breeze and with the humidity so low and air so clear the distant mountains looked touchable—on this perfect summer day I felt as gray, low, foggy, dismal, and miserable as I ever have felt. I was sitting in a rocking chair, on a porch overlooking a stunningly beautiful valley shining with light, and in the dazzling brightness I wrote in my journal, “One year from today I will not be in the ministry.” I think that dark sentence was both despairing and hopeful.

My prediction was wrong. Now, seven years later, I am still a Christian, still in ministry, and enjoying both more than I ever have.

But at that low tide of faith, my soul was trying to tell me something important, something I needed to listen to. Just as feelings of suicide are often an exaggerated way for our soul to tell us something we have been denying, something like, “The life you’re living is insupportable; you can’t keep living this way,” my ministry death wish and urge for spiritual escape were telling me something I needed to attend to.

Only Two Alternatives?

At the time I could only see two alternatives: (1) continue practicing and promoting a version of Christianity that I had deepening reservations about or (2) leave Christian ministry, and perhaps the Christian path, altogether. There was a third alternative that I hadn’t yet considered: learn to be a Christian in a new way. That is the subject of this book. Beginning that August day, when the gloom inside my heart was so dark and the sunshine around me was so blazing and stark, a process of reevaluation was somehow set into motion. Perhaps I was like a person who spends a few days feeling suicidal and then decides, “If I could seriously ponder ending my life, then I can do anything. I can change anything in my life. So instead of ending my life altogether, I’ll end my life as I’ve been living it and start a new kind of life. I can now see a third alternative to the status quo and suicide.”

M. Scott Peck says that depression often accompanies the collapse of a mental map or paradigm; it is a natural and necessary expression of grief, grief over the loss of something perhaps as dear to us as a brother or mother: our worldview, our way of seeing life. Alan Roxburgh, a colleague in the emergent conversation (an initiative to explore how Christian faith will reconfigure in the postmodern matrix), teaches people that this painful process of letting go of life as we have known it and embracing a new life on new terms (the process of paradigm change) typically follows five phases:

1. Stability, when life is fine, current theories explain everything adequately, and questions are few—perhaps like Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz living happily in Kansas

2. Discontinuity, when the old system seems to be working less well—reflected socially in Dorothy’s conflict with her witchy neighbor, psychologically in her ambivalent desire to run away from home, and physically in the approaching thunderstorm

3. Disembedding, when we begin feeling that the current system is insupportable and we begin to disconnect from it—like Dorothy being carried away from Kansas by the tornado

4. Transition, when we haven’t fully left the old world and we haven’t fully entered the new world—like Dorothy newly arrived in Oz, trying to get her bearings

5. Reformation, when we decide to make a go of it in the new world we have entered—like Dorothy setting out on her journey to see the wizard, invigorated with new hope and passion

This in many ways mirrors my experience through those shadowy times.

Andrew Jones, another colleague in the emergent conversation, once drew a diagram for me that created a similar scenario. It looked something like this:

Area 1 refers to the old paradigm, the old mental map or way of seeing things. Over time, it becomes increasingly cramped and feels more like a prison than freedom. Area 2 describes the early transition period, where there is a high degree of frustration and reaction. An individual or group in this phase turns against the old paradigm and can’t stop talking about how wrong, inhumane, or insupportable it is. In area 3, people gradually turn from deconstructing the past to constructing the future and begin the hard work of designing a new paradigm to take the place of the old one. This is a time of creative exhilaration, challenge, and perhaps anxiety—because the discovery of a new paradigm that will be superior to the old is by no means assured and because the wrath of the defenders of the old is likely to be unleashed on those who dare propose an alternative. If the creation of a new paradigm succeeds, the group moves into area 4, where the new era develops and expands freedom and possibilities. (Of course, one must anticipate a time when the new liberating paradigm itself becomes confining and old.)

Understanding My Frustration

These images and illustrations describe, at least in part, why I had grown frustrated with the way I was being a Christian and the way I was helping others to be Christians. The old way was, as an old Bob Dylan lyric puts it, “rapidly aging,” and I needed to disembed and reevaluate and begin a journey toward a new home—for my sake, for the sake of the people I was called to lead, and perhaps even for God’s sake. But the new way hadn’t been created yet. We were barely into area 2, maybe sticking our toes into area 3. Hence the anxiety.

There is a dimension to this experience of disembedding from modern Christianity that none of us can fully understand or describe. That’s the theological dimension. What if God is actually behind these disillusionments and disembeddings? What if God is trying to move us out of Egypt, so to speak, and into the wilderness, because it’s time for the next chapter in our adventure? What if it’s time for a new phase in the unfolding mission God intends for the people (or at least some of the people) who seek to know, love, and serve God? What if our personal experiences of frustration are surface manifestations of a deeper movement of God’s Spirit? In other words, what if this experience of frustration that feels so bad and destructive is actually a good thing, a needed thing, a constructive thing in God’s unfolding adventure with us?

Maybe Martin Luther felt this way in his life as a monk. Maybe when he was told to preach about indulgences or to make room for emissaries from Rome to do so, he thought to himself, “I can’t take this anymore. Maybe I’ll go back to being a lawyer.” His experience seemed bad to him. (He must have been frightened: Am I losing my faith? Am I falling away from God?) But Protestants would agree, at least, that something good was afoot.

That August day, I felt miserable, and I continued to feel miserable for some months. But gradually, although giving up in despair remained tempting, hope started becoming more interesting.

On to Something

I began to feel like one of those rumpled detectives on TV who finds a clue that opens up a whole new twist in the plot. Or better, I began to feel like a scientist in a movie, doing a routine run of experiments. I’m looking over my data and this icy feeling starts back between my shoulder blades and crawls up my neck, and I think, “Something’s not right here. This pattern in the data just doesn’t make sense.” The camera comes in over my shoulder, and all you see are rows of numbers, but I pull out my cell phone and call my partner and say, “Jack, you’ve got to get over here to the lab. No, now. We’ve got something major here.” Or better yet, I felt like Eleanor Arroway in the movie Contact, at that moment when she is sitting on her car listening through headphones to the random noise of space picked up by the array of radiotelescopes that surround her. Suddenly comes this sound, like a clothes dryer with a really bad bearing that is drying a pair of rollerblades. “This is no random noise,” she thinks. “There is a pattern to this noise. This noise is data, trying to tell me something.”

Of course, my data isn’t numbers. My data is my experience—my general experience as a committed Christian and my specific experience as a pastor. Experiences like these:

1. I drive my car and listen to the Christian radio station, something my wife always tells me I should stop doing (“because it only gets you upset”). There I hear preacher after preacher be so absolutely sure of his bombproof answers and his foolproof biblical interpretations (in spite of the fact that Preacher A at 9:30 A.M. usually contradicts Preacher B at 10:00 A.M. and so on throughout the day), his five easy steps (alliterated around the letter P), his crisis of the month (toward which you should give a “love gift . . . if the Lord so leads”). And the more sure he seems, the less I find myself wanting to be a Christian, because on this side of the microphone, antennas, and speaker, life isn’t that simple, answers aren’t that clear, and nothing is that sure. (Paradoxically, at that moment I might consider sending him money, hoping that by investing in his simpler vision of the world, I myself will be able to buy into it more. But eventually I will stop throwing good money after bad.)

2. I preach sermons that earn the approving nods of the lifelong churchgoers, because they repeat the expected vocabulary and formulations, words that generally convey little actual meaning after hearing them fifty-two times a year, year after year, but work like fingers, massaging the weary souls of earnest people. Meanwhile, as the initiated relax under this massage of familiar words, as they emit an almost audible “ahhh” to hear their cherished vocabulary again, these very massaging messages leave the uninitiated furrowing their brows, shaking their heads, and shifting in their seats. They do this sometimes because they don’t understand but even more when they do understand—because the very formulations that sound so good and familiar to the “saved” sound downright weird or even wicked to the “seekers” and the skeptics. These people come to me and ask questions, and I give my best answers, my best defenses, and by the time they leave my office, I have convinced myself that their questions are better than my answers.

3. I do the reverse: I preach sermons that turn the lights on for spiritual seekers but earn me critical letters and phone calls from the “veterans” of the church often because the expected fingers didn’t reach through my message to massage them as expected.

4. I have counseling sessions in my office, year after year, during which many wonderful people, people whom I love, people who have a lot of Bible knowledge, Christian background, theological astuteness, and “pew time,” prove to have the same problems, make the same mistakes, harbor the same doubts (though more often unexpressed), indulge the same vices, and lack the same “spark” that unchurched people often do, the only major differences being that (a) the church people tend to use more religious language to define their problems, (b) their problems are further complicated by guilt for having these problems in the first place, and (c) these religious people nevertheless consider themselves superior to their non-religious counterparts. (I read recently that divorce rates among evangelical Christians—supposed guardians of traditional family values—are actually higher than those in the culture at large. What?) After these counseling sessions, I am left troubled, wondering, “Shouldn’t the gospel of Jesus Christ make a bigger difference than this? And does pew time have to result in spiritual pride and inauthenticity?”

5. I realize that as people come into our church, everybody needs conversion. The not yet committed Christians need to be converted to a vibrant twenty-first-century faith, and the already committed twentieth-century (and nineteenth-century!) Christians need the same, myself included.

6. I realize, as I read and reread the Bible, that many passages don’t fit any of the theological systems I have inherited or adapted. Sure, they can be squeezed in, but after a while my theology looks like a high school class trip’s luggage—shoestrings hanging out here, zippers splitting apart there, latches snapping, clothes pouring out on the floor like a thrift store horn of plenty. My old systems—whether the Dispensationalism of my childhood, the Calvinism of my adolescence, the “charismaticism” of my early adulthood, or even my more mature, moderated, mainstream “evangelicalism”—can’t seem to hold all the data in the Bible, not to mention the data of my own experience, at least not gracefully.

7. I read what other people who are having similar experiences are saying, including people writing outside of the religious context—like this from Peter Senge: “In any case, our Industrial Age management, our Industrial Age organization, our Industrial Age way of living will not continue. The Industrial Age is not sustainable. It’s not sustainable in ecological terms, and it’s not sustainable in human terms. It will change. The only question is how. Once we get out of our machine mind-set, we may discover new aptitudes for growth and change. Until then, change won’t come easily.”1 As I read, I feel that “industrial age faith” faces the same fate.

8. I pick up most religious books, like the one you’re holding, and know from somewhere midway through page one what the entire book will say, and I read on anyway and find out that I was right. I wonder: Doesn’t the religious community see that the world is changing? Doesn’t it have anything fresh and incisive to say? Isn’t it even asking any new questions? Has it nothing to offer other than the stock formulas that it has been offering? Is there no Saint Francis or Søren Kierkegaard or C. S. Lewis in the house with some fresh ideas and energy? Has the “good news” been reduced to the “good same-old same-old?”

9. I meet people along the way who model for me, each in a different way, what a new kind of Christian might look like. They differ in many ways, but they generally agree that the old show is over, the modern jig is up, and it’s time for something radically new.

Enough of this data accumulates (my list could go on and on) . . . and a pattern becomes perceptible, and a realization comes like a good cry: Either Christianity itself is flawed, failing, untrue, or our modern, Western, commercialized, industrial-strength version of it is in need of a fresh look, a serious revision.

Secrets and Sparks

You can’t talk about this sort of thing with just anybody. People worry about you. They may think you’re changing sides, turning traitor. They may talk about you as if you came down with some communicable disease. So you keep this sort of thing like a dirty secret, this doubt that is not really a doubt about God or Jesus or faith but about our take on God, our version of Jesus, our way of faith. You let it out only when you feel you have found someone you can trust.

And when you do, and the other person says, “I can’t believe you’re saying this. I have felt the same way, but I thought I was the only one”—that’s a good moment. Relief. Company. Affirmation. It’s like you’re both pieces of flint, and when your secrets strike one another, a spark of hope flies: “Maybe we’re not crazy. Maybe there’s a better way. Maybe there’s a new way of being a Christian.” And then, over time, the two of you discover you’re not the only two, that there are many more out there, including some respected people, “important” people, people with “names,” who are wrestling with the same discontent, experiencing the same disembedding. You begin to wonder if maybe you’re at the front edge of something—if your tentative and anxious steps “off the map” are actually the beginning of a new adventure into terra nova, new ground, fresh territory.

I’ve never been all that good at keeping my own secrets, so I’ve probably let my disillusionment out more than I should have. But as a result, I have seen a lot more sparks of hope fly than most people have, which has given me the courage and enthusiasm to write this book, which is a kind of bag of flints that when shaken together may produce a bunch of sparks that can catch fire in very hopeful ways.

In my first book, The Church on the Other Side, I hinted that a book like this might be rumbling around in the rear lobes of my brain. I said:

You see, if we have a new world, we will need a new church. We won’t need a new religion per se, but a new framework for our theology. Not a new Spirit, but a new spirituality. Not a new Christ, but a new Christian. Not a new denomination, but a new kind of church in every denomination. . . .

I began to doubt that any of us Christians are actually Christians. I relate this experience simply to illustrate the importance of our challenge: to reopen the question of what makes a good Christian. . . . If need be, would we be willing to confess that we are hardly Christians at all and that we need to become as little children and start again?2

My second book, Finding Faith, was written to help people who are agnostics or atheists (or spiritual seekers wandering somewhere north of monotheism) in their journey to a good faith, which would open the door to a good relationship with God.3 But I realized as I was writing it (and even more since it was published) that I was creating a problem. The kind of people who would come to faith along the path I was trying to clear for them would probably not end up just like the people waiting for them in church. They would be like a bunch of wild-eyed artists and excitable children and rugby players walking into a roomful of buttoned-down accountants and engineers. To be sure, that could be a great learning experience for all concerned but not the makings of a fun party.

And so in A New Kind of Christian, I explore, albeit indirectly, several questions:

1. Why am I not the same kind of Christian I used to be?

2. What might a new kind of Christian be like?

3. How might one become a new kind of Christian if one is so inclined?

An Apology

Before proceeding, I should say something about who I think you are. I’m assuming you’re either a Christian of some sort (“hot” fundamentalist, “warm” evangelical, or “cool” liberal; charismatic or noncharismatic; denominational or nondenominational; Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox; modern or postmodern, or amphibious) or else a non-Christian of some sort who is interested in Christianity (the kind of person who has perhaps read my second book, Finding Faith, and is interested in continuing the conversation we began there). If you are the latter, I must apologize because in several places I will, for the sake of my primary audience, have to belabor points that present little problem for you. The reverse may be true as well, but probably less often.

If you are a new kind of non-Christian considering becoming a new kind of Christian, you face different (and in many cases, I think, easier) issues than if you are an old kind of Christian becoming a new kind of Christian. Or if you are a postmodern non-Christian considering becoming a postmodern Christian, you face different (and in many cases, I think, easier) issues than if you are a modern Christian becoming a postmodern Christian. (Believe me, the previous two sentences will make more sense after a few more chapters.)

I should also add that my primary tribe has been the evangelical Protestant wing of the church. For readers from Roman Catholic, liberal Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish, or other backgrounds, at times you may feel like you’ve just tuned in Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion and are listening to the news from Lake Wobegon, Keillor’s fictitious largely Lutheran Minnesota town where all the men are good-looking, all the women are strong, and all the children are above average. Neither Minnesotan nor Lutheran, I’m still able to see myself in Keillor’s characters and their “it was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon” stories. Similarly, even if your background is far different from mine, I hope you’ll be able to see yourself in the stories and conversations that follow. If at times I seem to be addressing concerns of another part of my audience, I hope you’ll take that as an opportunity to eavesdrop. (Eavesdropping can be a pretty interesting way to learn, sometimes more interesting than being addressed directly.)

I think that Christian leaders—pastors, priests, lay leaders, parachurch workers, missionaries—may have a special interest in this book. Many of them have experienced twinges of discontent similar to my own and, like me, are hopeful that we will find some new ways of being Christians as we enter the postmodern world. If you are in this category, I’m especially glad to have you along for the journey.

Beyond this, I’ll try to assume as little as possible about you, except your basic sincerity, goodwill, intelligence, and desire to become a better person and help create a better world.

Three Points of Orientation

To prepare you for what you’re about to step into, I can offer three additional introductory comments. First, as you’ll see, I’m going to blur the line between fiction and nonfiction in the pages that follow. I think you will understand why I have done so as we proceed. This book started as a work of nonfiction but evolved steadily toward fiction with each revision. Knowing that I was not trying to commit a work of artistic fiction from the start will help lower your expectations about character development, plot, and other artistic concerns. Things will go much better for both of us if you consider this more in the category of a philosophical dialogue than a novel.

I am reminded of a man who was in a situation similar to ours, a man who lived at the boundary between the medieval and modern worlds. He had become convinced of some ideas that were in his time considered unorthodox, odd, crazy. He couldn’t explain his new ideas in straight expository prose for a variety of reasons. So he resorted to an ancient form of writing. He said, “I have thought it most appropriate to explain these concepts in the form of dialogues, which, not being restricted to the rigorous observance of mathematical laws, make room also for digressions, which are sometimes no less interesting than the principal argument.” I hope, as Galileo did, the dialogues that follow will be judged neither by the rigorous standards of mathematical laws nor by the equally rigorous standards of good novel-writing. And I hope that the digressions will prove no less interesting than the principal argument, as Galileo’s were.

Second, you will soon meet Neil Edward Oliver, Dan and Carol Poole, and Casey B. Curtis. Please don’t assume that any of these characters can be fully identified with the “I” who wrote this Introduction.

Third, this book is just a beginning. There are a number of other questions, important questions that follow on from these, that I will only nod toward in this book. Please don’t be disappointed that you didn’t get the last word. When you’re on a really long voyage, you have to get beyond asking, “Are we there yet?” and instead start asking, “Are we making progress?” I hope that you will feel you have made real progress when you turn the last page, even though our destination will still be far ahead of us. The fact is, whatever a new kind of Christian will be, no one is one yet. At this point, we’re more like caterpillars cocooning than butterflies in flight. But every transformation has to start somewhere. The sooner we start, the better.

It is my hope that these imaginary conversations will prompt you to engage in real-life ones and that those conversations will take you where these cannot. I’d be most happy if you share the book with a small group or maybe read it with one good friend. Then take some long walks or share a few meals together and see where those conversations lead you. If you’d like to learn more about my work and connect with other resources, please go to brianmclaren.net.

Spencerville, Maryland

February 2001

BRIAN D. MCLAREN

CHAPTER 1

Sometime the Peacock Wish to Be the Seagull

“CAROL, I’M NOT SURE how long I’ll last. I know this must be scary for you. I’m sorry.” I was leaning against the counter, and Carol was sitting across the kitchen with her chair angled away from the table, her legs crossed, left elbow on the table behind her, facing me but not meeting my gaze.

She got up, turned her back to me, and began picking up the dinner dishes—quietly, deliberately, maybe a little more slowly than normal. Our twin ten-year-old sons, Corey and Trent, were at a birthday sleep-over (badly named—they stay up half the night and come home wired) at a friend’s house, so there had been only three of us at the table. Carol put the dishes in the sink and stood beside me. She crossed her arms as mine were, and we stared at the same spot on the kitchen floor for a couple of seconds. “Well, Dan,” she said, “if you quit, I’m sure we’ll make it somehow. But I don’t relish the thought of moving. I’d hate for the kids to have to change schools, especially Jess. But whatever damage moving would do would be a lot less than . . .”

“Than me being depressed all the time.”

“Well, that too, but I was going to say it would be better than you getting embroiled in some big deal at the church. You know, heresy stuff or division stuff or getting fired. Lord knows we don’t need that.”

“No, I won’t let that happen. I’ll quit before I let that happen. I’ll substitute-teach or something, maybe get certified. I wouldn’t mind having my summers off, and . . . the pay wouldn’t be that different.”

“You just did it again,” Carol said.

“What?”

“You sighed. You never used to sigh. In seventeen years of marriage, I never heard you sigh until these last few months.”

“Yeah.” We kept staring at that spot on the kitchen floor, not talking. Carol reached her arm around my waist and gave me a gentle squeeze. I said, “I keep thinking that there must be this ranch out in New Mexico somewhere. You know, we move out there, I get a horse . . .”

“And you ride the range all day and never have to talk to anybody. Cowboy Dan.”

“Yeah. The thought of the quiet and the dry air and the big sky—shoot, I’ve never even been to New Mexico, but I’m ready to move tomorrow. . . . I just sighed again, didn’t I?”

“You sure did. But look, if we have to move, let’s move back near my folks. Atlanta’s no Santa Fe, but the kids would love to be near their grandparents, and vice versa.”

“Somehow dreaming of hot, humid, crowded Atlanta doesn’t draw the same kind of sigh out of me,” I said.

“Whatever,” Carol replied. “Look, hon, it’s almost seven. I’ll get the dishes cleaned up if you’ll take Jess to her concert, OK? You’ve got to pick up a couple of her friends from the youth group too. You know where it is, right?”

“It’s at that rec center just off 95? Gosh, if it takes me forty-five minutes to get there and back, I might as well just stay.”

“Better you than me. I hate that kind of music.”

“OK. We’ll probably be back by 11:30 or so by the time I drop the other kids off. Thanks, honey.”

“For what?”

“For hanging in there with me. I wish I wasn’t putting you through this.”

“I wish you weren’t putting yourself through this. You’d better get moving. Jess hates being late.”

I think that conversation was the first time I’d put my plan into words. Not the New Mexico part—that was pure fantasy. The other part—about quitting my job as a pastor, becoming a high school teacher—I’d never put that into words before. I guess that’s why I went out of my way to meet Dr. Oliver at the concert that night.

It was a Saturday, midsummer, 1999. Jessica wasn’t yet sixteen, so even though she had her learner’s permit, she needed me to drive her and a few friends to a concert. Some boys from her high school had put together a rock band called the Amish Jellies. (Quite a name, eh?) They’d rented out a community center for their first big gig. I’d played in a bunch of garage bands as a high school kid myself, so I didn’t mind sticking around to hear them play. But they were a lot louder and worse than I thought they’d be, so about twenty minutes was all I could stand. I snuck out into the lobby, hoping it would be less painful out there.

Some parents of the boys in the band had put out some refreshments on an old blue card table (including coffee for the adults) so the kids could hang out and celebrate the band’s debut after the concert. It turned out that a lot of the kids weren’t interested in the music either, because the lobby was full of kids—all talking loud to be heard above the music. The other parents were holed up in the rec center’s kitchen, so there I was, a thirty-nine-year-old guy trying to look coolly inconspicuous in a corner of a rec center lobby, a lone goose in a flock of animated ducks. I was just finishing a small Styrofoam cup of something vaguely resembling coffee when I heard Dr. Oliver’s musical accent over the pulsing bass from the Jellies and the giggles and chatter of the kids.

I recognized his lilting voice from back-to-school nights. He was originally from Jamaica, I had been told, but his ethnic identity was mysterious for an American like me, used to two basic categories, black and white. He didn’t seem to fit either of my standard categories. Part of his differentness was his style of dress, almost always a gray suit, a tie—more formal than American styles, yet the man himself was warm, engaging, enthusiastic, hardly a gray-suit kind of guy in my opinion. His features, his movement, his posture also defied easy categorization; I guess to me he looked African, but not African American. He was a science teacher, but I knew him more because he was the girls’ soccer coach. Although he cut Jess her freshman year, he put her on first-string junior varsity as a sophomore. I’d missed most of her games though. Too many night meetings.

I’d heard lots of stories about Dr. Oliver over the years, even before Jess made the soccer team. Tall, articulate, and outspoken, the only Ph.D. on the Franklin Roosevelt High faculty, popular with the kids, survivor of a few controversies including a big textbook fight that had been in all the papers and on TV (that’s how I originally heard about him)—he stood out in a lot of ways.

At first I couldn’t see him because he was seated and surrounded by standing kids. After a few minutes, they left en masse, laughing and saying, “See you Monday, Dr. Oliver,” and “Thanks for coming, Dr. Oliver.” The crowd of teenagers parted like a motley curtain, and there he was, seated, smiling, shaking hands, giving high-fives, even in midsummer looking like it was any school day with his gray suit on. I went right over to say hello. He stood up as I approached. He made me think of Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes—tall, bearded, salt-and-pepper hair, but thinner, darker-skinned, and a bit farther along in the receding hairline department. One other difference—where Bradley exudes TV newsmagazine seriousness, Dr. Oliver’s whole face seemed wired to a smile that could appear at any moment, and his whole face seemed part of that smile—eyes, brows, cheeks. That’s the smile I saw as I approached.

He shook my hand, with his peculiar mixture of formality and enthusiasm: “Ah, Mr. Poole—Daniel, isn’t it? Father of the late-blooming soccer star? So good to see you, sir!” We exchanged a few flattering observations about Jess and then some complaints about the coffee, typical small-talk stuff, and then he asked how my summer was going. I didn’t want to get into it, so I said, “Well, that’s a long story.” I was wondering how I could get some information on high school teaching from him without revealing that I was thinking about quitting my job at Potomac Community Church. That’s not the kind of rumor I wanted my board to hear.

“And you, Dr. Oliver,” I continued, “what brings you to an Amish Jellies concert?” He explained that the lead singer and drummer were students of his, and he liked to be supportive of his kids. “But listen, Dan,” he said, “please don’t call me Dr. Oliver. Only my students call me that. To my friends, I’m Neo. It’s been my nickname since my freshmen year of college.”

I cocked my head slightly, and that’s all the cue he needed to continue with the story: “When I joined a fraternity at Rutgers, my roommate said I had three first names—Neil, Edward, and Oliver—and that confused him terribly. So he just started calling me by my initials, NEO. To tell you the truth, I think behind my back some of the others actually called me ‘Negro.’ They weren’t used to having people of color around—especially ones like me with odd accents. But good friends we became anyway, and the nickname stuck. Now, if I recall correctly, I remember hearing that you are a minister. So how are things in the wonderful world of religion?”

Obviously, I didn’t want to get into that either. I fumbled with my coffee cup and said, probably a little too quickly and cheerfully, “Well, I’m hanging in there. How’s science?”

“Science,” he said, finishing his last sip of coffee, “is a piece of cake compared to what you do. Our subject matter is mathematically definable, we’re encouraged to experiment, and we’re paid to be honest about our data. Somehow I don’t think your cohort has any of those advantages. . . . Here, let me take your cup.”

While he walked over to the trash can, I remember this strange feeling coming over me. The best word I can use for it was safety: this guy is safe to talk to—he understands, I thought. When he came back, I was surprised to hear myself saying, “Actually, Neo, things in church work are pretty rough sometimes. Pardon the pun, but it’s not always a Sunday school picnic.”

He rearranged the folding chairs and motioned for me to sit down, facing him, our knees only about two feet apart. He leaned forward, his forearms resting just above the knees. He looked a lot like a basketball coach I had seen on TV, maybe conferring with a point guard in foul trouble. “Well, Reverend, it sounds like you could use a friend.”

Out of nowhere, a wave of emotion rushed up my spine and caught in my throat. I’m a pretty “smooth” guy in public, not prone to extravagant expressions of emotion. But that simple sentence caused me to choke up. I tried to hide it, but I’ll bet he saw my eyes brim. Without taking off my glasses, I quickly reached up under the rims and wiped my eyes and said, “Oh, you know, I guess every profession has some ups and downs.”

“Yours more downs than many, I’m sure,” he said. “Even with God’s help it can still be brutal at times—or so Father Scott tells me. I’m an Episcopalian. Do you know St. Timothy’s?”

I smiled politely and said, “Yes, over in Rockville,” but I was afraid inside, thinking, “Don’t do it! You can’t pour out your heart to someone you hardly know.” I forced a more cheerful look and said, “Thanks, Dr.—I mean Neo—for your concern.” A polite put-off, gracefully done. I wanted to get the spotlight off me. I was comfortable in the role of listener, counselor, not revealer, counselee.

I perked up and said, “My daughter constantly tells stories about you, like about the time you brought a wild raccoon into class and he escaped in the storage room. Or the time your chemistry experiment caught fire and the whole school had to be evacuated. And then there was something about a tarantula having baby spiders that spread around the school. Did those legends really happen?”

He laughed: “Ah yes, I’m embarrassed to say yes, on all three counts, but it was an Amazonian bird-eating spider, which is actually much bigger than a tarantula. And I still have nightmares about that poor raccoon. . . . And the fire—Mr. Reedman at FDR will never let me forget about the fire. Actually, it was mostly smoke. . . .”

I said, “Well, you certainly make learning exciting—and memorable—for the kids, and I really respect that. The spider thing really gives me the creeps, though. I’ve never been much of an outdoors person. Well—I guess nobody will accuse you of being boring, which probably can’t be said about that many science teachers . . . or pastors either.” He smiled and shook his head, looking down, as if remembering something. Then I added, “I also remember admiring how you handled yourself in that big controversy about the textbooks a few years back. For a while you were a regular in the Howard County section of the Sun. I was really impressed how you handled the science-faith thing.”

He made a whistling sound and then wiped his forehead with his hand, faking a sweaty brow: “Ah, 1996—don’t make me think about 1996. A terrible year in my life, one I’d rather forget. I was caught between the fundamentalists, who didn’t want me to teach about evolution, and the atheists, who didn’t want me to admit that I believed in God! Nobody could accept that I would do both, so I became everybody’s enemy. Mr. Reedman told me that the hard thing about being a bridge is that you get walked on from both ends. He was right about that!”

“Well,” I said, “you certainly earned my respect through all that. I remember thinking that you were smarter and braver and more articulate than I would have been. When Channel 5 did that feature on you, you were brilliant. I never dreamed I’d actually get to meet you. Wow, some of those parents were ruthless, though. . . .”

“Indeed, ruthless is a good word for it, on both sides actually. But to me,” he said, smiling, holding out his hands and shrugging his shoulders, “it was a simple matter of intellectual honesty. My faith has plenty of room for science, and my science only strengthens my faith—and I guess that just flows out of who I am.”

I smiled and responded, “Well, I find that pretty remarkable.”

He shook his head, and said, “No, no, no, I’m just . . .”

“You’re not ‘just’ anything! Here you are, a Ph.D. scientist on the one hand, and on the other hand you come to an Amish Jellies concert—more for your love of your students than for love of their music, I’m sure!”

He replied, “Well, I think the auditory nerve damage will be temporary. . . .”

I joked back, “What’s that? I can’t quite hear you!” It was a dumb line, but we both laughed anyway.

Then he held up a finger and said, “One thing, Dan. My doctorate is not actually in science. It’s in the philosophy of science. My undergraduate degree was in history. I came into high school science teaching completely by accident, only because Mr. Reedman couldn’t find a real science teacher and because I couldn’t find a college or university with an opening in philosophy of science. Actually, even though history and philosophy are my first loves, I’ve learned a lot of science these last few years. In fact, as a boy, I was incurably curious about the natural world—plants, animals, weather patterns. Jamaica’s a great place for that, you know. So I love teaching science. And high school students are . . . the best. So I have no complaints. Say, would you like a cookie?”