Churches should move beyond charity, author says

Author Brian McLaren s embrace of new worship styles is at the center of what is called the emerging church.

NEW YORK - Author Brian McLaren is among the most influential American religious thinkers of the last decade.

His break with rigid orthodoxy and embrace of new worship styles is at the center of what is called the emerging church - a movement that has taken off. The emerging church reclaims ancient practices and prayers and creates new ones, while re-examining Scripture to learn how modern-day Christians should live.

Since no particular denomination is dominant in the view of McLaren and evangelical thinkers like him, their views have been embraced by a wide range of religious groups, including both conservative and liberal Protestants along with Roman Catholic congregations.

Emerging church leaders have earned praise as innovators, especially in their ability to inspire young people. Yet, many conservative Christians remain suspicious of the movement and its approach to theology. Emerging thinkers contend that evangelicals and others have been too influenced by the broader culture in their reading of Scripture. The emerging church says this has marginalized important Bible teachings and hurt the faith.

McLaren has explained his thoughts in more than 10 books. His latest, Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope, argues that Christians must move beyond traditional charity and work for systemic change that addresses the causes of human suffering.

McLaren recently sat down to talk about the book and the future of emerging churches. Here are his answers in condensed form:

Q: How is what you recommend different than the humanitarian work churches do already?

A: It's not working within the paradigm that a lot of Christians work - which is all that God is ultimately interested in is extracting souls for heaven. And we might do some good works here on earth, but we don't really expect any of it to work, because the world is sort of, the toilet has been flushed and it's going down.

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Q: What do you mean by systemic change?

A: You can make incremental changes within a subsystem but in order to actually change a whole system you have to get a lot of the parts changing all at once. ... You can pour money into building a school, but then if there's a war, the war wipes out all the benefit you got from the school and the school shuts down. You can improve agriculture, but if HIV runs through, then there's so much upheaval, then you can't maintain the advances in agriculture.

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Q: But there's an impression churches are already so active on these issues. Why does anyone need to urge churches to do this?

A: One of the really important concepts is the difference between mercy and justice. There's that famous passage from Micah 6, "Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with God." One way to describe it is unjust systems throw people into misery and mercy brings us to relieve some of their misery, but until we confront the unjust systems by doing justice we're never going to make a change. ... I think what churches in America, especially evangelical churches, are just waking up to is the way they have to deal with systemic injustice, not just charitable giving to people in misery.

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Q: Are you trying to create heaven on earth?

A: As a Christian, I'm just trying to be faithful. I'm trying to live out what I pray when I pray the Lord's prayer, 'May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth.' ... I'm not a utopian in any way.

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Q: On the theology behind the emerging church, you reject the idea that there's an absolute truth. So what boundaries are there on theology that churches are teaching? Can any church just call itself an emerging church?

A: Obviously that's a challenge. The flip side of that question is look at the Catholic Church: For all of its orthodoxy, it could have bishops covering up for molesting priests. And evangelicals, for all their claims of orthodoxy, can be barbaric to gay people and can blindly support a rush to war in Iraq and can be, as we speak, fomenting for war with Iran. ... Obviously, I have a lot of critics and they often say, 'You're wanting to water down the Gospel to accommodate to post-modernity.' I say, 'No, I really don't want to do that. But what I do want to do is acknowledge first the ways we've already watered down the Gospel to accommodate modernity.' ... I think the naivet

De of some of those critics is that they're starting with a pure pristine understanding of the Gospel. It seems to me we're all in danger of screwing up.

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Q: Can you talk about where the emerging movement is now?

A: The first of these sort of emerging gatherings that I was ever involved with was 10 years ago and we weren't even using the word emerging yet. ... None of us ever guessed in our wildest dreams that we were onto something that would become a big deal. We were trying to survive really. Ten years ago, I was a 42-year-old pastor who loved God, but was having deep questions about the kind of standard evangelical way of being a Christian I'd been devoted to. And I was so relieved to find that other people were asking the same questions. ... There are still people who are just entering into the conversation at that level, so there are people who, for them this is all new.

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Q: What comes next for emerging churches?

A: Ten years ago, the question was, why are Gen-Xers dropping out of church? .. So we've been grappling with these very deep theological questions over the last five or seven years. What is the Gospel? What was Jesus really trying to do? ... Emergent Village (emergentvillage.com) created this kind of safe space for people to talk. Now what's happened is all of these affiliated groups are forming - Presby-mergent, Anglo-mergent. ... A Catholic network is forming. ... It's breathtaking to hear all the creative thinking going on about the future.

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Q: What are the weaknesses of the movement?

A: Nobody had a master strategy for this. That creates weaknesses as well as strengths. It means you don't have anybody calling the shots and it means that things happen in a somewhat haphazard way. And I think there's a huge range of responses. ... Among evangelicals you have people who are not doing any theological rethinking at all. The theology that they inherited, they're staying with 100 percent. They're trying to do sort of methodological innovation (in styles of worship). And my personal feeling is that's great. Those'll be steps in a good direction... I'm not a purist about anything. I think it's all good. We're all trying to stumble along and take some steps in the right direction. Others of us are asking theological questions and that's always messy.

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Q: You reject the word liberal to describe yourself.

A: What do you mean by the term? If liberal means you believe ... you should help the poor, and your bias should be toward peacemaking rather than war-making, then I'm a liberal. But if liberal means that government can solve all of our problems and that secularism is better than faith, and that it doesn't matter what you do in your personal life and that morality is up for grabs, then I'm not a liberal. And I could say the same thing about conservative.

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On the Net:

Brian McLaren: http://www.brianmclaren.net/

/AP-CS-05-07-08 1209EDT