Brian D. McLaren's Blog

Some of the most profound things you'll ever read about Pentecost will be found right here: http://girardianlectionary.net/year_b/pentecostb_2012_ser.htm - all I can say is "wow" and "hallelujah!"

In particular, don't miss the sermon linking the Spirit and Satyagraha ... and the stunning reading of the phrase "sin, righteousness, and judgment" from John's gospel. Amazing, amazing.

After 36 hours in transit (not counting another unexpected 24 hours when my original flight was cancelled) I'm back home from another amazing time in East Africa. Amazing friends there doing wonderful, needed, and inspiring things ... beautiful African countryside ... stark human need met by stunning human kindness, infused by God's Spirit of love, wisdom, peace, and creativity. I'll be sharing more in days to come, but am going to enjoy a few days of rest and recuperation first.

In the meantime, you can see slides from my presentations there, here:

http://www.slideshare.net/brianmclaren

And you can get a glimpse of some of the beautiful projects (with tremendous photos) unfolding there - here:

http://www.communityforburundi.org/

I'm with an inspiring group of African leaders in an absolutely beautiful setting - at the top of Lake Tanganyika in Bujumbura, Burundi. I can hear the waves crashing on the shore - like an ocean beach with crystal clear fresh water. (They say Lake Tanganyika contains 1/6 of the world's liquid fresh water, in a deep rift between the mountains of Burundi and Congo.) Every meal, every break I meet new friends doing amazing things to serve God and/in neighbor.

Tonight, we sang the well-known song, "Open the Eyes of My Heart." Sean Callaghan from South Africa suggested we need to remember Jesus' words - that what we do for the "least of these" we do for him ... and he suggested it's not just that we need to "be Jesus" to those in need, but we must realize they are being Jesus to us ... if we have eyes to see Jesus in them.

Anyway, I started scribbling down a second and third verse to that song, inspired by what people around me embody in their service to people in great need. Let me know if any of you every try using it (feel free to improve upon it first!) in gatherings somewhere ... and let me know how it is received.

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open they eyes of my heart.
I want to see you. I want to see you.
To see you low and beaten down ... in the homeless, sick, and lonely,
In the suffering and oppressed, we see you lowly, lowly, lowly ...

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. Open they eyes of my heart.

I want to see you. I want to see you.

In what we do for them - the least of your sisters and brothers,

We also do for you, in the outcast and the lowly

Lowly, lowly, lowly ...

For the next week I'll be in Africa with good friends in the Amahoro network ... I don't know what I'll have by way of internet capability, but I'm sure there's a lot of archived material here to explore if I'm digitally silent this week. Maybe pick a key word and search the site for it ... Or maybe check out my short fiction ebooks, available here: http://brianmclaren.net/archives/books/brians-books/short-fiction-ebooks.html

A reader writes ...

I am a first time reader of your books. Just finished A GENEROUS ORTHODOXY, and A NEW KIND OF CHRISTIANITY. Thought I would take a chance with you since I saw you are going to be on the Board of Trustees at Claremont School of Theology. As a graduate I was once the President of the Alumni Association and as such on the Board of Trustees. I am now retired.



Your journey is an interesting one, that in many ways is similar to mine. I am from an evangelical background, raised with the Greco-Roman world view. I worried about all the things you mentioned, re: second coming etc. This is my story: During the summer of 1966, a friend of mine and I hitch-hiked the continent. We had been given a letter of introduction to Rudolf Bultmann, and an interview with him in his home at Marburg, Germany. He was then in his 80's and writing his commentary on the Gospel of John. Being from the background I was, I was fearful that I was on enemy territory, visiting a man whose treatment of the New Testament was questionable, if not heretical. I was very much in a theological turmoil, in the years prior to going to Claremont for theological reorientation. We found Mr. and Mrs. Bultmann to be warm and gracious, (which threw us off right at the beginning!) I posed a question to Bultmann, thinking I would stump him. I asked, "Dr. Bultmann what do you believe about life after death?" His answer: I believe that the God who meets me day by day will meet me when I must die." It was such a gentle and authentic answer, that I felt I was on holy ground. He didn't need to spell out what it would look like, he said "that is fantastic."



A few years ago I shared this story with Marcus Borg after a lecture series. He said that was his view as well. This incident I recalled after reading your chapter "The Future Question."



I thought I would be more mellow at this point of my journey, have all the answers, basking in some spiritual bliss! Not so. I continue to struggle and am grateful that you, among others, are here to keep the questions alive.

Thanks so much for writing. Many of us are taught in our religious communities to fear "the other" - the liberals, the conservatives, the Muslims, the Catholics, the Evangelicals, the Jews, the whatever. Then, we actually meet them and - lo and behold! - "they" are human beings, nice folks, bearers of God's image just like "us." (That's an important theme of my upcoming fall release ... I hope you'll enjoy it too!) This is a big part of what Paul is getting at, I think, in 2 Corinthians 5:16 ... "in Christ," we no longer recognize others "according to the flesh." Even Rudolf Bultmann or Jerry Falwell or anyone in between. Thanks again for sharing this story.

Here's the Q: A friend of mine who is Hindu recently read the manuscript for my upcoming book (Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?). He then read the following article ...

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/april/proselytizingmultifaith.html?start=1

... and sent me this question:

I find the idea of proselytizing to be, at best, patronizing towards the other. It flies in the face of Vaclav Havel's dictum to "keep the company of those who seek the Truth, and run from those who have found it."

How do we deal with this in a multi-faith world?

Here's the R:

Thanks for this good and important question. Christianity and Islam (unlike Judaism and Hinduism) are often called "missionary religions." But I think that categorization is problematic. Here's why.

All religions, I think, have a mission. For some manifestations of each religion, the mission appears to be little more than institutional survival - keeping a clergy class employed, keeping buildings or temples open, and so on. For others, the mission focuses on bringing benefits to members only (sometimes "enhanced" with threats towards the other). For others - the best ones, in my opinion - the mission extends to "the other" by focusing on the common good, with special attention to the outsider, outcast, stranger, marginalized, forgotten, disadvantaged, and even the enemy.

In some sense, then, all religions are missionary religions - it's just that their missions differ.

Many religious communities are also proselytizing religions - meaning they actively recruit people from other religions to defect from those religions and join their own. This, I think, is what you find patronizing. This approach may assume that one's own religion is purely good while other religions are purely evil. It begins by assuming my primary duty to my neighbor of another religion is to persuade him to convert ... or else. This is what Havel's quote rightly warns about: when we assume we already have the truth and so have nothing more to learn or seek in company with the other.

It's no accident that this viewpoint has historically gone hand in hand with colonialism. Such an us-vs-them attitude suits the colonial agenda perfectly.

To avoid this patronization, self-deception, others-deprecation, and colonial mindset, many people advocate a kind of religious isolationism ... you have your religion and I'll have mine; let's keep religion private so it doesn't cause conflict and division.

I can see why this approach would seem appealing - all the more so if one is surrounded by proselytizers. Nobody wants to be colonized - religiously or politically.

I think we need an option better than either proselytism or isolationism. Such an approach would indeed be missional (focusing on mission for the common good), but it wouldn't fall for the oversimplified dualism that says "us=good/better" and "them=bad/worse." We might even say such an approach would be "evangelistic" - not in the traditional sense of demanding conversion with the threat of eternal damnation, but in the original sense of good news. In this approach, each religion is encouraged to bring its good news - its message about the common good, its transferable wisdom, its treasures to be shared.

This approach avoids the us-them thinking of conventional proselytism, which is highly problematic, as you know.

Any honest person would admit there are a plenty of problems in his or her religious community. There are plenty of blemishes, blind spots, inconsistencies, misunderstandings, divisions, disputes, prejudices, and flaws. And any honest person would admit there are plenty of virtues in the religious communities of others - heroism, loyalty, wisdom, morality, generosity, virtue, strength. Conventional proselytism largely ignores the negatives one is taking on when joining "us" and the positives one is leaving behind when leaving "them." Jesus spoke of this - he criticized those who travel over land and sea to make a single convert, only turning the convert into "twice the son of hell" he was before conversion!

That's why I think we need an approach that acknowledges the strengths and weaknesses on all sides and that invites people to come to the table with their unique gifts to offer the others. Gifts, of course, can't be imposed - that's colonization, not gift-giving. The very nature of a gift is that others can say, "No, thank you." When people obsessively push their gifts on others, that's also a dysfunction ... more like sales than friendship!

So my Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish friends come to me with the gifts of their traditions, and I come to them with the gifts of mine. Some we may welcome; some we may not be interested in - now, anyway. Sometimes, the uninterested response of others will cause me to ask if there's something wrong in my presentation of the gift I offer ...

Interestingly, I think that's what you and I have experienced in our friendship. I'll never forget when I heard you tell the Hindu parable of the cosmic fig tree to a group of Christians ... I could tell they were gaining real insights from that story - insights about desire, about wisdom, about the complexities at work in our own minds and motivations. You didn't require us to become Hindus to gain those gifts ... and neither did you keep them to yourself, assuming we had nothing to gain.

That, to me, is a good kind of evangelism ...bringing good news, healing stories, gifts of wisdom ... to one another. I can imagine those gifts being received in one of two ways. In one way, a person might say, "We have nothing like this in our tradition. I will gladly leave my tradition and join yours so I can gain the treasures you have." That's a matter of religious freedom, and I think we can celebrate that freedom not as a matter of patronization but rather of hospitality. But there's another way those gifts could be received: "My tradition needs this wisdom. Let me welcome it and see how it improves and challenges and even transforms my understanding, within my tradition." That approach isn't always easy ... but no path of growth is.

Anyway - those are a few thoughts on the subject. I guess you could say I'm against proselytism but for evangelism, sharing good news that can bring benefits to all, whatever their religion, culture, heritage, or history. Looking forward to more conversation on this subject.

Steve Knight is a trustworthy guide into missional church space. His new blog will be worth following, here:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/missionalshift/

As a believer in seminaries, as a frequent guest lecturer at seminaries, as a past-and-current board member of seminaries, as a believer that more and better theological education is better (!) than less and worse, and as someone who didn't attend seminary myself but has two honorary doctorates and who has a pro-seminary bias, I found these two articles fascinating - both in their similarities and differences.

This one on seminaries: http://chronicle.com/article/For-Schools-of-Theology-Its/131851/

This one on do-it-yourself learning: http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/05/schoolers-edupunks-makers-learning.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+oreilly%2Fradar%2Fatom+%28O%27Reilly+Radar%29

All this raises a question I'll post over on my Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brian-D-McLaren/65814657989?ref=ts

A lot of people, when they hear that term “emerging church,” think it means a particular style of church – distorted electric guitars, subdued lighting, lots of tattoos and piercings, anti-liturgical, extremely hip. Or they think it’s about structure – dismantling denominations or something similar.

Those folks don’t get it.

Focusing on “style” is part of what the emerging church is emerging from. The emerging church represents a turn from preoccupation with structure and style towards content, towards the primary and primal meaning of the gospel in our world today. If we “get” that meaning of the gospel – that God’s kingdom (or dream, or commonwealth, or kin-dom, or beloved community) is available now, within reach, inviting all to participate – then we realize that style (whether traditional “smells and bells” or hipster tattoos and piercings) isn’t the point. It’s relative, not absolute; a means, not an end.

From a guest blog here:

http://seaburynext.wordpress.com/2012/05/07/permission-to-lead-in-the-emerging-church/