McLaren Builds Bridges in Sojourners Magazine
Brian McLaren’s written the cover article for the latest edition of Sojourners, on building bridges between extremes of liberalism and conservatism. I like what he has to say. He starts by drawing our attention to the commitment Jesus made to entering the culture he lived in. Likewise he looks at Paul’s call to ‘be all things to all kinds of people’, despite our saying that ‘we can’t be all things to all people’.
McLaren’s hunch is that there are four bridges we have to deal with in our hyper-polarized world today:
1. Religious Right and Secular Left.
“On the one side we have people for whom the good news of Jesus and the policies of George W. Bush are bonded with super glue. On the other side we have people who believe that all religion is superstitious mush and wish we would just dispense with the whole business once and for all and trust science and government instead.”
2. Religious Right and Religious Left.
“More and more supposedly “secular Left” folk are coming out of the closet as people of faith. For them, being anti-war is more important than being anti-abortion for religious reasons, and for them, some form of recognition for homosexual couples is a moral issue based in faith. They want to argue these issues not only on the basis of politics and sociology, but also on the basis of the Bible and theology.”
3. Secular Right and Religious Left.
“I suspect that hiding behind some religious conservatives are some secular conservatives who are manipulating their religious colleagues for a secular, cynical, ideological conservatism. These are the people who have (in the worst sense of the word) a relativist-postmodern conservative ideology, best articulated in Ron Suskind’s article “Without a Doubt,” published in The New York Times Magazine last October. These conservative ideologues are happy for religious conservatives to win support for their policies, but in the end it’s ideology, not theology, that guides them. Ironically, they have less in common theologically with those they have the most in common with ideologically, and vice versa.”
4. Secular Right and Secular Left.
“In spite of the widespread assumption that religion is the new politics, there still are secular forces on both sides for whom a thoughtful Christian (or generically spiritual) voice is seen as stupid for actually believing in such unscientific and impractical things as God, hope, forgiveness, sacrifice, and prayer.”
McLaren says that there is a rising ‘purple peoplehood’ out there - people who don’t want to be defined as red or blue, but have elements of both, and for whom faith speaks to both abortion and war, both sexuality and ecology, both family values and fair, respectful treatment for gay people - then we will need to learn new ways of communication. He finishes with suggestions on how to engage in conversation that takes this complexity seriously.
2 Responses to “McLaren Builds Bridges in Sojourners Magazine”
By The Eagle's Child on Oct 2, 2005 | Reply
These are definitions from an American experience. Could we have some discussion and definitions within the Oz experience?
By Duncan on Oct 2, 2005 | Reply
You’re right. The religious, secular, left and right categories don’t fit so well down under. Though I do see people importing the assumptions around those into the Australian setting. Take for example the current debate over intelligent design and evolution in the USA education system.
One of the supposedly mutually exclusive categories in Australia is the emerging divide between incarnational and attractional approaches to church.
In the Uniting Church we have a polarisation between Reformed focus on the saving work of Christ and Wesleyan focus on the call to carry out the missional work of Christ.