There are book reviews and there are book reviews. As I undertake a review of Brian McLaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy, I believe that it is best for us to be frank. As my son put it in a discussion last night, my review mode is that I have apparently put on the hockey mask and started up the chain saw.
But let me begin by giving credit where it is due. McLaren is a master rhetorician, and one of the things he does best is anticipate objections, make them himself, and then sidestep neatly. Voila! He does a masterful job of stealing thunder, but this is not the same thing as answering the questions.
Let’s start with the title of the book, a most ungenerous title. “My orthodoxy is generous. What kind is yours?” He knows he is being unjust, and he steals that thunder by admitting it. “Beyond all these warnings, you should know that I am horribly unfair in this book, lacking all scholarly objectivity and evenhandedness . . . while I keep elbowing my conservative brethren in the ribs in a most annoying — some would say ungenerous — way. I cannot even pretend to be objective or fair. This is simply an inexcusable shortcoming of the book that serves no good purpose, unless by some chance . . . ” (pp. 35-36).
And the title is not a mere slip. You have to understand that this generous orthodoxy he is shilling for is an orthodoxy that has existed virtually nowhere in the history of the church. “You have every reason to believe, based on a cursory understanding of church history, that a generous orthodoxy is oxymoronic (like heavy lightness, a dark flash, or dry rain) . . .” (p. 27). But now, after two thousand years of nastiness in the name of Jesus — finally! — a nice Christian! He lives in Maryland! I wonder what took the Holy Spirit so long?
He says in two places in Chapter 0 (I am not sure what that means either) that he affirms “consistently, unequivocally, and unapologetically” the Apostles’ and Nicene Creed (pp. 28,32). But what does this mean? It does not mean, according to McLaren, that we are able to “batter into submission people with honest questions.” But having done this, he then undercuts the value of having done it. The question of why he affirms the Creeds is brought up in this first chapter. He recalls that the victors write the history books (p. 29), and says that “orthodoxy might seem to follow those who fight the hardest and perhaps the dirtiest. Not a pleasant thought.” So the question arises, did the orthodoxy represented in the two creeds he unapologetically affirms arise in this discrediting way? If not, given his principles for understanding church history, on what basis does he say not? If so, then why does he affirm them?
McLaren also makes a great deal about the relation between orthodoxy and orthopraxy (again, in a most ungenerous way). What conservative evangelicals have affirmed and taught constantly and unremittingly (“you must walk the walk before you talk the talk”) McLaren treats as a new insight. James taught us that faith without works is dead, and faithful and orthodox Christians have been insisting on the relationship of right belief and right living ever since. This is not to say that there has been no hypocrisy in conservative ranks (there has been a great deal of it), but McLaren talks in this chapter as though the necessary relation between doctrine and life is formally rejected by your typical orthodoxy. “Orthodoxy in this book is similarly caught up in the practice (orthopraxy) of love for God and all God’s creations. Such an outlandish idea, in the name of orthodoxy, is so unorthodox that it is hardly worth your continued consideration” (p. 33). I see. The idea of loving God, for the vast majority of the orthodox through history is not only a Novelty, but a novelty that will probably get the perpetrator of it run out of town.
But speaking of orthopraxy, it should be pointed out that McLaren is actively engaged in smuggling in a new definition of what it means to “live right.” He means behaving like an amiable discussion partner, regardless of what is being discussed. But he fails to point out that the most unsettling aspects of the emergent church movement (to the orthodox) have been precisely those aspects where biblical concepts of orthopraxy are being brought into question. Case in point: homosexual behavior. Is this a question of orthodoxy or orthopraxy? But when asked about this basic question of sexual ethics (a question that the apostle Paul described as the end of the ethical road, the road of what you do, not what you think), McLaren sidesteps, and refuses to talk about . . . what? He refuses to link right thinking about God with right living. He detaches orthodoxy and orthopraxy, and he does while maintaining that he is doing just the opposite. And many other such things he does.
There is another place where McLaren gets coy in quite an exasperating way. He anticipates rejection all over the place. He anticipates that we will all be showing up at his place with the tar and feathers any time now. You, the reader, risk guilt by association “just by being seen in public with this book” (p. 37). He suggests swapping dust jackets with other books so that the Orthodox Gestapo won’t getcha. And, just “so you know, I plan to change my name and apply to either Extreme Makeover or a witness protection program as soon as the book comes out to save my fragile skin, so I urge you to protect yourself, too” (p. 37). Sounds scary. What basis did he have for anticipating this reaction? A Generous Orthodoxy is copyrighted in 2004. His previous book A New Kind of Christian, purveying the same kind of cotton candy for the soul, was published in 2001 and won the Christianity Today Award of Merit. Yeah, it sounds like ostracism is barrelling down on him like an eighteen-wheeler.
And here is something that is so deep that we might have to call in the philosophers. “Speaking of smoke, this book suggests that relativists are right in their denunciation of absolutism. It also affirms that absolutists are right in their denunciation of relativism. And then it suggests that they are both wrong because the answer lies beyond both absolutism and relativism” (p. 38). Well, I’m glad that’s settled! This is like Nietzsche moving beyond good and evil and finding a genuine third way.
Near the end of the chapter, McLaren writes — tellingly — this. “Speaking of confession, I confess I just reread this Chapter 0, and it strikes me as so weird — arrogant? defensive? tortured? complex? anxious? — that I can’t imagine why anone would push through it to Chapter 1” (p. 38). This is one of the places where I agree with him completely, but, as I said, he is smooth. Since he confessed to his arrogance first, it mitigates the force of anyone else pointing it out. But when you see this coy anticipation of what an honest reader could see, and then this manipulative move to shunt a just criticism aside, it simply makes the whole thing worse.
I would add to this the charge of hypocrisy. He says, “I hope you will agree not to use any ideas found here in a dangerous or divisive way . . . If you try to create an elite ‘generous orthodoxy club,’ holding meetings at which you look down your long, crooked noses on everybody else who is so obviously less generous or less orthodox that you, please do not invite me to be your guest speaker” (p. 39). Out of context, this looks wise, and humble, but the real reason he does not need to be invited as the guest speaker for a group like this is that they have already learned all their censoriousness from this book. Looking down your long crooked noses at your local “narrow” orthodox church, are they? Is that anything like looking down your crooked nose at two thousand years of orthodoxy?
Is this man representative of the emerging church? Is McLaren an emergent leader? Yes or no? If he is, and I believe it is acknowledged on all hands that he is, then this is an emergence we should have no interest in encouraging. There is more than one way to emerge, and more than one kind of thing can emerge. If this is emergence, it is looks more to me like the pupating church. So the question does interest me. What is coming out of that thing?