…always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth. (2 Timothy 3:7)

Reimagined Liberalism

In posts like Brian McLaren Continues To Blunder and Dissention Growing Around The Emerging Church here at Apprising Ministries I’m showing you that Progessive Christianity aka liberal theology will be showing up more and more around the cricles of the sinfully ecumenical Emerging Church aka Emergent Church—that morphed into Emergence Christianity—(EC). It’s a reimagined (post) form of it i.e. Liberalism 2.0 particularly in the mystic myths of  EC guru Brian McLaren, heretical EC pastor Doug Pagitt, and his equally heretical “theologian in residence” Tony Jones. 

As a matter of fact they’re not even trying to hide their “progressive Christian theology” now in the EC. For example, in McLaren’s new book A New Kind of Christianity (ANKoC) he made the choice to finally come straight out with his rejection of the verbal plenary inspiration of Scripture in favor of destructive higher criticism of the Bible as well as his sympathies with Open Theism/Process Theology. We get a little peek at some of this in the following from ANKoC. 

While Setting the Stage for the Biblical Narrative, chapter 5 in A New Kind of Christianity (ANKoC)—the title alone is revealing enough—McLaren tells us there was a time when he “began losing faith” in the way he once read the Bible. However, McLaren goes on to share that he was then fortunate to be able to learn “from Christian scholars” such as “Protestants” like Living Spiritual Teacher and Progessive Christian scholar “Marcus Borg” and Roman “Catholics” like “Richard Rohr,” a leading instructor of Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism as well as another Living Spiritual Teacher.

On page 268 as footnote to the above chapter in ANKoC McLaren muses:

As we will see again when we read the story of Job in response to the authority question, it may help us here [in Elohim’s “coming-of-age” story] to see “God” not simply as the real God, but as a character in a story, seen and described unapologetically from a human point of view. This character is thus rendered in starkly human terms, which excuses the character for displaying less emotional maturity that we might expect in an actual deity.

This character seems, if we’re honest, rather limited in foresight (threatening and then not imposing the death penalty with Adam and Eve, not anticipating Cain’s violence to Abel), and somewhat insecure and threatened by human potential, worrying first that humans “will become . . . like us” (Gen. 3:22) and later that “nothing will be impossible for them” (11:6). 

Last Monday in Goodbye Emergent: Why I’m Taking The Theology of the Emerging Church To Task where Jeremy Bouma, who’d been in the EC for five years and personally knows many big names within it, shared some reasons that contributed to why he can no longer remain with the EC. Among other things Bouma says:

In short: I became uncomfortable and have grown downright tired of the theology that has bubbled-up out of the emerging church… Maybe it was when I read Fredrick Schleiermacher and realized his and modern liberalism’s vapid, gospel-less faith are being repackaged and popularized to an unsuspecting, ignorant Christian community as a wholesome alternative to what has been. (Online source)

We also see a shift further in the direction of this still being reinterpreted version of liberal/progressive theology as evidenced in the upcoming Theology After Google (TAG) conference. The other day in Tony Jones, The Emerging Church And Progressive Christianity I showed you that Jones wrote a post called The Future of Progressive Theology and God’s Future where he told us:

I’ve just spent another few days with Philip Clayton, and once again been impressed with the evangelical zeal with which he approaches progressive theology.  He is a force of nature.

Which, I imagine, is why the Ford Foundation gave him a grant to “transform theology for church and society” (read, make progressive theology popular and populist again).  I’ve been involved with him in that, particularly with Tripp “Sancho Panza” Fuller… (Online source)

No surprise that Jones would be so taken with Philip Clayton and his Transforming Theology because he also did the foreword to Clayton’s current book Transforming Christian Theology (TCT). Now concerning this heresy-fest coming up next month we’re told:

Progressive Christian theologians have some vitally important things to say, things that both the church and society desperately need to hear… Hence the urgent need for a conference to empower pastors, laypeople, and the up-and-coming theologians of the next generation to do “theology after Google,” theology for a Google-shaped world…

Thanks to the Ford funding, we’ve been able to assemble a stellar team of cultural creatives and experts in the new modes of communication. We are also inviting a selection of senior theologians, and well as some of the younger theologians (call them “theobloggers”) whose use of the new media (blogging, podcasts, YouTube posts) is already earning them large followings and high levels of influence. (Online source) 

And if you look at the rolling ad in the lower right part of the the webpage for TAG you see what such EC luminaries as Brian McLaren, F. LeRon Shults, and Phyllis Tickle—the Empress of Emergence—have say about Philip Clayton and his TCT:

“How can an important book of theology be so delightful to read? How can a top-drawer theologian have such a high level of respect for “normal” Christians that they are seen as partners in the work of transforming theology? How can Philip Clayton make the idea of big-tent, progressive Christianity so believable and attractive that one can imagine Evangelicals, Charismatics, Mainliners, and Roman Catholics having a meal and joyfully discussing it together? There’s only one way to find out – open up Transforming Christian Theology and start reading now.”

Author details: 

Brian D. McLaren
author/speaker/activist
(brianmclaren.net) (Online source)

“Philip Clayton is one of the world’s leading philosophical theologians. In this new book, he calls for a transformation of theology—for a theology that transforms by radically engaging the concrete and practical concerns of both church and society. Pointing to significant movements within the Christian church, as well as shifts in late modern culture, Clayton clearly shows that the time is right for challenging old divisions such as ‘evangelical’ and ‘liberal.’ A welcome call for and contribution to transforming theology!”

Author details: 

F. LeRon Shults
Professor of Theology and Philosophy
University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway
Author of Reforming the Doctrine of God (Online source) 

“Straight-forward and tantalizingly thorough, Transforming Christian Theology is the first volume to describe in a highly accessible and concrete way how Christian groups of any size or circumstance can locate and amend themselves theologically. This is, in sum, a very, very user-friendly Traveler’s Guide to largely uncharted territory.”

Author details: 

See also:

Phyllis Tickle
Author of The Great Emergence (Online source)

See also:

OLD FASHIONED LIBERALISM IN THE EMERGING CHURCH

BRIAN MCLAREN YOUR EMERGING CHURCH HYPOCRISY IS SHOWING

DOUG PAGITT AND ARROGANCE OF LIBERAL/PROGRESSIVE CHRISTIANS

DOUG PAGITT AND JOHN SHELBY SPONG

APPRISING MINISTRIES WITH A PEEK AT THE COMING SOTERIOLOGY OF EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY

NEO-ORTHODOX APPROACH TO THE BIBLE PERFECT FIT FOR EMERGENCE CHRISTIANITY

MORE ON: GOD OF THE EMERGING CHURCH