McLaren at Davos

I am very critical of Brian McLaren and view many of his ideas to be down right dangerous and unorthodox. That being said many of you would be surprised to find out that I think that on some issues McLaren is asking the RIGHT questions.

I would like you to put away your opinions of McLaren for a couple of minutes and listen to the issues that he brings up in this video from his trip to the World Economic Forum at Davos.

One of my strongest criticisms of American Evangelicalism is that it has become overtly AMERICAN. We've lost sight of the fact that we are the church catholic and have become the church American.

So rather than reacting to McLaren as an Emergent, I'd like to know what you think of his questions and the experience he shares about his trip to Davos.

Comments

[Rick Frueh]

The church should be a-national and a-cultural. But MacLaren should never be a conduit for legitimate questions to the church. Considering his dismantling of Biblical doctrine, it would be akin to having the iceberg give a safety talk to the Titanic.

[Chris Rosebrough]

Rick,

Your distaste for McLaren is duly noted.

I have a reason for using him for this question. That will be revealed in a later post. So I'm glad that you played along.

[Dan at Necessary Roughness]

It's an interesting point. But I wonder if the Muslim can see the split between something that's Muslim and something that's "not western".

[Shane Trammel]

Chris,

The question is a valid one. Our dialogue or ministry to any people group or non-Christian religion should be informed by scripture rather than a "western mindset".

McLaren is more about asking questions than giving answers, but the answer is, we need to be true Christians. Sharing the truth in love, without compromise, to those who need it.

God Bless,

Shane

[Lane Chaplin]

This is exactly the same as what Schaeffer said about the revolts in California in the 60's, I think it was, as he described it in How Then Shall We Live?

The students had rightly diagnosed the problem that the culture around them had adopted the horrendous "qualities" of personal peace and affluence, but their reaction to it was wrong. McLaren reminds me of the same thing. He has diagnosed the problem ("American Christianity"), but his way to solve it is completely unbiblical, liberal, and wrong. It just goes to show that we shouldn't embrace everyone who rightly diagnoses a problem because their means of solving it may be against Christ and not with Him.

[John]

I personally think this muslim, western, eastern, Christian talk is nonsense. Here's my take. The real focus is to destabilize the USA what better way to do it, by trying to get Christians to turn away from the citizenship of their own country and attempt to look at themselves as world citizens. This ideas is made for getting the Christian to join the ranks of the liberals in following them down the road of anti-american-western hatred. Its just sugar coated.

What is the most popular thing you can do right now? Well, join Obama and that spirit in jettisoning anything american and being a friend to the Muslim. The problem is America..the problem is american-Christian ideal, the problem is the antagonistic verbage between these two religions. So, the answer in Muslim, obama and now Mclarens tool box is to get the Christians to reject their own God given country in favor of endorsing anything that anti-american.

This nothing more than religous double-talk and a subversion of the American homeland and its ideals.

The problem, is not what Mclaren or the Asian archbishop have declared. The problem is always the same. Ungodliness and rebellion against God. Mclarens answer is to buddy up to and include Muslim religious patronage. I think its blasphemy and abominable.