Why Do Evangelicals Dislike Me So Much? – Brian McLaren

“Brian McLaren and his ilk of the emerging church … all it is, is late 19th century protestant [theological] liberalism in a postmodern dress. There isn’t anything new in it at all. And the only reason they can get away with it is because people are so a-historical and ignorant of theologies of the past.” – David Robertson, Emergent Calvinism (MP3)

Notice how McLaren doesn’t defend his orthodoxy (or lack thereof), he pleads the victim card and calls out the majority of evangelicals for essentially being separationists, you know, where seperationism actually matters. He clearly doesn’t see what is at stake. I mean even one of the New Atheists sees what’s at stake and knows where the dividing lines are! Christopher Hitchens is quoted as saying in a debate against a theologically liberal Christian, “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

I’m only speaking my conscience, McLaren says in the article in defense of his stance. Well, a great majority in evangelicalism, the group he alleges to be a part of, now are saying loud and clear that his beliefs of conscience concerning core doctrines are against historical Christianity and he should cease to take the name evangelical if he’s going to believe, proselytize and support these views. I mean when your views are closer to that of the arguments and rebuttals of agnostics and other secular, unbelieving skeptics, you might want to check the authenticity of your faith and its connectedness to historical, Biblical Christianity. These are not issues to play down lightly as periphery concerns. This is front and center, headline news; the very stuff of the meat of Christianity we’re talking about that he is redefining. This is not unimportant. His arguments, redefinitions and theology concern the very heart of the Christian faith, specifically within the evangelical context.

This is just New School liberalism, springing up now in the evangelical world. Don’t be fooled. Over time, and especially in his latest book, McLaren has been taking the mask off more and more. He may be speaking his conscience, as he says, but it shows his convictions do not rest in the historic Christian faith but in the (not-so-new) innovations of postmodern theology. And there is no reason to try and associate with our groups any longer.

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men.” – 2 Timothy 3:1-9

“always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” … I cannot think of a better description of his strain of “new” theology.