A review of "a Generous Orthodoxy"

Once a great leader came to the Rabbis Hillel and Shammai. When he asked the strict Shammai, "tell me what your God commands, while standing on one foot." Shammai tried, but fell to two feet, without explaining the whole of the Torah. Then the great leader came to Hillel and said the same. Hillel hopped up on one foot and said, "That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor, all the rest is commentary."
If I were to sum up McLaren’s "a Generous Orthodoxy" on one foot I would say, "Ditch mutual exclusivity. Be a blessing to the whole world. Follow Jesus, not Christianity. All the rest is commentary."
"a Generous Orthodoxy" is a very auto-biographical book and conversational in tone.
The generous orthodoxy that McLaren proposes is a curious thing, to him the Emergent Church seems to be a Frankenstein monster of his own creation. He wants to borrow the best bits of various Christian traditions to form a Christianity for the post-modern age. McLaren’s Emergent Church would be an orthopraxic, non-eschatological faith, infused with the spiritual fire of Pentecostalism, the anything to spread the gospel attitude of Evangelicals, the urge to reform of Calvinists, the spirituality of Catholicism, the methodology of Methodism, the way of relating to culture of Celtic Christianity, and the ability to get along with one another of the Anglican church.
The book starts off with McLaren trying to convince us not to read the book, always a good tactic; it wets the appetite of the reader and makes them curious. In chapter one he writes about the ways in which various groups (Conservative Protestants, Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Liberal Protestants, Anabaptists, and Liberation Theologians) view Jesus as savior and decides they are all true.
McLaren tries to put the Emergent Church forward as a middle ground, or maybe a synthesis, between Liberal Christianity and Conservative Christianity. To do this he defines Conservatives as narcissists and Liberals as atheists. Actually that was one of my biggest beefs with McLaren, in his Post-modern way he re-defines everything. He is a Fundamentalist, because he believes loving God and neighbor as yourself to be fundamental to his faith. He’s Calvinist because he likes reform and believes in TULIP, but TULIP in his case is "Triune Love, Unselfish Election, Limitless Reconciliation, Inspiring Grace, and Passionate Persistant Saints."
It may sound like I didn’t like this book. Not true, it did what McLaren wanted, to make me think. There is a lot of good here. He points out a lot of skeletons in Christianity’s closet and elephants in the room that no one admits are there. He does a good job at giving a general overview of reasons for historical developments in Christianity.
In some ways I think this book was written more for Baptists considering leaving the faith because of the Religious Right, as he hits out at that portion of Christianity very hard. As for liberal Christianity he simply leaves it at that we’ve lost something important in our struggle with modernity. Really he doesn’t struggle with the questions of the Christian Left beyond saying we don’t have soul and sometimes can lead to Athiesm.
One other thing, LZ points out that McLaren may be a closet Lutheran. I am not so sure, but what is interesting is he never talks directly about Lutheranism. The closest he comes is to quote Luther’s saying "Here I Stand." That said he indirectly talks about Lutheranism a LOT. Not only does the whole post-modern thing fit in well with my faith’s paradoxical nature, but quite often when he talks about other denominations he mentions off hand Lutherans are similar to this or that. He mentions us when he talks about Roman Catholics, Anabaptists and Anglicans. I think he doesn’t know what to make of us. Or, maybe he does but he realizes we are sitting on the ground he’d like to claim for the Emergent Church. Perhaps the Emergent Church, in McLare’s eyes is simply a more rowdy, less centralized version of the ELCA?
Peace,
Chris