A New Kind Of Christianity

Ekklesia is beginning to go through the book A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren. I was sitting here reading the first chapter, when I came across this interesting passage that I couldn't help but put on my blog:

"My disillusionment [to Christianity and the Church] was intensified by what was happening in the Christian community in America during the 1980s and 1990s. A large number of both Protestant and Catholic leaders had aligned with a neoconservative political ideology, trumpeting what they called "conservative family values," but minimizing biblical community values. They supported wars of choice, defended torture, opposed environmental protection, and seemed to care more about protecting the rich from taxes than liberating the poor from poverty or minorities from racism. They spoke against big government as if big was bag, yet they seemed to see big military and big business as inherently good. They wanted to protect unborn human life inside the womb, but didn't seem to care about born human life in slums or prisons or nations they considered enemies. They loved to paint gay people as a threat to marriage, seeming to miss the irony that heterosexual people were damaging marriage at a furious pace without any help from gay couples. The consistently relegated females to second-class status, often while covering up for their fellow males when they fell into scandal or committed criminal abuse. The interpreted the Bible to favor the government of Israel and to marginalize Palestinians, and even before September 11, 2001, I feared that through their influence Muslims were being cast as the new scapegoats, targets of a scary kind of religiously inspired bigotry.

"Their stridency and selectivity in choosing issues and priorities at first annoyed, then depressed, and then angered me. They had created a powerful, wealthy, and stealthy network dedicated to mobilizing fighters in their 'culture war.' I began referring to the new religious establishment they had created as radio-orthodoxy because it depended on radio (and TV). They had turned the way of Jesus, I felt, into the club of the Pharisees, and they didn't speak for me, even though their spokesmen dominated the dialogue night after night on cable TV. The terms 'Evangelical' and even 'Christian' had become like discredited brands through their energetic but misguided work. I increasingly understood why more and more of my friends winced when the name 'Jesus' was mentioned in public. It wasn't due to a loss of respect for Jesus, but for those who most used his name."

Hi. My name is Brittany Ryan. And, if I told you I was a Christian and it automatically made you think about ANY of the negative things listed in the first quoted paragraph, I am deeply and forever sorry. The Jesus I follow; the Jesus of the Bible is nothing like that.