booklogging

Nashville, TN, Thomas Nelson. 2007
Paperback: 240 pages, 0785289364

McLaren starts by recognising that a number of potential readers could be put off because of a cultural skepticism about the kinds of themes he's dealing with. I wonder whether this is true; in my case, I want to read this book because those themes are being dealt with. Nevertheless, the skepticism is real and forms a backdrop for all of us. It seems to me that for McLaren the more important potential audience are those who are more fully aware of the difficulties with organised Christian religion, particularly in its north American forms and who may be rejecting it because of its failure to be or embody good news.

McLaren was an English teacher and it shows, arguably, in some really nice soundbites. And I write 'nice' because they express my own thinking well. For example,
I couldn't help asking other questions: why do we need to have singular and firm opinions on the protection of the unborn, but not about how to help poor people and how to avoid killing people labelled enemies who are already born? Or why we are so concerned about the legitimacy of homosexual marriage but not about the legitimacy of fossil fuels or the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (and in particular, our weapons as opposed to theirs)? Or why are so many religious people arguing about the origin of species but so few concerned about the extinction of species? [pp.3-4]
The first chapter alerts us to the need to come up with a better Christian “framing story”. And the importance of doing so is well put and alluded to when McLaren writes,
The popular and domesticated Jesus who has become little more than a chrome-plated hood ornament on the guzzling Hummer of western civilisation, can thus be replaced with a more radical, saving, and, I believe, more real Jesus. [p.6]
Chapter two begins by confessing the two big questions that have stayed with McLaren since his twenties: what are the biggest problems in the world and what does Jesus have to say about them? For me, it is significant that a third question arises for him from those, because, again, it is mine. Why hasn't the Christian religion made a difference commensurate with its message, size and resources?

He outlines about a trip he took, on invitation, to Burundi and the word amahoro, 'peace'. In moving to chapter 3 we are introduced to the 'one' sermon that McLaren's host Claude had heard growing up in church: you're a sinner, unless you believe in Jesus you're going to hell. Claude pointed out to his Burundian, Rwandan and Congolese audience that none of them had heard anything about Hutus, Tutsis and Twa being reconciled. But this is not just an central African issue: all too often the Church, Christians have not been about reconciliation and welfare, though the world has sorely needed them. A recovery of the message of Jesus about the Kingdom is needed.

Chapter five brings us a scene from a meeting with South African pastors in a township where unemployment and AIDS are chronic. A health worker challenges them that their preaching of healing, being born again, colluding with not talking about sex and of tithing for prosperity are contributing to the problems not alleviating them. He outlines some of the kinds of programmes they could be developing but haven't been. McLaren characterises this kind of preaching and way of being church as chaplaincy to a dysfunctional and failing culture and a PR dept for a destructive ideology. To be sure he also mentions some areas where churches are becoming part of the solution, but the challenge remains.

It's probably helpful that McLaren makes these points in narrative and so via the voice of others directly affected. The health worker had to put up with accusations of heresy, though he was a committed pentecostal Christian. McLaren helps the presentation of his case by being more indirect at this point.

In chapter six we are introduced to post-modernism very helpfully and accessibly first by some historical placing to do with post-colonialism and the experience of two world wars and then very succinctly by reference to the roots of overweening certainty found in Descartes' foundationalism. I had to admire his adroit choice of examples and core issues as well as the presentation of them in well-crafted language and accessible thought.

next blog post.
In chapter six McLaren invites us to revisit the questions about what are the biggest problems facing the world and shares some of the ones he considers most on the ball, including the Copenhagen consensus, the millennium development goals, Rick Warren's PEACE plan and the UN questions about development. He also reminds us of Einstein's dictum that no problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it. He then mentions the work of the New Vision group who identify three main challenges [global poverty, environmental destruction and increasing violence] and diagnose the common root to be a disease of ideology.

Chapter seven could have been entitled 'The Suicide Machine'. It explores the metaphor of human systems (machines) which have become interlocked to produce human extinction, ultimately. This machine, he analyses to be composed of three interdependent subsystems. One is dedicated to prosperity, another to security and the final one to equity.

Chapter eight looks at that analysis in terms of how it sits within the earth's ecosystem. This employs a helpfully designed diagram to make the points clearer about energy flows and the size of the economy relative to the ecosystem. Much of the information is well-known, but not necessarily by some of the target readership, and the way that it is put over may be helpful to those who are familiar with it already in giving a way to share our concerns simply and with some hope of being effective.

In the next chapter we consider the importance of what McLaren calls “framing stories”. He gives some examples of how the stories we tell ourselves about who we are will tend to affect the way we live; we will live out these stories both individually and corporately. The chapter then explores how each of the subsystems can move into dysfunction supported by various narratives legitimising the overall continuance of the dysfunction, the comparison to addiction and denial is well made. It is here that the “theocapitalist narrative” is identified and so labelled. It is against this background that McLaren now raises the possibility that Jesus may offer a 'framing story' that stands outside of the consciousness that created our global crises.

Further Chapters
Part three starts with chapter ten and contrasts a conventional view of Jesus with an emerging view. The former tends to be tightly focussed on personal salvation whereas the latter is more of a holistic view. McLaren takes a look at the downsides of the conventional view which tend to be about it being easy for it to acquiesce in the kinds of injustices and excesses which started the book mainly by defining primary duties to looking after our own 'in groups' of family and the saved.
McLaren then resituates Jesus in his earthly context by drawing out the implications of Empire in the Roman variety by focussing on how it only really worked well for well-connected males close to the heart of Empire. For everyone else there were various degrees of being exploited.

We are then invited to consider the cross as a symbol of coercive Roman power; the means of keeping people in place and a warning to those who might think of rebelling. This moves us into chapter 11 and the reflection that coercive power tends not to achieve a total degree of coercion but rather to breed rebellion and bitterness and, more significantly for the development of the argument, counter narratives: stories embodying self understandings in contrast and rebellion to the prevailing hegemonic ideological myths of Empire (my phraseology, McLaren doesn't frighten his readers with such stuff). He shows how the Jewish people in Palestine under Roman occupation tended to develop four basic counter-narratives exemplified by the stances respectively of the zealots, the Saducees, the Pharisees and the Essenes. These turn out to be the main logical positions of any counter-narrative. The analysis begins to bite when McLaren relates these to positions found in north America today among Evangelicals: those who like the Essenes draw into separated subcultures, Then there are the culture warriors who seem to resemble the zealots, then the holiness/purity people like the Pharisees, and the Saducees represented by those who pretty much adopt a 'my country/party right or wrong' approach.

We are then introduced to an analogy drawn from Steve Chalke where the message of Jesus is likened to a box containing a jigsaw puzzle, but where the wrong lid has been put on which tends to mislead in various ways: do we insist on the picture on the lid despite the evidence and even perhaps alter the pieces to fit the picture better, or give up on the whole thing because we can't get a match, or decide that the lid has been switched?

What if, we are invited to consider, Jesus was offering a different counter-narrative: a transformative reframing which relativises the claims of empire?

Chapter 12 is entitled 'No Junk DNA', and begins with an encounters with a genetic expert who ends up giving an expert opinion that,despite, a common misconception, there probably is no junk DNA, just DNA that we do not understand at this point. We then read about the possibility that in the view of many Christians there is, in effect, a lot of junk revelation which does not appear to contribute to the main conventional 'gospel' message. The rest of part three is given over to the task of testing whether, in fact, this junk revelation has more purpose than conventional evangelicalism had given it. McLaren does this by looking at twelve features of Jesus' ministry. One is the way that Jesus refuses to be co-opted by the counter-narratives of either the Sadducees or the Pharisees and seems to have people in his disciple band from different counter-narrative communities, and indeed imperial collaborators. His habit of table fellowship with the 'unholy' was not in the counter-narrative of the Pharisees. And note the way he sidesteps questions whose answers could place him in a particular counter-narrative box.

Incidentally, we can see the impact of seeing the Jesus events against the imperial background when McLaren invites us to re-consider the story of the rich young ruler: someone who has probably been profiting by the imperial system in which he is working as a ruler. Jesus' call to him is to serve those whom the system has been exploiting rather than being mainly an issue of whether he loves money. And the parables about stewards gain a new poignancy when we realise that stewards, as the managers of the estates of the elite would have been in a rather 'interesting' position especially in the story of the 'unjust' steward. Further examples are given of this kind of understanding. The next chapter continues the reflection on how reading the gospels against the Imperial narrative makes sense of the 'junk revelation': consider the gospel canticles in Luke. McLaren illustrates the 'problem' by rendering the magnificat into what it 'should' have been according to the kind of evangelicalism in which he was brought up. “The Mighty One has provided forgiveness, assurance and eternal security for me -an holy is his name”, “He has helped those with correct doctrinal understanding, remembering to be merciful to those who believe in the correct theories of the atonement ...”. Ouch! But, so true.

And yet we are also reminded of the way that Jesus handled the aftermath to his Isaianic manifesto which also was a big deceleration of the kinds of expectations of the more zealot sort. Chapter 14 opens by inviting us to consider the meaning in the wider context of Peter's confession of Christ at Caesarea Philippi and then onto Jesus before Pilate. It doesn't say anything that isn't said elsewhere but it does help to grasp more firmly the conceptual shift that many would have to make in their reading of these passages.

Part four

Part four is entitled 'reintroducing Jesus'. First a caveat about using texts as if they need not be understood in context and without understanding the contemporary context. This is the familiar 'two horizons' stuff. The fundamentalist impulse is to collapse the horizons, McLaren shows why it is important not to. He then looks at the terms 'good news', 'repent', 'kingdom' in the kind of socio-political context of the first-century Roman empire to help us to see their more-than-personal salvation meanings, indeed subversive meanings.

I found helpful the quoting of Arnold Toynbee's writing that in order to keep the biosphere habitable we need to choose the way of St Francis over the way of his father who was passionately committed to profit.

I really take to the project of chapter 16; finding contemporary metaphors that could carry the same sort of freight as Jesus' contextually-apposite use of 'kingdom of God'. Let's face it, it does tend to sound patriarchal and even fairy-storyish nowadays. McLaren offers 'divine peace insurgency' which would address the security crisis, 'God's unterror movement', '' which would address the equity crisis, 'new global love economy' to address the prosperity crisis (noting en passant that our prosperity system is also an excrement factory), and to wrap it all up McLaren proposes 'God's sacred ecosystem'. Finally McLaren mentions David Korten's identification of the real culture war as being between empire and earth community noting that the new right have gained acceptance of their story through 'selling' their narrative, not because of their numbers.

For me, this chapter is making the same sort of point as Tom Sine has been making since Mustard Seed vs McWorld: that we need a better vision a better story to live by rather than acquiescing in that sold off the peg by western society. The difference is in the metaphor explored. In Sine it is about the Good life, in McLaren it is about ecosystem.

I think that, although I support McLaren's project here, I remain unconvinced by his replacement metaphors. I even like them but I suspect that they are too schmaltzy to ignite the imagination of a hyper-sold-to society. 'Divine peach insurgency' says all the right things, but sounds like a dance music ensemble as does 'global love economy'. I love 'unterror' movement (just the way I like to use language), but worry that it comes over a bit too reactively with regard to terrorism. So I'm still looking for something to oust 'Divine economy' though I think that McLaren's aim to address the various crises is important. I worry that 'sacred ecosystem' will sound too restrictive to a plain environmental agenda, and it probably plays badly into the hands of those who would like to write-off the kind of viewpoint McLaren is hoping to promote. It sounds too 'knit your own yoghurt' and newagery to appeal. I sometimes use 'the dream of God' but recognise that this can sound too unworldly, wish-fulfilment-y.

chapter 17 explores the notion of ecosystem as a metaphor for God's kingdom, and does so by reflecting on Jesus' use of the natural world in parables. This is one of the better examples I have seen of making a solid connection between these teachings and the ecological concerns that we need to address as gospel people. The point is to re-see the connection between us and our own ecosystems.
This chapter also has a definition of repentance which I found really helpful.
“The word repent means, in this context, a profound defection from one framing story and a profound investment of trust in another.” [p.139]

Chapter 18 is mainly concerned with deconstructing the “second-coming Jesus” which I suspect I would have labelled the “premillennialist Jesus”. which seems to propose a version of redemptive violence at the end which could be taken (and is) to legitimate state promoted terror (such as detention of suspects without charge, the threat to use weapons of mass destruction, torture, summary execution -and I've restricted myself to the USA). McLaren offers another memorable soundbite to characterise this Jesus: 'jihadist Jesus'. McLaren's ultimate concern in this chapter seems to be, rightly, that we don't confuse means and ends but recognise that unless we recognise that peace and love are the way to peace and love, we have no fundamentally different message to that of the world system which is askew from God's purposes.

Part five
Here we begin to unpack more thoroughly some of the themes that were outlined earlier, starting with the 'divine peace insurgency'. The trouble is that religious narratives are being used in the contemporary world to justify violence against enemies. In fact, the Hebrew bible has quite a bit of nastiness in it involving religiously sanctioned violence and even the Jesus of the gospels seems to have a less fluffy side involving a glorious return to put all his enemies under his feet. So McLaren's task in chapter 19 is to highlight the way that the gospels' deeper subtext is actually subversive of the violence-justifying ideologies, including those that might look to the Hebrew bible to do so. In particular a helpful reflection on the encounter with the 'Canaanite' woman and the following feeding of the four thousand where the seven baskets full of crumbs can only plausibly correspond to the seven gentile nations that were supposed to be driven out of the promised land. Once again, it is an appeal to the culturally contextualised understanding of Jesus that shows the deeper and fuller meaning and offers little comfort for those who would justify sacred violence.

In the twentieth chapter we are taken through a sobering reminder of the economics of weapons and war and see how the USA has, in effect, become Empire. with an ultimately illusory pursuit of absolute security and in chapter twenty-one we're reminded how in the pursuit of that security, paradoxically , makes it more and more unachievable. It becomes difficult to understand why 'we' continue in the war business unless we factor in the economic angle based on economies of scale: it's cheaper to produce lots of weapons and sell the surplus. And then there is the mythic status of war which produces a whole lot of emotional highs to which we, as societies, become addicted. So, in the next chapter we are introduced to warriors anonymous which talks about replacing our craving for violence with the challenge to struggle for justice and the relief of want and aid in times of disaster. During the course of this section, McLaren calls for a rapprochement between pacifists and just war defenders around exploring what would truly make for peace. I amen this call but wonder whether part of the problem is really that just war thinking has been so thoroughly co-opted that it cannot now be part of the solution. As McLaren points out in an earlier chapter, in the words of Einstein: no problem can be solved by the consciousness that created it.

Part six

In this section of the book we turn to examine in more depth the implications of resistance to the prosperity system and begins with a closer examination of the 'theocapitalist' system which phrase has been borrowed from Tom Beaudoin. McLaren explains why the term may be apposite by highlighting the way it gives identity, communitiy, ecstasy and transcendence: it has a spiritual/religious function binding all of life to itself. He then goes on to use the idea of the four spiritual laws as a way of outlining theocapitalism. I'm not entirely convinced by the typology in that the first one “the law of progress through rapid growth” seems to me to be over-wedded to a modernist myth (progress) which seems to me not to be expressed in post-modern forms of the system. I think it may have been sufficient to have simply identified the fetishizing of growth. Serenity through possession and consumption. Again I'm not sure that I'd make much of a distinction between the two but the expose of wealth only really counting if it is privatised. The third law is of competition noting the ironic rejection of the theory of evolution by people who are most committed to economic Darwinism. I'm not sure that unaccountable corporations are really a part of the belief system; to me they simply use neocon ideology to hide the way that they are actually anticompetitive and deeply exploitative. That said, the analysis of corporate behaviour is fair enough. I'm simply not convinced that corporations occupy a gatekeeper function to the ideology. They seem to me to be more of a parasitic outgrowth of the theocapitalist ideologies. McLaren leaves us with an interesting, if disturbing, analogy for the way that corporations behave: psychopaths.

Chapter 24 outlines our civilisation's 'suicidal unsustainability' driven by the commitment ot growth which leads us into considering the way that Jesus' message addresses the four spiritual laws by offering contrary principles: instead of growth Jesus calls us to good deeds for the common good and uses the parable of the rich fool to help us to see what is at stake. It is interesting to note with McLaren how Jesus' priority at this point is almost completely avoided by much contemporary Christian obsession with theories of atonement, for example.

Counter to consumption Jesus recommends gratitude and sharing and McLaren reflects on the story of the fall quite helpfully along with research on happiness which show that greater wealth, beyond a certain point fails to make people happier. Gratitude is, of course, subversive because it tends to encourage contentment with what one has rather than striving for more. In chapter 26 we are reminded of the way that Galilee was an area that suffered more than most from the downsides of Empire and so Jesus' blessing on those seeking justice is significant not least because it adds weight to the idea that Jesus's interest is in promoting the seeking of justice which tends to pull against the natural gravity of competition and of monopolisation of power. Against that we have bottom-up empowerment which builds community.

Part seven
Here we begin to look at the equity system and we begin to consider this by asking not so much how we can improve the lot of the poor, but why it is the poor are poor. I couldn't help thinking of Oscar Romero musing on the way he would be applauded for giving to the poor but vilified for asking why they were poor. In many ways, McLaren's thinking here echoes the kind of concerns that have been promoted by agencies such as Christian aid about trade justice: the equity system was developed in conditions that don't now pertain and which have become biased towards the already-haves. In the course of this chapter, we are reminded of some shocking figures about global inequality, not least if which is that the ratio-gaps are getting greater, not smaller and makes the point that seamstresses working 18-hour days for peanuts in appalling conditions are almost certainly working far harder than fat-cat executives: this is clearly not about just rewards for hard work. that said, in chapter 28 McLaren points out that it is too easy to say that the wealth of the rich causes the poverty of the poor. He offers a model which says that systematic injustice gives the double outcome of over-rewarding the haves and under-rewarding the have-nots (my phrasing). In reflecting on the story of the unjust steward and the parable of the labourers hired at different times of day, McLaren points out that God's concerns go beyond mere fairness to sustainable community and includes grace. He notes that the so-called 'unjust steward' was actually restoring things to those who had found their goods and labour exploited under an unjust system. In this chapter, I was particularly interested in the recovering of theologies that recognise social or collective sin.

In chapter 29 we are encouraged to ask productive questions: what benefits will come to the rich if the poor are better off? What dangers and negative consequences will follow for the rich if the poor are not better off?
Chapter 30 begins to envision religion that is not so much organised as organising for the common goods. Much of this is not really new (at least not to me), but I'm really pleased to see it all brought together in an easy-to-read way to bring the concerns and ideas to a wider audience.

Part eight
In this part we consider the role of hope and some encouraging stories about living differently. It is a call to disbelieve the dominant stories that the book exposes and to trust that outlined in this book as being the truer or fuller understanding of Jesus's message. It is a call to action at different levels and a reminder that though things may seem difficult, even impossible, but Jesus is all about the mustard seed faith.

I suspect that this book won't convert hardline believers in the theocapitalist system, and it will have a hard time with those who are in churches where the conventional piety is preached. However, it will help those who are beginning to explore these kinds of issues to be able to think about them from a Christian point of view.

Books etc to investigate further.

Boff, Leonardo. Cry of the earth, cry of the poor
Daly, Herman. Beyond Growth, the Economics of Sustainable Development.
ptsem.edu/iym/lectures/2001/Beaudoin-after.pdf
highbeam.com/doc/1G1-93610958.html
Rauschebusch, Walter. A theology for the Social Gospel

Labels: apologetics, Christian, culture, theology