McKnight, McLaren, and McAuthenticity

A friend sent me this morning a copy of New Testament scholar Scot McKnight's take on my Touchstone article on Johnny Cash. Turns out, McKnight sees a parable here. He notes that Cash was mistreated by another generation of Southern Baptists because of his "Man in Black" persona and ties that to the fact that "emerging church" guru Brian McLaren was disinvited from speaking at a Kentucky Baptist Convention evangelism conference. Moreover, McKnight comments:

I have no real truck with the SBC in general, nor with Moore in general, but I find it mighty convenient to stand in line with Johnny now when the tough days of standing with him are over. Stand with the men and women in black, I say, and you’ll find yourself sometimes standing next to Jesus.

First of all, if the Southern Baptist Convention (or the larger evangelical community) vilified Johnny Cash, it is certainly difficult to see from here. Cash, a baptized Southern Baptist, was a frequent speaker at Billy Graham Crusades and other evangelistic events and wrote a book on the life of the apostle Paul (Man in White) with an evangelical publisher.

Second of all, yes, it is much easier for me to commend Johnny Cash now than it would have been during his tumultuous days in the late 1960s and early 1970s, since I was born in 1971.

Finally, the tie between Brian McLaren and Johnny Cash just doesn't work. When Cash spoke of his conversion (what we call "giving his testimony"), he did so in orthodox evangelical terms of repentance, sin, and faith in Christ. McLaren is not speaking as a penitent to other penitents. He is speaking as a pastor and theologian. As such, he denies some things that conservative evangelicals (including Kentucky Baptists) consider to be essential for evangelism (such as the necessity of conscious faith in Christ for salvation and the reality of hell). The issue is not why the Kentucky Baptists disinvited McLaren, whom most of us consider a false teacher. The question is why he was invited at all. This is quite different from Cash's stumbling moves toward repentance. In fact, it is the difference between the early Augustine and Arius. The difference between Cash's sin-and-repentance authenticity and the manufactured faddish candles-and-incense "authenticity" of the "emerging church" movement is one of kind, not just degree.

As the Dixie Chicks once sang of the contemporary Nashville music scene, "They've got money but they don't got Cash." One might also say of the repackaged liberalism of the "emerging church," everyone who wears dark turtlenecks is not a Man in Black. After all, there's not really a line to walk if there's no ring of fire.

Comments

[angel]

Man! you're just a year older than me... Freaky!

[JS Bangs]

I am not a McLaren fan, but in his defense I should say that AFAIK he has not actually denied the doctrine of hell, but merely used it as a theme of discussion in one of his books. In this book many different understandings of Hell are put forth, but that's nothing new in Christendom.

St. Isaac the Syrian, who I would hesitate the accuse of liberalism, said, "... those who find themselves in Hell will be chastised by the scourge of love. How cruel and bitter this torment of love will be! For those who understand that they have sinned against love, undergo no greater suffering than those produced by the most fearful tortures. The sorrow which takes hold of the heart, which has sinned against love, is more piercing than any other pain. It is not right to say that the sinners in Hell are deprived of the love of God ... But love acts in two ways, as suffering of the reproved, and as joy in the blessed!" (Found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell#Eastern_Orthodoxy).

This is perhaps insufficiently "literal" for some people, but at the least it illustrates that there's room for informed disagreement about the topic among serious, orthodox Christians.

[Patrick]

JS's point is well made. Indeed, I find it a little overreaching to even take McClaren's comments in regard to the expression of our present Christianity to then dismiss the entirety of the emerging church, which almost by definition, is much more diffuse than a single spokesman can represent.

Both Cash and McClaren are indeed speaking as those who found significant spiritual dissatisfaction in their contexts. That McClaren's context was a pastor and theologian does not make it less important or less worthy. Like JS, I am not a fan of McClaren's but I do appreciate his willingness to poke at the borders of our present ecclesial realities.

The example of Augustine versus Arius isn't necessarily the most apt. Rather, the Emerging Church is a renewal movement within, at this point, the Evangelical Church seeking depth where before their has only been an emphasis on depth.

So, small communities develop. Leaders who reflect the values of these communities arise. These communities are pursuing Christ, yet not within the confines of the established denominations. Their pursuit of "authenticity" may in some ways be off track, but in many ways such people are finding depths just about forgotten.

I personally would be wary about so quickly writing off this movement because of theological differences. For it seems to me this is not a matter of Augustine versus Arius, but rather a matter of Augustine versus Cassian.

Which makes the wonderful quote from Isaac the Syrian even more fitting. The Emerging Church has the flavor of an evangelical monastic movement, and as such worth watching with hope rather than dismissal.