There are some days that I wish I could be paid to blog. (I hear that laughter.) But I get paid to produce television and media content for clients. And my blogging and focus on ANKoChristianity has caused me to get rather behind on work that needs to be finished. I hope to respond to Brian McLaren's response to me in the next 72 hours - but that will depend on how much paying work I get done in that timeframe.
So.
Let me point you to a few other reviews of Brian McLaren's A New Kind of Christianity.
Trevin Wax is simply one of the best bloggers in Christian blogdom. Gracious, scholarly and a very good writer. Though I would not share all of the finer points of Trevin's theology, I look forward to his posts showing up in Google Reader. Trevin has dome some of the very best interviews with N.T.Wright. Please read Trevin's take on Brian's book, Why Brian McLaren's New Book is Good for the Emerging Church.
I took Kevin DeYoung and his co-writer, Ted Kluck to task for their book, Why We Love the Church. Brian's book, which I would actually agree with less than DeYoung & Kluck's book, has been treated with kid gloves in comparison (by me). That being said, DeYoung has written a firm, even handed and indepth critique of McLaren's book that is a must read, Part 1 and Part 2. His paraphrase of the late Stan Grenz and Roger Olson on classic liberalism is one of the most effective moments in the review - at least for me.
Nathan Gilmour of The Christian Humanist (?) pens an interesting review as one of the Ooze Viral Bloggers. (I hope you can get a prescription for that / GRIN.) He outlines where he sees Brian getting it right, wrong & sneaky while giving the book "a nod" at the end. Nathan takes McLaren to task particularly for pitching himself as an available consultant at the end of the book. (I confess I skimmed over that in my reading.) Nathan writes,
I realize that not everybody is as suspicious of out-of-town “experts” as I am, and I’d be fine if McLaren were consistently sanguine. But as it stands, it looks like he decided to use this book, which pitches itself as a moment of honesty, as a platform to promote himself and his Emergent Village buddies while calling dedicated ordained folks prison guards, and that’s an inexcusable bit of duplicity.
Nathan may call it "inexcusable" but he still goes on to recommend we purchase the book,
...a book’s excellence lies not in its being right but in its being interesting. Given that criterion, I’d still recommend this book for folks interested in reading some philosophical-progressive alternatives to modern evangelicalism. There are some moments of sloppy thinking and others of outright self-serving dishonesty, but on balance, I can accept those sorts of things in a book that spurs me to think for a while, and I think that this book did.
Ron Cole is about 1/2 way through reading ANKoChristianity and has a generally favourable response to the book, along with a deep love for Brian himself. (That is a good thing, btw.)
Jeremy Bouma, in the process of placing Pagitt beside Pelagius and eliciting something stronger than a "hmmmm" promises to peruse ANKoChristianity and publicly place his thoughts before us. (Some people say I'm alliterate.)
And finally, as perhaps many folk who read me would not read Challies (the #1 Christian Blogger in the Universe - as far as statisticians are able to ascertain - and a near-Toronto lad to boot), Tim writes a very well written, hard and angry response to Brian's ANKoChristianity. (102 comments at this point in time)
[Humour Alert] And finally, finally (or the last word and the word after that) I have been told that there is no truth to this rumour from the future that when ANKoChristianity finally takes over;
Albert Mohler, former President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (now renamed the ANKoChristianity Southern Seminary) will still be permitted to teach. But only in German. On Thursdays. Wearing a cardigan. In a shuttered Episcopal Church. In Poughkeepsie, NY.
