Having been to seminary (twice), I understand the importance of knowing what one believes before undertaking a study of any subject or issue. This all-but guarantees that whatever material is selected for the purpose of research will either support or fail to refute one’s predetermined conclusion. It is one of the many valuable things one learns in seminary and why I recommend a rigorous course of seminary studies to everyone.

Wisely, I have learned to generalize my highly-honed approach to learning beyond the Bible to subjects not specifically or exclusively theological. It is for this reason that, before I actually read and studied Brian McLaren (hereafter, BM), I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like him, that his teachings were dangerous and false, and that I should warn others about him. With my position firmly established and made public, I began to study BM for myself.

Before going any further, however, I must confess two things: first, that I had had some exposure to BM prior to reading and studying him in earnest, albeit accidentally. The initial exposure was strictly visual: the ubiquitous photo of him that seems to be lurking everywhere these days. Whether I was physically perusing books at Barnes & Noble or digitally browsing on Amazon, I could not seem to escape BM’s I-know- something-you-don’t-know grin: it was everywhere, peering out at me like a baptized version of Baba Ram Dass.

Dass, for those of you too young to know or too burnt out to remember, was a Stanford-educated Harvard professor of psychology - what else? - back in the Sixties, known as the professor-formerly-known-as Richard Alpert; he was a colleague of Timothy Leary, another great mind and psych prof from Harvard who augmented his mental acuity with massive hits of acid. When the soon-to-be Dass met Maharaj ji, the soon-to-be founder of the Divine Light Mission, Alpert did what every American prof would do when meeting someone with reportedly exceptional insight and intelligence: he gave him a bountiful supply of LSD. The legend maintains that the youthful guru dropped all the acid in a single trip and was unaffected by it, leading many of us to wonder (a) who ripped off Dass with the fake acid, (b) if the Maharaj ji wasn’t already trippin’, and/or (c) what kind of selfish guru doesn’t share his stash?

My knee-jerk reaction to Baba Ram Dass was to immediately dislike him just on general principles, of which I had basically none at the time (not being a Christian and therefore totally devoid of any morality whatsoever, I was later to learn). I had and continue to have a visceral response to those individuals who claim to have achieved a “higher state” of anything, whether it is enlightenment, spirituality, or tuna fishing. The babblings of Dass, along with Leary, confirmed my belief that anyone with a degree in psychology was one troubled individual, a position I continue to hold fervently to this day.

Based on solid evidence - the picture of BM above - I came to the same conclusion about him that I had about BRD almost 40 years ago: I didn’t like him, trust him, or believe him. It was all quite scientific.

The second exposure to BM (but still part of the first confession) was my reading a couple of books, More Ready Than You Realize and The Church on the Other Side, back before I had any idea who BM was. I underlined and highlighted a normal amount in each book and then promptly forgot anything I had read: the books struck me like bolts from a 9-volt battery.

The second confession I must make about BM is, well, embarrassing. It is this: he’s got the kind of face that makes me want to slap him. From what I have read and been told, BM is a very warm, loving, likeable fellow with no small amount of humility - which, naturally, makes my desire even greater. But there’s just something about the Chesire-cat grin that makes me go all jihadist inside. I’m not saying my impulse is a good thing or rational, only that I have it (but see the preceeding comment about people with psych degrees).

Now that I feel purged and appropriatedly catharted, I can proceed to the substance of this already-longish post, i.e., BM. I have intentionally begun to study him through his writings - I would say that I am deconstructing his works, but after reading him I’m not sure what that term means anymore. I have read, in addition to the two aforementioned books, his recent The Secret Message of Jesus and I am well into A Generous Orthodoxy, which started like an pleasant conversation with Dr Jekyl but now is devolving into a tedious debate with Mr Hyde. I’m not saying whose experience I’m describing.

At present, I’ve interrupted my reading of A Generous Orthodoxy in order to return to one of BM’s earlier works, More Ready . . .. (I refuse to read any of the fictional Neo triology [a] because too many other people have already frothed about it, and [b] there’s only one Triology, after all, even though it really isn’t. Perhaps in a few years I’ll find Neo’s wisdom-in-print at Half-Price Books or on Ebay.) Going back has proven to be a good decision: I’ve come across some things that perhaps explain why I don’t give BM’s solutions a lot of credence - although I think his ability to state the obvious to the oblivious is invaluable at times. You know, The Emperor’s New Clothes and such.

Having hopefully whetted (or, as we say in Indiana, “wetted”) your appetite, I’ll try to follow this post up with some profound and irrefutable insights into why I’m right about Brian McLaren in some ways1 and you’re not.

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1 As I wrote in my review of Secret Message,

    “Though being an ‘old wineskin,’ McLaren does not burst but he cannot help but distort the flavor of the fresh, new wine he seeks to serve to others. It does not seem possible for him to achieve a rapprochement between what fundamentalism had right and what he now rightly proclaims.”


2 Cor 1.13