{"id":10499,"date":"2015-09-18T00:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-09-18T00:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/news\/?p=10499"},"modified":"2018-11-07T19:41:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T19:41:10","slug":"brian-mclaren-calls-for-return-to-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/2015\/brian-mclaren-calls-for-return-to-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian McLaren Calls NOAC to Get Back to the Bible, in a Different Way"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Cheryl Brumbaugh-Cayford<\/small>
Brian McLaren speaks at NOAC 2015<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI can tell you love each other,\u201d Brian McLaren said to the NOAC congregation as he began his morning keynote address. McLaren is a popular author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. His two most recent books are \u201cWhy Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World\u201d and \u201cWe Make the Road By Walking.\u201d<\/p>\n

For most American Christians, getting back to the Bible means a \u201cbackwards\u201d view of the text, McLaren told the NOAC audience. Usually we transmit and interpret the Bible via all the theologians and scholars and church leaders who have left their marks on the history of the faith, as well as the popular writers who dominate Christian bookstores today. The problem, he said, is that means most of us try to squeeze scripture into a matrix that is human-devised rather than biblical.<\/p>\n

Instead, McLaren suggested that the best way to go forward in faith as a Christian is to work at getting back to the Bible\u2019s original understanding, not the one we have developed over the centuries since.<\/p>\n

That does not mean McLaren ignores the rich history of landmark theologians. During the course of his talke he quoted Martin Luther, as well as Father Vincent and Vaclav Havel and many others who have provided biblical interpretations. But he centered his attention on the core narrative of the Bible found in Exodus, Genesis, and Isaiah, which is about God\u2019s history, not ours.<\/p>\n

McLaren repeatedly displayed a graph that he had developed earlier in his ministry, when he tried to squeeze every Bible narrative, as well as other historical narratives, into the same flow chart. In this chart, the path from Eden to Heaven is sideswiped by the Fall, where a choice is made to accept the offer of salvation leading back to heaven, or the choice of denial that leads to Hell. This is the narrative flow of the typical American Christian understanding, he said.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the core biblical storyline is in three parts: the central narrative of Exodus, a story of liberation and formation; the \u201cprequel\u201d in Genesis, which is about Creation and reconciliation; and the \u201csequel\u201d in Isaiah, about how to seek a peaceable kingdom of justice and mercy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not an elevator theology,\u201d McLaren said. \u201cThis is an incarnational theology,\u201d based on the interaction between real people and God, and people with each other.<\/p>\n

Christians, he said, \u201cshould learn and tell a better story of justice, peace, and joy,\u201d and not parrot flawed and outdated storylines. God\u2019s people are called to tell an alternate story that can be shared in common with all people. \u201cLink your story with God\u2019s story.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI can tell you love each other,\u201d Brian McLaren said to the NOAC congregation as he began his morning keynote address. McLaren is a popular author, speaker, activist, and public theologian. His two most recent books are \u201cWhy Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World\u201d and \u201cWe Make the Road By Walking.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[806,1259,1256],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-10499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-congregational-life-ministries","tag-noac","tag-older-adults"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10499"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12818,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10499\/revisions\/12818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10499"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=10499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}