Thanks for your thoughts, John. I agree - it does seem like a more gracious project for God to call his covenant community to save the world, rather than to isolate itself from the world. That’s what McLaren thinks too. Is it God or the devil who’s in the details? The Holy Roman Empire seemed bent on saving the world by subjecting it forcefully to God’s rule. The contemporary Western Empire takes a more cooperative approach, using pro-Western democracy and global capitalism as the one-two punch for bringing the world together, backed up where necessary by multilateral military alliances. The egalitarian structures of democratic governance and the free market emerged as unintended byproducts of the Protestant Reformation, so in a practical sense Western-led globalization really is the successor to the medieval alliance between church and state. In Europe the religious influence on mainstream culture has largely given way, so I suppose the issues of the survival of the Church as a distinct witness has become paramount. In the USA, where people in large numbers still go to church regularly and where the prospect of electing an agnostic President is unthinkable, the Christian substrate of the Protestant Empire remains largely intact. It remains to be seen whether guys like Brian McLaren and Jim Wallis, church leaders working inside what remains the wealthiest, the most powerful, and arguably the most Christian nation on earth, can help move the Protestant Empire in a more Christ-like direction.

I like the idea of becoming authentically human, though I’m less persuaded by the idea that we have become a diminished species. I’d say there’s pretty strong evidence that, whether God had a hand in the creation of humanity or not, our real forefathers were apes. We’ve come a pretty long way as a species, to the point where you can think something and describe your thoughts in a string of written words, and I in turn can read your words, understand what you mean, and respond appropriately (more or less). To lament our limitations, to regard humanity in general as a failed experiment, is like a father looking over his child’s school report card, seeing top marks in every subject but one, then chastising the child for the one sub-par performance. I admit that I’m sort of a misanthrope, and there are times when I would like to see the earth cleared of all the undesirables (i.e., the people who aren’t like me). But on my good days I think the ongoing human experiment has been pretty successful. At the same time we have to acknowledge that our successes have rendered the consequences of our failures far more lethal.