Over the past several decades, with the aid of media technologies, some Christian pastors have attained a celebrity status. We see this not only with the televangelists of the 1970s and 1980s, but even more recently we see that some Christian pastors have gained followers and advocates, especially through the publication of books and through their use of the Internet. The celebrity pastors and their advocates form quarreling factions of self-declared believers in Jesus the Christ.
To see this, just tap into the blogosphere and watch the quarrels unfold in real time. You can easily see one Christian who identifies with John MacArthur and Ken Silva bad mouth Brian McLaren and Tony Jones and anyone who identifies with these Christian men. You can see these quarrels break the surface when, for instance, Mark Driscoll calls Rob Bell a “heretic” and for weeks afterward their respective followers taunt and bad mouth each other. You can also see these quarrels bubble up around events like Doug Pagitt’s interview with Todd Friel on the Way of the Master radio show, which generated weeks of commentary and name calling.
This quarrelsome situation reminds me of Paul’s characterization of the early church in the Mediterranean seaport of Corinth. To quote 1 Corinthians, “What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ or ‘I belong to Christ’” (1:12). Although in our present situation there is a key difference, all the quarreling factions of believers act and speak in the name of Jesus Christ. No one says they belong to MacArthur. Rather, they just think that MacArthur is telling the truer story and making the truer gestures toward Jesus Christ, while they’re pretty sure that McLaren and Pagitt and crew are telling false stories and making terribly wrong gestures toward Jesus Christ (like burning incense or doing Yoga).
What do you do in this situation? Paul called for people to return to Christ. He asked: “Has Christ been divided?” (1:13). Of course the answer for Paul was no, Christ had not been divided, so stop quarreling and boast together in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, he suggested.
But in our present context, Jesus is already being boasted about by all the factions. Jesus Christ is being divided and claimed and managed in the name of Jesus Christ.
This dividing can be seen especially in the more conservative factions of believers that surround MacArthur and crew. Here is MacArthur’s response to an interview in Crosswalk.com. It‘s clear that MacArthur is refusing the very possibility that Paggit and McLaren could be Christians
John MacArthur: Let me just cut to the chase on this one: [Doug] Pagitt is a Universalist. What he was saying is real simple. He was saying when you die your spirit goes to God and judgment means that whatever was not right about you, whatever was bad about you, whatever was substantially lacking about you, gets all resolved. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Buddhist, a Hindu or a Muslim—doesn’t matter whether you’re a Christian really; we’re all going to end up in this wonderful, warm and fuzzy relationship with God. That’s just classic universalism.
I think you know it’s most helpful, Paul, to go back and kind of recast how we view these people. He’s not a pastor; he’s not a Christian; that’s not a church. When you call yourself a Christian and you call yourself a pastor and you say you have a church, all of that has to be—to be legitimate—defined biblically. And if it’s not, that’s not a church and you’re not a pastor and you’re not even a Christian.
What you have here is a form of false religion … A form of paganism that basically wants to be thought of as Christian because it gains a certain ground. But the underlying bottom line of this whole emerging movement is they don’t believe in any doctrine, they don’t believe in any theology. They don’t want to be forced to interpret anything in scripture a certain way and the out is, “Well the Bible isn’t clear anyway.” In other words, we don’t know what it means; we can’t know what it means.
Brian McLaren says nobody has ever gotten it right—we haven’t got it right now—so let’s not make an issue out of anything. Let’s just be open to everything. Let’s not take a position on theology, or for that matter, on morality or behavior because, hey, there’s no judgment anyway so we’re all going to end up in God in some ethereal, eternal relationship. And that’s just non-Christian. It is blatantly, flagrantly non-Christian. It’s as non-Christian as any false religion.
How does one go about reconciling a rift like that? I’m just not sure that Paul’s response will work when one faction calls into question the Christianess of the other faction. It seems to me that in order to heal this rift there has to be a presumption by both factions that both factions are working in good faith in Jesus Christ. Without that trusting faith in the other faction, the rift will persist—I fear. Without that trusting faith in the other factions, believers risk dividing Jesus Christ in the name of Jesus Christ.
There was a rift from the beginning
As soon as Jesus gained any followers there was a rift. The reality of a person’s or a community’s faith is defined by the action that it invokes. Note Jesus’ discussion of Sheep and Goats in Matthew 25:31-46.
However, language can be manipulated so that some people can pretend to agree with the faith of another group when in fact there is no agreement. Some in the ‘emergent’ community have done this to try to retain ‘continuity of community’. It is understandable that evangelicals get a little annoyed when they discover that they have been the target of such a ploy.
Can we just be honest and straight forward. Whatever continuity of community we may imagine that we have with various streams of historical or contemporary Christianity doesn’t change what our actions are, or what we are working towards, the realities of our faith.
There are many ‘Christians’ who actively work towards increasing fear and anger towards anyone different. They may believe in the same metaphysics as I do (or not) but their actions and desired ends mean that they belong to a totally different religion than I do. Why pretend otherwise? I would like to try to respect them as much as possible, though I expect no respect in return, but I do not desire a reconciliation of my faith with theirs. I want them to change religions to something that works towards good rather than towards evil.
We are divided from people who act like this. Why should we desire to be identified with people of such a different faith? Sounds to me like we are acting like adolescents embarrassed by our ‘parents’ but shocked and hurt when our parents are embarrasesed by us. We need to leave home. If they don’t want to talk to us anymore or invite us to share Christmas with them, then it is sad, but it is their choice. I feel sorry for John MacArthur, if he doesn’t want any constructive interaction with emergents, because I’m afraid that spreading meaningless enmity is not in keeping with the actions of the sheep in Matthew 25.