Do I Stay Christian? Pondering McLaren’s New Book

In an appendix to the book that I wrote telling the story of my life up to my 82^nd birthday, I have several “top ten” lists, including one of “theologians and/or philosophers.” Although he is neither a professional theologian nor philosopher, the youngest person on that list is Brian McLaren (b. 1956).

Currently I am slightly revising and updating that book I wrote for my children and grandchildren, and I have just added McLaren’s 2022 book, Do I Stay Christian? A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned, to my list of top ten 21^st century non-fiction books. 

No, I am personally not considering giving up being a Christian. Neither do I include myself among the doubters or disillusioned, although I am often disappointed with how so many Christians have lived and are living.

But certainly there are many thoughtful people now who have already left Christianity or are seriously thinking of doing so. With my lifelong interest in Christian apologetics, I was most interested in seeing what McLaren would say to those who have left, or would like to leave, the Christian faith.

The book has three parts: the first is “No,” ten chapters giving reasons for not staying Christian. Part II is “Yes,” ten chapters giving reasons for staying, and Part III is “How.”

There is much of considerable value in McLaren’s book, but I am not attempting to review his book here or to summarize the wealth of ideas worth thoughtful consideration. (I have made a page containing some of McLaren’s important statements, which you can access here.)

The ninth reason McLaren gives for not staying a Christian is “Because of Christianity’s Great Wall of Bias (Constricted Intellectualism.”) Although he has brief paragraphs about seven other biases, in that ninth chapter he mainly considers the “confirmation bias,” and it is worth pondering.

“Confirmation bias names our brain’s tendency to reject anything that doesn’t fit in with our current understanding, paradigm, belief system, or worldview,” writes McLaren (p. 67). This bias, he contends, has skewed the thinking of many Christians about nuclear war and ecological crises.

Perhaps this is the reason Mommsen failed to deal with ecological overshoot, which I wrote about in my July 5 blog post.

Mommsen, the able editor of Plough Quarterly, certainly is not “guilty” of the errors of the conservative evangelicals who believe the (eminent) “second coming” of Jesus will take care of the problem of ecological overshoot (although they haven’t used that term).

As far as I know, Mommsen has not written about the “rapture,” which has been emphasized in much conservative Christian eschatology. nor does he write explicitly about the second coming of Jesus. ⁺⁺

But perhaps Mommsen’s belief in rather traditional ideas about God acting in “supernatural” ways to consummate the world as we know it, maybe even in the lifetime of people now living, is the reason he overlooks overshoot—and the same is likely true for most traditional Christian believers.

On the other hand, perhaps it is Mommsen’s belief in the Kingdom of God (KoG) that blocks his acknowledgment of overshoot.

Emphasis on the KoG has been a central emphasis of the Bruderhof from the beginning, although he/they have not committed the “liberal” error of thinking that if we just work hard enough, we humans can “bring in” the Kingdom of God on earth.

Perhaps “confirmation bias” of Mommsen and others, traditional and liberal, has prevented serious consideration of the collapse of the world as we know it.

That collapse is projected by scientists based on their investigation of facts rather than theological (or ideological) beliefs that would skew their thinking because of confirmation bias.

(Of course, scientists are also sometimes biased, but generally they are far quicker than religious believers to recognize and correct those biases.)

In his next-to-last chapter, McLaren begins a prayer for overcoming the confirmation bias with these words: “Source of all truth, help me to hunger for truth, even if it upsets, modifies, or overturns what I already think is true” (p. 210).

This is my prayer also.

_____

⁺⁺ My March 25, 2015, blog post was titled “Do You Believe in the Rapture?” and it has had more than 3,000 pageviews (!) as well as far more comments than usual.

** Some of you may be interested in watching (some or all of) a YouTube interview of McLaren and his book I have introduced above: Do I Stay Christian with Brian McLaren: One Question with Pastor Adam.

 

Overlooking Overshoot

As most of you know, I am a big admirer of the Christian group known as the Bruderhof and am a regular reader of Plough Quarterly, their excellent publication. However, I have both appreciation for and some serious questions about their Summer 2022 issue titled Hope in Apocalypse. 

“Hoping for Doomsday”

Peter Mommsen, the great-grandson of Eberhard Arnold (1913~82) who was the founder of the Bruderhof, is the able editor of Plough Quarterly. I have often been helpfully informed and challenged by his perceptive editorials.

I was dissatisfied, though, with his six-page editorial in the current issue of Plough. It is titled, “Hoping for Doomsday: The times are troubled. That’s why we need the promise of apocalypse.”

While Mommsen writes some about the possible disastrous effects of climate change, he seems to think that it is less a threat to humanity than the potential destruction of earthly life as we know it because of nuclear war.

After briefly looking at those two apocalyptic threats, he writes,

one day homo sapiens will go extinct, with or without our help through carbon emissions or nuclear war, and the game will be over. At least that is what current scientific models foretell. Perhaps it will be at the next round of global glaciation, predicted in a hundred millennia or so . . . .

What he goes on to say in that paragraph is what I learned in the 1960s. But, and this was my dissatisfaction, he makes no reference to what some scientists (and others) have said in recent years about ecological overshoot.

In passing, Mommsen does mention Don’t Look Up! the movie I wrote about in my Jan. 25 blog post (see here), but he makes no reference at all to the frightening phenomenon of overshoot.

Ecological overshoot occurs when human demands exceed what the earth’s biosphere can provide through its capacity for renewal. According to some ecological scientists, the industrial world is nearing the overshoot apex and will soon begin to collapse, an irreversible phenomenon.

For a good introduction to this matter, see Michael Dowd’s video Overshoot in a Nutshell: Understanding Our Predicament and also YouTube talks (such as this one) by William Rees, professor emeritus of British Columbia University. These articulate what some scientistic models are now foretelling.

(Rees, b. 1943, is primarily known for creating the ecological footprint concept. Wikipedia, here, gives a good, brief introduction to Rees and his academic work.)

Mommsen’s failure to make any reference to the concept of ecological overshoot and the work of thinkers such as Dowd and Rees is a major deficiency in his editorial.

Why is Overshoot Overlooked?

A main reason is doubtlessly unawareness. In spite of valiant efforts by Dowd, Rees, and others to warn us of the perils of overshoot/collapse, there is little public awareness of that real and present danger.

My “Google alert” for overshoot in recent weeks has yielded surprisingly few “hits.” There are some pertinent articles found at EcoWatch (such as here), but these important essays are read by relatively few people.

Most, I’m afraid, don’t know (and don’t care?) about what is likely to happen before the end of the present century.

But some are aware (to varying degrees) of overshoot but find the idea unbearable. Some who do know at least something about overshoot just don’t want to think about it, because it is too upsetting to consider.

Perhaps a major reason overshoot is overlooked by many, especially serious Christian thinkers such as Mommsen, is that the possibility of such is unthinkable.

Earlier this year, Brian McLaren’s new book Do I Stay Christian? was published. While he does not say a lot about overshoot, he does mention the concept and makes a passing reference to Michael Dowd.

The seventh chapter of McLaren’s scintillating book deals with “Christianity’s great wall of bias, which includes the “tendency to reject anything that doesn’t fit in with our current understanding, paradigm, belief system, or worldview” (p. 67).

Perhaps this helps us understand Mommsen’s lack of serious attention to overshoot.

Much more needs to be said about this—and I plan to write at least a little more about it soon.