In a Religion News Service interview, Brian McLaren reflects on 25 years of emergence Christianity:
RNS: In 2010, Anthony Bradley wrote something of an obituary for the movement in WORLD Magazine. Was he right? Has the conversation’s pulse flat-lined?
BM: I vaguely remember the article, so I can’t respond directly. But I think there’s a sense that evangelical gatekeepers have vilified “Emergent” so that people within evangelicalism no longer use the term. I was never all that infatuated with the term myself, but this doesn’t tell the whole story. Anyone who thinks the status quo has triumphed over the need for change is probably a victim of wishful thinking.
RNS: What about those who claim the movement could not be sustained because it lacked a strong theological center or strayed into theological liberalism?
BM: The only people who would say that are those who would be happy with theological conservatism. Many of us have found theological conservatism a bit inhospitable and theological liberalism a bit passé. We’ve borrowed from both theological conservatism and liberalism. But it is important to note that these categories themselves have been defined in modernist terms. As we move beyond the categories, “liberal” and “conservative” are two ways of being irrelevant.
For the full interview, please visit the Religion New Service here.