Brian McLaren spoke with Guy Raz of NPR’s All Things Considered last night about his new book, Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?.
An couple of excerpts from the story:
McLaren chose the title deliberately, evoking the beginning of a familiar joke in the hope that Christians would be more understanding of the religions that surround them. “One thing I think is quite certain,” McLaren tells … Raz. “If Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed were to bump into each other along the road and go have a cup of tea or whatever, I think we all know they would treat one another far different and far better than a lot of their followers would.”
and
On his “a-ha!” moment while writing his new book
“It’s typical for people to say that what causes tension between religions is our differences, but I’ve become more and more convinced that the real issue is something that we all have in common and that is that we build a strong identity among us by emphasizing hostility toward them. We love to recount the stories of how they persecuted us, we love to talk about the threat they pose to us. And in all of these ways we build this oppositional identity.”