Book Share: The New Christians by Tony Jones.

Continuing on in my effort to share with you small portions of what I’m reading as a way of encouraging you to explore some of these authors, I give you a few excerpts from Tony Jones’ new book, The New Christians. If you haven’t read my glowing review of The New Christians here, then you need to do that and then go buy or steal this book.

“As is well known, the permissible range of issues that can be on the theological or ethical agenda at some conservative evangelical churches has been narrowed to two: abortion and gay marriage. In their salvos against other issues – such as global warming – evangelicals like James Dobson, Chuck Colson, and the late Jerry Falwell have said as much. A specific example of this kind of thinking comes from Ronnie Floyd. In the days following the April 2007 Virginia Tech shooting massacre, Floyd posted extensively about the tragedy on his blog, “Between Sundays.” He warned the American church to “get serious” and to “WAKE UP!!!” Thirty-three persons had died, he wrote, and they each went to heaven or hell. He then urged his readers to get busy with evangelism because “death is real,” and the job of Christians is to “bring others to Christ” so that they won’t go to hell when they die.

In Floyd’s blog posts about the Virginia Tech shootings, there was nary a word about Seung-Hui Cho’s ready access to guns and ammunition. No comment about the epidemic of clinical depression in our country. Not a mention of the prevalence of hurting people in our culture, often adolescents who are shrouded in anonymity, lost on college campuses with tens of thousands of other students. In other words, Floyd said nothing about the systemic issues that become acute to many of us during times of tragedy. Floyd’s question is not how this young man’s mind became so twisted in his own mental illness, how he fell through the cracks of our societal net, or how he was able to purchase two handguns and hundreds of bullets with no more than a driver’s license. The question was about whether he and his victims had invited Jesus into their hearts before they died.”

What are your thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Why is that we reduce everything down to what I perceive to be the lowest common denominator of “heaven when you die”? Why is that we are more concerned with the results or the effects and never the causes?

New Podcast With Brian McLaren.

We have a new podcast up with Brian McLaren. My audio is sketchy both for the intro and the conversation. Sorry.

Nick Is A Big Timer.

Nick is a big timer and if you’re on the East side and haven’t had a chance to sign-up for Deep Shift – Charlotte, now would be the time as it’s only a few weeks away.

And it’s official . . . I’ll be at A Sustainable Faith. Which is a big deal for me since I’m anti-social and am going by myself. My mom would be so proud of me. Although I won’t be hosting a conversation. Partly because I don’t have much to say and partly because these look so good . . . I’m deciding between this one, this one, or this one. Decisions, decisions. Intrigued . . . sign up now and be my friend.

Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola.

Well when you give us feedback we listen . . . our podcast with Frank Viola, author of Pagan Christianity, is now live. You can subscribe to the podcast over on The Nick & Josh Podcast site.

I know Bob Hyatt, Joe Thorn, Daryl Dash, and Bill Kinnon have all pushed back with some concerns and criticisms for Frank’s Pagan Christianity. And Kingdom Grace has been hosting an open-ended discussion on her site. Consequently, the blogosphere has been humming with people sharing their reflection on Pagan Christianity.

Nick and I did our best to incorporate as many of the concerns and questions being raised during our conversation with Frank. And in my estimation, Frank responded to the criticisms graciously and respectfully. After listening to him share his side of things, I think some of the criticisms might be caricaturing Frank and Pagan Christianity in the same way that they are asserting that he’s caricaturing Christianity and church history.

To be fair, I haven’t yet read the book (free copy Frank?) and was only able to engage with it via Bob Hyatt’s blog and Frank’s website where he responds to the criticisms. Add to that the fact that The Nick & Josh Podcast is notorious for throwing nice fat pitches at our guests as opposed to throwing those nasty sliders, and you have a recipe for a pretty straight forward 30 minute conversation. My only complaint was that 30 minutes wasn’t near enough time for us to ask the questions we wanted to ask and for Frank to develop his thoughts and responses to those questions.

On the bright side, I’m planning on traveling down to St. Petersburg to the A Sustainable Faith un-conference where I hope to probe (non-alien) Frank some more about the criticisms and how he reconciles the practices of the church with it’s contextual, local, and specific place.

Anyway . . . I think it’s a great podcast (I’m biased) and I think Frank is a gentleman who is as bold as he is inquisitive.

Again, if you want to check out the podcast you can do so here. Nick also has a reviw up on his site.

The New Christians by Tony Jones.

Tony Jones has a new book coming out in March 2008. Tony was gracious enough to send me an advanced reader’s copy (in advance of an upcoming podcast) and I devoured it in 3 sittings. While I’m prone to hyper-active spurts of exaggeration, in this particular instance I’m afraid I’ll understate things. I think The New Christians is the most important book since A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren.

I’m really not prone to kissing someone’s butt (unless of course it’s this guy’s), but I was literally engrossed in this book from the first page until the last. I raced through it because I couldn’t put it down. I don’t know if it’s because I’m in sort of a sensitive/soft place about possibly entering back into an intentional community of people but I was actually inspired to want to go out and be a part of creating a space again for a gathered community.

The book was part personal memoir, part history, part theological framework, and part travelogue. At times it felt like I was listening to a father-type figure reflecting back on his life and looking forward to the life ahead. And at other times it felt like was truly reading a letter from a pioneer in some far away land reporting back the signs of life that he was discovering.

The strongest portion of the book are the metaphors that Tony develops to articulate this nexus and transition in culture that we are experiencing. He waxed poetic with metaphors about phone booths, chickens, and wikis.

Far from being soft, Tony talks at length in deep theological terms about the trinity, the art of hermeneutics, and politics. But despite wading into these heady theological waters, these topics get addressed and explained simply and honestly. But Tony is doing more than trying to articulate what Emergent’s “is” . Instead he is building a framework for an entirely new/old/third way of doing Christianity. I have a suspicion that in the same way Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian was so instrumental in helping people put their frustrations in to words, that The New Christians will be instrumental in helping people put their hope into action.

I don’t think this is a book that could have been written 7 years ago like A New Kind of Christian. ANKOC helped many people articulate what they were feeling. Which was a beautiful and freeing thing for many people. But it also left many of us (and maybe it’s just me) on the outside looking in, feeling at times like we were on an island, albeit joined by a few of our friends.

Tony’s book has the potential to be one of the final (or first) steps towards many of us reclaiming our role as leaders and visionaries by giving us some sort of closure for the past few years and some sort of hope for the years ahead.

Plus any book that calls Al Mohler and Paige Patterson “bishops” on page 6 is solid by my definition of pwnage. To be fair, he also pushes back on Marcus Borg and John Piper to name a few. Tony appears way more moderate than the “heretic” label that his critics want to put on him.

My only complaint is that I didn’t get a G.I. Joe action figure to accompany the cute little figure on the cover.

DISCLAIMER: I know my review may appear as quite biased. Partly because I consider Tony a friend (albeit an extended one) and I consider myself thorougly emergent (although I understand the hang-ups with labels). This is an understandable assumption. However, I didn’t write a glowing review because of my appreciation for Tony or Emergent. I wrote the glowing review because it’s a freaking good book. And if you’re a critic of Emergent (you know who you are) then I can’t think of another book that would be my greatest hope to get you to give us the benefit of the doubt more than The New Christians.