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A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith [Hardcover]

Brian D. McLaren (Author)
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Book Description

February 9, 2010

"Wherever the willingness to rethink has been squelched, wherever that sense of quest has been buried under convention and complacency, the Christian faith in all its forms is in trouble. But even there, something is trying to be born. Even now, right here, among us, inside you, inside me. You may feel it as a curiosity, a desire for better answers than you inherited so far. You may experience it as frustration, knowing that there must be more to faith than you currently know. You may know it as hope, hope that God is seeking humble people whose hearts and lives can be the womb of a better future. . . . In you, your family, your faith community, and circles of friends, among people of peace and faith everywhere, something is trying to be born."
—from A New Kind of Christianity

We are in the midst of a paradigm shift in the church. Not since the Reformation five centuries ago have so many Christians come together to ask whether the church is in sync with their deepest beliefs and commitments. These believers range from evangelicals to mainline Protestants to Catholics, and the person who best represents them is author and pastor Brian McLaren.

In this much anticipated book, McLaren examines ten questions facing today's church—questions about how to articulate the faith itself, the nature of its authority, who God is, whether we have to understand Jesus through only an ancient Greco-Roman lens, what exactly the good news is that the gospel proclaims, how we understand the church and all its varieties, why we are so preoccupied with sex, how we should think of the future and people from other faiths, and the most intimidating question of all: what do we do next? Here you will find a provocative and enticing introduction to the Christian faith of tomorrow.


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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

McLaren's fans and detractors have eagerly awaited this book, which promises to codify the beliefs he introduced in his bestselling A New Kind of Christian and other titles. McLaren, one of the most visible faces of the emergent movement, examines 10 questions the church must answer as it heads toward a new way of believing. McLaren deconstructs the Greco-Roman narrative of the Bible and addresses how the Bible should be understood as an inspired library, not a constitution. He moves into questions regarding God, Jesus, and the Gospel, urging us to trade up our image of God and realize that Jesus came to launch a new Genesis. The Church, sexuality, the future, and pluralism merit chapters, as does McLaren's final call for a robust spiritual life. Followers will rejoice as McLaren articulates his thoughts with logic and eloquence; detractors will point out his artful avoidance of firm answers on salvation, hell, and a final judgment. All sides will flock to this with glee. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“[When reading] Brian McLaren’s latest - A New Kind of Christianity…one gets the impression we are at a pivot point, a moment that upsets the whole terrain of theological allegiances having to do with the post evangelical emerging church developments of the last ten-fifteen years.” (Englewood Review of Books )

“McLaren is advocating a different, perhaps upgraded form of Christianity that takes a more objective view of history and employs a better interpretation of the Bible,... rendering it more applicable and accessible to a modern, educated people.” (Huffington Post )

“A New Kind of Christianity is the book that many of us have been wanting McLaren to write for years. …Sparks hopeful conversation… a beautiful and thoughtful way forward.” (Englewood Review of Books )

“McLaren clearly has been asking important questions about Christian witness for decades.... A New Kind of Christianity continues McLaren’s project of assessing and reassessing our assumptions concerning the foundations of modern Christian practice by asking ten important questions about the pillars of the Christian faith.” (The Other Journal )

“[McLaren] has been hailed widely as one of the most significant religious leaders of our time, compared by some to the leaders of the Protestant Reformation….In articulating this longing and his disquiet with the status quo, McLaren strikes a chord with many.” (The Christian Century )

“...Very thought provoking.” (Greater Than Magazine )

“Brian’s writing is brave and honest, vulnerable and courageous, disturbing and unsettling, reassuring and hopeful. Every now and then you come across a book you’ve been waiting for. A New Kind of Christianity is that book.” (Steve Chalke MBEFounder of Oasis GlobalUN Special Advisor on Human TraffickingSteve Chalke MBEFounder of Oasis GlobalUN Special Advisor on Human Trafficking—Steve Chalke, MBE, founder of Oasis Global, UN Special Advisor on Human Trafficking )

“Some books provide us with information about the world, but every once in a while a book appears that enables us to imagine new, more wonderful worlds. The book you hold in your hand is one of these.” (Peter Rollins, Ikon )

“A New Kind of Christianity is a stellar accomplishment, a combination of hard tack fact and unfettered hope, an overview in delightful narrative of the long way of our coming to this time and of the multiform ways of our arriving. In every way, a dispatch from the front.” (Phyllis Tickle, author of The Great Emergence )

“Christians must be unlocked from‘a prison’ of long-held assumptions and have the freedom to ask honest questions, Brian McLaren indicates in his newest book, A New Kind of Christianity. He’s not advocating for a new set of beliefs, he says, but rather a ‘new way of believing.’” (The Christian Post )

“A new reformation is taking place in Christianity. Brian McLaren is one of its leading voices and A New Kind of Christianity is a roadmap for this reformation. This is a very important book.” (Adam Hamilton, author of Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White and Senior Pastor, The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection. )

“...A New Kind of Christianity is incredibly well written, engaging, thoughtful and provoking….one of the most significant conversations that will shape Christianity for years to come.” (The Faithful Reader )

“...Reading a Brian McLaren book is not for the theologically faint of heart... McLaren calls the church to a deeper and broader vision of the gospel that makes room for contemporary issues of justice and reconciliation” (UrbanFaith.com )

“Now and then gifted people emerge who see the situation from a higher and more helpful level. Brian McLaren is one of those seers.” (Richard Rohr, author of Everything Belongs )

“Very rarely a book appears that houses the power to change a generation. A New Kind of Christianity is nothing less than one of those moments.”’ (Peter Rollins, Ikon )

“Brian McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among innovative Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists. He is the author of A New Kind of Christianity...[a] bold and imaginative new work.” (Spirituality and Practice )

“...McLaren is considered one of the country’s most influential evangelicals, and his new book, A New Kind of Christianity, takes aim at some core doctrinal beliefs. McLaren is rethinking Jesus’ mission on Earth, and even the purpose of the crucifixion.” (NPR Morning Edition )

“McLaren has become an important and controversial figure in Christian thought…. Structured around 10 basic questions about the faith, the book will provoke debate. And it should–these are important questions worthy of our thought and (loving) discussion.” (Relevant Magazine )

“...A New Kind of Christianity... has lit the fuses of critics in the Christian press and blogosphere.” (Publishers Weekly Religion BookLine )

“These are questions that many in the church, and beyond, are asking. His patient explorations will prove helpful to many who value Evangelicalism’s piety but worry that it has failed to thoughtfully engage hard but unavoidable questions.” (Crosscut.com )

“Brian McLaren, considered one of the more articulate leaders in the emergent church, has a lot of questions. And he hopes Christians won’t avoid those questions. In his new book, A New Kind of Christianity, McLaren questions conventional truths and calls for a major overhaul of the Christian faith.” (The Christian Post )

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (February 9, 2010)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0061853984
  • ISBN-13: 978-0061853982
  • Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (87 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,666 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Brian D. McLaren is an author, speaker, pastor, and networker among innovative Christian leaders, thinkers, and activists. His groundbreaking books include A New Kind of Christian, A Generous Orthodoxy, The Secret Message of Jesus, and Everything Must Change. Named by Time magazine as one of America's top twenty-five evangelicals, McLaren has appeared on Nightline and Larry King Live, and has been covered by The Washington Post and the New York Times.

 

Customer Reviews

87 Reviews
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182 of 214 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A very important book, February 19, 2010
By 
Mort Coyle (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (Hardcover)
Brian McLaren has emerged as a voice that asks aloud the questions that many of us have wrestled with in silence. As a result, he has been lionized (and sometimes idolized) by those who find resonance with his theological ponderings. He has simultaneously been demonized and even slandered by those who are disturbed by his explorations into what it means to follow Jesus in the 21st century. He has become both an antenna and a lightning rod for the light and heat generated by the friction of Christianity's transition into post-modernism.

I have just finished reading McLaren's latest book, A New Kind of Christianity. Having read several of McLaren's other books, I would consider this one to be essential. I mean "essential" in two different ways:

1. "Essential" in the sense that A New Kind of Christianity is a streamlined and tightly focused distillation of ideas that McLaren has explored elsewhere. This book seems to contain the concentrated essence of what McLaren's theological labor has produced thus far. I often found points which he had sketched out in previous books now re-drawn in sharp, clear and muscular form. As a result--at under 300 pages--this book packs a great deal of theological, intellectual and inspirational punch.

2. "Essential" in the sense that A New Kind of Christianity is *the* Brian McLaren book to read, whether you haven't read anything else by him or whether you have read everything else by him.

A New Kind of Christianity is built around the exploration of ten important questions that Christians throughout the world seem to be asking more and more and with greater urgency. These questions are:

1. What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
2. How should the Bible be understood?
3. Is God violent?
4. Who is Jesus and why is He important?
5. What is the Gospel?
6. What do we do about the Church?
7. Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
8. Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
9. How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
10. What do we do now? (How do we translate our quest into action?)

McLaren doesn't so much provide pat answers to these questions as give thoughtful responses which leave the door open for further exploration. His tone throughout is humble, circumspect and low-key. This is not a book for people who want a pedagogue to tell them what to believe. Rather it inspires you to bring your own theology into the light and take an honest look at what you believe, why you believe it and if, perhaps, you ought to rethink a thing or two (or ten).

As an example, early on McLaren provides a brilliantly simple visual representation of the Biblical narrative according to Western "Greco-Roman" Christianity (aka Catholicism & Protestantism). He then proceeds to carefully deconstruct that "Greco-Roman" narrative and present an alternate "Hebrew" narrative which is vibrant, hopeful, appealing and, frankly, makes a whole lot more sense. One begins to realize that this "New Kind of Christianity" is also very ancient.

As a Quaker, I found myself surprised at the parallels to Quaker theology which I found all through this book. I had an opportunity to ask Brian about this on a conference call and he responded very enthusiatically. He is quite familiar with the theology of Friends and spoke in glowing terms of Quakers. Perhaps George Fox & Co. were at the far bleeding edge of what has come to be called the Emergent Church Movement! In the book, McLaren refers to those throughout Church history who, like the Quakers and Anabaptists, provided a "minority report" on what it means to follow Jesus.

On that same conference call (courtesy of [...]), McLaren said that it took him far longer to write this book than any other book he has written. It shows. Now that I have finished reading it, I plan to begin re-reading it immediately. This is an extremely important book. Buy it. I am not exaggerating when I say that if I could afford to, I would get a copy for every Christian and every spiritual seeker I know.
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169 of 204 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars McLaren, on balance, is worth reading, February 17, 2010
This review is from: A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (Hardcover)
I'm cross-posting this review from The Christian Humanist Blog, so do forgive any html oddities.

When I praise Plato and defend my teaching Republic to college freshmen, I often say that Plato's excellence lies not in the fact that he's always right but that when he's wrong, he's wrong in compelling ways, ways that inspire me to imagine a better alternative. While Brian McLaren is no Plato, parts of his most recent book A New Kind of Christianity have that Platonic character to them, getting things very wrong in ways that set me thinking about how I'd improve on his points. Other parts of the book resonate quite nicely with things that I try to do as a Christian teacher or realize now that I should try to do. But other parts still, alas, smack of the sleight-of-hand, the well-poisoning, and the other dirty trickery that make me mistrust apologetics literature of various sorts. In other words, A New Kind of Christianity is a complex book, not consistently excellent but nonetheless very helpful in places.

Brian McLaren Gets it Right

As Phil Rutledge pointed out in response to our podcast on the Haiti Earthquake, when I talk about the Bible, I tend to talk not about one unified document but a library, various not only in cosmetic details but in a more robust sense of genre, asking certain questions in this book that lie out of bounds in other books, offering teachings here that seem to stand at least in tension with teachings there. (I should note the obvious, namely that I do not speak for the other Christian Humanists on this point or necessarily on any given point.) I tend to think that the flexibility of such a collection is part of the Bible's strength, that the practice of being Christian community is richer because Christian teachers can pull from a broad range of resources depending on the contingencies of the moment without having to pretend that every moment is the same as every other moment. When we need a text that shakes us out of complacency, the Bible has a book for that. When we lean over the precipice of despair, the Bible has a book for that. And so on. I think that McLaren offers a handy next step in that thought process, noting that the Bible is a true collection of texts precisely because of the "spaces between" those strong positions of Deuteronomy or 1 Chronicles on one hand and Ecclesiastes or Job on the other.

Furthermore, McLaren highlights the God-defining character of Christ and insists that the Palestinian Jew Jesus of Nazareth and not the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover is a better starting point for disciplined reflection upon the character of God. I know that making the historical Jesus that radically central flies in the face of much systematic theology (including that of Thomas Aquinas, one of my favorites), but I agree with McLaren that such a move is ultimately more faithful to the gospel of John among other Scriptural witnesses.

Finally, when McLaren gives advice to parishioners and clergy who find themselves resonating with progressive ideas, and his counsel leans consistently towards humble and peace-seeking measures rather than grandstanding, intellectual and moral arrogance, and other vices that so often characterize folks who think they've gotten something right while their neighbors still get it wrong. His exhortation to "be a blessing" is probably my favorite part of the book.

I noted above, and I write again, this book does get some things very right, and by no means should anyone think that it's error, error, error all the way down.

Brian McLaren Gets it Wrong

That said, as someone who loves intellectual history and who values some degree of historical precision, I do blame this book for playing fast and loose with historical identifications for the sake of scoring cheap rhetorical points. One of the jokes that was current during my days at The Ooze forums was that the Emergent words for "really quite bad" were "modern" and "modernist," and the word for "so much better, don't you think?" was "postmodern." McLaren seems to have left that ugly and misleading binary pair only to settle on another pair, just as ugly and even more misleading (and also a binary that I started encountering back in seminary), the Manichean dualism of "the Bible" and "Greco-Roman religion." Resisting the temptation to examine every instance of "Greco-Roman" meaning just plain "bad," I'll point out a few that drew a chuckle from me for their historical naivete: Greco-Roman religion, apparently, has no place in it for homosexuality (175--apparently all of that Athenian praise for pederasty as superior to love-of-women doesn't count), does not allow for multiple religions (212--never mind the Roman Empire's grand scheme of syncretism that incorporated pantheons as diverse as the Celts' and the Egyptians'), and stands as a pernicious idol called Theos, who stands as enemy to the Biblical god Elohim (65--I suppose the New Testament authors didn't get the memo that the Greek language had that idol mixed in there).

The content of McLaren's "Greco-Roman" tradition came about as the fruit of a conversation he relates in which an epiphany came to him, namely that the broad outlines of the traditional Evangelical narrative (he extends it to Catholic and Magesterial Protestant traditions as well) derive not from Biblical narratives but from Plato. Unfortunately, McLaren casts Plato only as the first step in a larger metanarrative, and that move is what makes things go downhill in a hurry. In McLaren's "six-line narrative" to which he refers again and again as he digs into his ten questions, Plato is only the first stage in the grand narrative, ruined when the world falls from Platonic perfection (which sounds more like Plotinus's realm of Ideas) into the "storied" world of Aristotle.

I'm certain Aristotle would have been surprised to find out that he was writing a simple sequel to Plato rather than supplanting his philosophy, but even more surprising to Alexander's tutor would no doubt be that, according to McLaren, Aristotle held that forms do not have any existence, properly speaking, save as mental constructs. (If Dante's right that Aristotle is in Limbo, where he might converse with future ages' non-Christian philosophers, no doubt someone has told him by now that the forms as purely mental was actually one of William of Ockham's central contributions to philosophy in the fourteenth century.) Perhaps more surprising still would be that, after dwelling in the Aristotle trench, the eternal souls that Plato does talk about (though sometimes in terms of reincarnation) return to a "Platonic" stasis, some by achieving salvation (another category rather alien to Plato and to Aristotle) and then reaching a final Platonic (neo-Platonic?) ideal, and some by falling into what McLaren calls "Greek Hades," a construct that of course predates Plato and Aristotle by a few centuries and has little to do, in the texts I've read, with punishing earthly evil. If one says anything about Homer's Hades, one should say that it's terrifyingly egalitarian, and that's what Achilles hates so much--he's forgotten just as readily as all of the other shades about him.

If all of that sounds familiar through the haze of misused Greek texts, it's because the "Greco-Roman narrative" that McLaren would impose upon Plato and Aristotle (the tag team!) is far more akin to what Origen, Augustine, and other Christian writers would call the narrative of creation, fall, and redemption. Although certain iterations of that narrative sequence deserve criticism, McLaren does nobody any favors (especially those of us who love teaching Plato) by inventing a syncretic thought-system that simply does not exist in classical texts and then loading that cumbersome burden on some of Christianity's best tutors.

As a passing comment in the introduction to one of his chapters, McLaren notes that, although he's not been a seminarian, he has read "thousands of theology books" (78). I suppose my own counsel for aspiring Christian writers is that we read fewer books, perhaps dozens, but take the time that good books deserve to understand and live with them.

Brian McLaren Gets Sneaky

Given the unhappy choice between accusing a writer I like (and I do like Brian McLaren) of duplicity and insinuating that the same writer has forgotten or misread, I'll usually err on the side of charity and say that, for example, McLaren probably read some really bad books about Greco-Roman philosophy instead of reading translations of Plato and Aristotle themselves, and that likely led to his strange construction "Greco-Roman." But there are moments of this book that make me deeply suspicious, and although I'd prefer not to approach people I like with suspicion... well, here goes.

In an early section of the book, McLaren relates a talk he gave at a conference in which he lined up seven people on the stage, each representing a historical figure. In a diagram that I won't reproduce here (I'm going to be cross-posting this review, and so I'm trying to keep html to a minimum), McLaren labels seven stick figures as follows:


Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Luther or Erasmus, Calvin or Wesley or Newton, Pope Benedict or Jerry Falwell or Billy Graham


After he briefly notes that folks who get their theology from this stream aren't "directly seeing Jesus" (36), he gives the people in the row a different set of names:


Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, Amos or Isaiah or Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Jesus


His point seems to be that the reading of Biblical texts that will follow in his book, unlike the "Greco-Roman" version of things, would work forwards up to Jesus rather than backwards to Jesus, therefore... Read more ›
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470 of 588 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Tearing Up the Contract & Starting Over Again, February 10, 2010
By 
This review is from: A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith (Hardcover)
In the middle of A New Kind of Christianity, Brian McLaren gives us a picture to describe how he thinks we need to change.

"Before...we are like lawyers trying to save an old contract, adding more and more fine print on page after page, until the provisions are weightier than the original contract. (This is good work, I suppose, and must be done for a generation or two, but it is not the work to which I feel called.) At some point, though, more and more of us will finally decide that it would make more sense to go back and revise the contract from scratch. And that work has begun. It is nowhere near complete, but the cat is out of the bag..."

And that cat is on a tear. McLaren attempts the impossible, essentially tossing out what you always thought was true, and starting again from scratch. The Fall of Genesis 3? That's really a coming-of-age story. The storyline of the Bible? It's really about the downside of progress, and about how good prevails in the end anyway. The Bible is a community library, and the violent, tribal God of the Genesis flood is "hardly worthy of belief, much less worship" - but those were early days, and our view of God is always changing. Jesus didn't come to start a new religion, nor is Christianity the answer in itself. In short, almost everything you know about God, the Bible, and Christianity is wrong, according to McLaren.

Disagree? It's probably because you have a Greco-Roman worldview, or worse. You may be someone who gets "authority and employment" from the old way of reading the Bible, which means you have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. To go back to McLaren's earlier image, you're maybe a lawyer who loves fine print and who hates cats being let out of their bags. You're probably like the theologians and pastors who:

"...sew on a patch here, cover up that bit over there with some duct tape, put a nice coat of cheerful paint on that section over there, play really uplifting music to distract from that bit under there, move the furniture so that part doesn't show, and so on."

You're either misguided or have a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Either way, it's hard to disagree without looking pitiable.

What to make of all of this?

First, I want to say that McLaren does make some good points. He puts his finger on some real problems. This isn't damning with faint praise. It's important, because it's what makes a book like this so compelling. Lots of people are going to buy what he says because they resonate with his critique.

Second, I'm grateful that McLaren has articulated his views. I suspect that there's going to be less guessing about what McLaren believes in the future. I don't think his views are a surprise to a lot of us, but they're in print now, and it's going to be a lot easier to talk about them.

Third, I'm going to predict that this book gets a lot of traction. I joined a conference call with McLaren last night and heard a number of people - including pastors - rave about the book. I think it's going to be one of those books in which the fans and critics speak past each other. The early reviews seem overwhelmingly positive. They won't be surprised if people like me don't like it. He takes some swipes at Mark Driscoll and John MacArthur, and sometimes comes across in a belittling way to evangelicals in general. He takes swipes at his critics sometimes that leave me gasping - and the fact that he does it with a friendly smile doesn't really help. This is going to be a polarizing book.

I really have to say that this is one of the most frustrating books I've read. I have a friend who says off-the-wall things. Half the time he's profound; the rest of the time he's just a bit random. I felt that way with this book. There are some potentially profound sections, but there's lots in the book that left me baffled. I can't remember reading any book that left me shaking my head so much. So much hinges on his assertion that we read the Scriptural storyline through a Platonic worldview, for instance, but I was far from convinced. His interpretation of Job, which he used to explain how we should read Scripture, left me scratching my head. His conclusions (or proposals) are so sweeping, and based on such baffling premises sometimes, that I hardly know where to begin.

Finally - and most importantly - this is not a minor tweak of Christianity. It is a repudiation of the church's understanding of the gospel. It really is tearing up the contract and starting all over again. McLaren says we've got the whole Biblical storyline, as well as our ideas of God and Scripture, all wrong. He'd rather be an atheist, he says, than believe in the God that many of us think is found in the Bible. You don't get any more basic. We are talking about two fundamentally different versions of Christianity and the gospel.

That's what makes this book so hard to critique. Supporters of the book will say that I'm critiquing it from a Greco-Roman mindset, using the Bible as a constitution text rather than as a community library. So my criticisms will be expected. McLaren's proposals go all the way back to the level of presuppositions, and unless you share his presuppositions it will be like complaining that the color red isn't blue enough. Fine, they will say, but it wasn't meant to be blue. He's not only giving us a new version of the Christian story, but he's making it very difficult to critique his new version using the resources of the old one. But I'm simply not convinced that he's made the case that he thinks he has.

Like McLaren, I believe we need to honestly examine our beliefs and practices, making corrections even when it's costly and uncomfortable. I believe that every generation needs to rediscover the gospel. But unlike McLaren, I'm not ready to toss the creation-fall-redemption storyline, or think that I've moved on from the God of Genesis 4-6. I'm simply not ready to say our old understanding of the gospel is wrong. We may need to rediscover it and be changed by it, and grow in our understanding of it. But that's different than tearing up the contract and starting all over again.

A few years ago, I was struggling with some of the issues McLaren raises. But I found that some of the answers being proposed were less, not more, satisfying. I believe that our biggest need is not for a new Christianity, but instead to rediscover some of the contours of the gospel we may have forgotten. We don't need a new contract; we need to "guard the good deposit" that's been entrusted to us (2 Timothy 1:14).

We really don't need a new kind of Christianity. We need to do a better job of rediscovering, and living in light of, the one we already have.
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