Brian McLaren writes on the Patheos “Future of Mainline Protestantism” blog of his thoughts on the future of Christianity.
My general hunch is that in the short run, the most conservative streams of Christianity — in Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox settings alike — will constrict, tighten up, batten the hatches, raise the boundary fences, demand greater doctrinal, political, and behavioral conformity, and monitor boundaries with increased vigilance. Doing so will increase commitment (and anxiety) among the “true believers,” but it will also drive away their younger, more educated, and less isolated members.
While fearing that many will reject anything “church”, McLaren hopes that those driven away will join an emerging coalition of organizations and networks that are “..developing both personal relationships and concrete plans for missional collaboration — especially on behalf of the poor, peace, and the planet.” He identifies four main religious sources:
Progressive Evangelicals who are squeezed out of constricting evangelical settings.
Progressive Roman Catholics (and Eastern Orthodox) who are squeezed out of their constricting settings.
Missional mainliners who are rediscovering their Christian faith more as a missional spiritual movement, and less as a revered and favored religious institution.
Social justice-oriented Pentecostals and Evangelicals — from the minority churches in the West and from the majority churches of the global South, especially the second- and third-generation leaders who have the benefits of higher education.





How did McLaren become the victim of anything (other than male pattern baldness)? He retired from preaching at Cedar Ridge in order to spend more time one writing and speaking, not because he was ejected; their website still claims him as a founder and member.
Murdoch, I loved that story! Thank you. I checked out their website and they seem to be going great there at All Souls.
Regarding Rev. McLaren, I think he’s a good writer, but I wonder if his book-&-article are stating the obvious (no insult intended to Rev. McLaren). That he places the parties in nice catagories is not so much predicitve but telling us what we already know?
God bless All Souls!!!!
Kevin McGrane
Murdoch Matthew:
Thank you for taking the time to share this. Very powerful.
All Souls UU Church in Tulsa has been going through some of this consolidation and growth. A 2007 article tells how All Souls took in a black Pentecostal bishop and the remnants of his congregation when he became too liberal for his denomination.
What Charles illuminates is the battle for the Center, not the edges. I consider myself an Anglican Centrist, since the center of Anglicanism can’t be far from Richard Hooker.
I love the irony though. Seven years ago one of our local “orthodox” gave our newly elected Bishop a copy of McClaren’s “Generous Orthodoxy”. Now he is just another old bald white guy who TEC dotes on and the so called “orthodox” priest is gone from TEC. Actually McClaren is now the victim of the constricting spirit he describes. Did he move or did his former devotees not?
I am for assessing people and conversing with them based on the content of their ideas not their pate. McClaren has been as generous a spirit as his book suggested we be.
The Sunday following GC I preached a sermon on how we had taken a stand that “All meant ALL” and believe it or not the “youths” teenage to 40 somethings resonated with that message. So the generous spirit is alive and well across decades of people younger by far than me.
We must refuse to cede the notion that the Anglican Center is something other than the generous spirit of Richard Hooker who took a radical, unilateral, almost singular position in 1586 when he declared that Roman Catholics, even Cardinals and the POPE would receive God’s mercy as long as they connected to Jesus by even the thinnest thread.
That is the Anglican Center.