A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-H

Loved the title and wanted to love the book. I did at first. His introduction is a great way into any discussion about how private beliefs and public life intersect. It's a winsome approach. However, later in the book, McLaren begins to cross the line from generosity to pluralism. The philosophical school to which he seems to subscribe is that of Hegel. The assumption here is that we...more

Loved the title and wanted to love the book. I did at first. His introduction is a great way into any discussion about how private beliefs and public life intersect. It's a winsome approach. However, later in the book, McLaren begins to cross the line from generosity to pluralism. The philosophical school to which he seems to subscribe is that of Hegel. The assumption here is that we arrive at truth by blending ideas that seem to stand in opposition. Throughout the book are examples of what C.S. Lewis calls "chronological snobbery," e.g. "The new is the true." Instead, I agree with G.K. Chesterton who champions both personal humility and yet confident convictions. McLaren seems to apply humility in the wrong place.   hide

I want to like this book for the title alone. McLaren has a winning approach at first. However, he begins to cross the line midway through the book to where there is little distinction between the ambiguity of "seeing in a mirror" dimly and the uncertainty of pluralism.

My faith in God has never waived but my faith in American evangelicalism has ebbed. I read this book at low tide. It helped me appreciate a lot of things that have influenced me along the way, but it also encouraged me to see things in a fresh way. Many of my fellow evangelical friends abandoned my wife and I for reading McLaren, but I don't regret it for a second.

This was a very thought provoking book that forces you to rethink your religious views on everything.