The Logic of Intersubjectivity. Darren M. Slade

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СКАЧАТЬ writes, “It has been said that science progresses one funeral at a time, that a new theory does not always triumph by convincing its opponents but because the opponents die and a new generation, uncommitted to the past, comes along.”11 In 1962, theoretical physicist Thomas Kuhn published his groundbreaking research on the kinds of paradigms that supersede older scientific models. However, Kuhn observed that specialists tend to react negatively to newer models by dogmatically defending conventional wisdom. Rather than view science as the amassing of new data, Kuhn argued that theoretical advancements (“paradigm shifts”) occur only after arousing conflict within the prevailing establishment.12 Kuhn’s work is, thus, representative of the shift presently occurring in Western Christianity and the religious establishment’s reaction to emerging voices, such as Brian McLaren. According to Phyllis Tickle, these kinds of shifts in Christian faith occur about every 500 years.13

Part of the shift presently happening today is the realization that Christendom’s control over Western culture has come to an end.14 In fact, Ken Howard’s demographic research on Christian growth trends reveals that institutional Christianity is in a state of total destabilization, having become more proficient at internal discord than actual discipleship (cf. AIFA, 21; NKOCY §1, 10).15 With evangelicalism in particular, younger believers are either abandoning church entirely or are seeking to reform its expression of faith from within.16 McLaren notes a pattern with regard to how Christians have historically reacted to these paradigm shifts. First, believers resist and denounce the changes, then they make small concessions before retreating into silence, and finally they eventually assent to the emerging paradigms (NKOCY §17, 177‒78).

According to Barna Group’s 2016 report, 48 percent of Americans are now “post-Christian,” meaning they have no lasting involvement with Christianity or they have abandoned faith altogether.17 Gallup research from 2017 reveals that nearly three-in-four Americans believe religion is losing its influence. Likewise, almost half of Americans are not members of a church, the majority of people rarely attend services, roughly two-in-five Americans do not believe religion can help solve today’s problems, and one-in-five have no religious affiliation whatsoever. In 2018, three-in-five Americans have little to no confidence in Christianity, and 43 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with how religion has affected the culture.18 In total, there exists a growing disdain for how conventional paradigms have conditioned believers to behave in society (cf. BMF, 293; SWFOI §34, 258‒59).19 McLaren observes that despite the growth of church plants, religious entertainment, and religious publications, Christianity is still losing its cultural influence. For him, the answer is not more churches: the answer is adapting to the church’s natural evolution through different stages of faith.20

      1.2.1.1 Stages of Faith

In essence, Western Christianity has experienced what James Fowler labels the six “stages of faith,” only on a wider social scale. In the first stage (“intuitive-projective faith”), believers view their religion in magical terms and use it to explain life’s mysteries. In stage two (“mythic-literal faith”), people uncritically accept folklore as literal truths. With stage three (“synthetic-conventional faith”), believers focus on what feels right and comfortable over what is intellectually sound. In the fourth stage (“individual-reflective faith”), believers question conventional paradigms, relying on their own experiences to develop a personalized belief system. Stage five (“conjunctive faith”) is a synthesis of affective and rational elements where people simply accept the existence of divine mystery. Finally, the sixth stage (“universalizing faith”) focuses almost exclusively on universal principles of love, justice, and compassion as religion’s defining goal.21 Significantly, McLaren delineates four parallel stages: 1) the “simplicity” phase is dichotomistic and naïve; 2) “complexity” then focuses on the pursuit for absolute truth; 3) “perplexity” is the disillusionment that results from this pursuit; and 4) “maturity” is accepting epistemic humility and divine mystery (AMP §16, 249). For McLaren, Western Christianity’s current paradigm shift is the natural growth toward a more universalizing religion that seeks to reverse the ossification of earlier stages of faith (cf. FFR §9, 172, 183).22

      1.2.1.2 Reversing Christian Ossification

In his pursuit of a “mature” faith (NKOCY §1, 6), McLaren asks several questions: “What kind of God do we believe exists? What kind of life should we live in response? How does our view of God affect the way we see and treat other people?” (LWWAT §Intro, xii). For him, what has most atrophied the church is its repeated suppression of paradigm shifts (FFS §1, 41‒46). For centuries, Bible-appealing Christians had endorsed patently wrong ideas, such as white supremacy, Ptolemaic geocentrism, slavery, and apartheid, which has caused McLaren to question if there are other sacredly-held beliefs that are also false (GSM, 41). He reasons that if Christians today can engage in (or tolerate) torture, war, and sexual abuse, then something must be wrong with conventional Christianity (COOS1 §2, 29). “A message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this. The religion’s results are not commensurate with the bold claims it makes. Truly good news . . . would confront systemic injustice, target significant global dysfunctions, and provide hope and resources for making a better world—along with helping individuals experience a full life” (EMC §5, 34; italics in original).23 McLaren’s solution is that believers ought to reinvest the church with interpretations that are socially relevant and reflect a more mature understanding of God (cf. CIEC, 208‒9).

      Here, McLaren highlights the evolutionary nature of Christian beliefs over time (COOS1 §5, 65‒71), insisting that the church is, in fact, a complex organism of interdependent relationships (AIFA, 272‒74, 277; GO §12, 191‒93). Hence, as a “living tradition” (LWWAT §15, 93; cf. NKOC §4, 49), Christianity ought to appropriate new insights and new moral sensibilities (GO §12, 191‒92). “To be a living tradition, a living way, [Christianity] must forever open itself forward and forever remain unfinished—even as it forever cherishes and learns from the growing treasury of its past” (WMRBW, xii). He clarifies further,

An important question today: if the Gospel of Jesus, a Jew, could be radically reinterpreted in the framework of Greek philosophy and Roman politics in the church’s first five centuries, is it forever bound . . . to function within those exclusive parameters? Or is it free to enter and engage with new cultures and thought patterns, including our own—learning both positive and negative lessons from its earlier engagements?24

As an organic body, the church will either mature and grow or it will stagnate and regress (cf. WMRBW, xi). Labeling this growth as a “continuing conversion,” McLaren concludes that without repeated change, believers will increasingly become arrogant, selfish, inflexible, and fraudulent in their claims to represent Christ (GSM, 13). The result is a loss of credibility with younger generations for being impractical and unrelatable (SWFOI §34, 258‒59). “The point isn’t to replace one mandated structure with another, but rather to realize that structures need to be created, adapted, outgrown, replaced, and reinvented as needed” (AIFA, 93). Hence, the significance of studying McLaren’s philosophy of religion centers on correctly understanding how he wants to “change the framework” through which Christians approach their faith.25 In so doing, readers can then comprehend and, perhaps, even empathize with how McLaren’s new paradigm applies to the current socio-political destabilization of institutional Christianity.

      1.2.2 Broader Socio-Political Context

In 2006, almost one-in-four Americans identified as white evangelical; but by 2016, that number dropped to less than one-in-five. Today, the religiously unaffiliated are seven percentage points higher than white evangelicals.26 According to Gallup, in 1951, only 1 percent of Americans had no religious preference; by 2017, one-in-five Americans now list “none” as their affiliation, and 25 percent say religion is “not very important.” However, the vast majority (87 percent) of Americans still believe in God, and the top two reasons why people seldom attend church is because they prefer to worship in private or because they dislike institutional religion.27 Rather than being anti-God, the reality is that a sizable portion of the population simply favors the label “spiritual” instead of “religious.”28 Thus, it is СКАЧАТЬ