Jazz Theologian:  I’m assuming that you
agree that the emerging church is not just a renewal movement for young
middle-class Caucasian Christians.  So here are a few questions so that we
can see how emergent Christianity addresses the issues of following Jesus
within the urban context.

How does A New Kind of Christianity help urban
Christians address issues such as high incarceration rate among young men,
substandard schools and fatherlessness while at the same time there is a the
proliferation of churches preaching a prosperity gospel?

McLaren:  In
NKoCy, I’m trying to help us get a deeper and broader vision of the gospel. The
gospel that many people believe in says very little about issues of justice and
peace in this life; it focuses on personal morality in this life and salvation
from hell after this life. It would be very concerned about, say,
homosexuality, but not very concerned about systemic racism and economic
exclusion and oppression. It would say a lot about personal morality but not so
much about social morality. I’m proposing that the gospel of the kingdom of God
– the gospel Jesus preached (and Paul too, I propose) – is about God’s will
being done on earth as in heaven, and so that has everything to do with the
city, with racism, with incarceration, with unemployment, with equity in
education, and so on. I’m also suggesting that the eschatologies that many of
us were taught – eschatologies that predict the world will get worse and worse
and then be destroyed – work against working for the healing of this world,
including our cities. So I would say that this book, along with Everything Must
Change, would be of real interest to folks engaged with urban issues.

Join the groove…what do you think about how Christianity relates to these issues?