The Logic of Intersubjectivity. Darren M. Slade
Origins in Sociological Perspective, 26.
86. Cf. Gleason, “How St. Mary’s College,” 257‒60; Turcotte, “Sociologie et historie des religions,” 43‒73; and Marti and Ganiel, The Deconstructed Church, 197‒208.
87. Unlike most other interactions with McLaren’s work, this study recognizes that a simple scrutiny of his theological deductions is inadequate without consideration of the cultural and practical contexts within which McLaren must live out his religious beliefs. In other words, religion is ultimately a lived experience that must work in reality apart from the theoretical musings of the intellectual mind; and since McLaren does not endorse an analytic approach to religiosity anyway, investigations into his beliefs would be incomplete without relating his philosophy to the sociocultural, historical, and practical contexts of everyday life. See Cottingham, Philosophy of Religion, 1‒24. For an elaboration on socio-historical investigations, see Slade, “What is the Socio-Historical Method,” 1‒15.
88. As Kierkegaard once wrote, “A pseudonym is excellent for accentuating a point, a stance, a position. He is a poetic person. Therefore, it is not as if I personally said: This is what I am fighting for” (Hong and Hong, Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 6:6421). Cf. Clowney, “A Critical Estimate,” 32‒33; Vardy, The SPCK Introduction to Kierkegaard, 49; Roberts, Emerging Prophet, 10n21.
89. Kierkegaard wrote something similar: “Thus in the pseudonymous books there is not a single word by me. . . .if it should occur to anyone to want to quote a particular passage from the books, it is my wish, my prayer, that he will do me the kindness of citing the respective pseudonymous author’s name, not mine” (Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1:626‒27).
90. Likewise, in the introduction to A New Kind of Christian, McLaren admits that his fictitious story incorporates numerous aspects from his personal life (NKOC §Intro., xvi‒xviii). Thus, these books are semi-autobiographical without McLaren explicitly claiming ownership of the viewpoints expressed therein (see “Becoming Convergent”).
91. Cf. Bohannon, “Preaching and the Emerging Church,” 61n1.
92. For detailed explorations of the difference between the “empirical author” and the “implied author” within narrative literature, see Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge; “What Is an Author?,” 141‒60; Suleiman, The Reader in the Text, Booth, Critical Understanding; The Rhetoric of Fiction; The Company We Keep; and Rimmon-Kenan, Narrative Fiction.
93. Though McLaren does not argue that his beliefs are self-evident or incorrigible, he does conclude that his philosophy is not self-referentially incoherent, either, especially because of its pragmatic worth for Christian faith (cf. AMP §18, 278; FOWA §1, 4; SMJ §9, 72‒89).
2
McLaren the Man
2.0 Introduction
Discussing the novelist Michael Crichton, Brian McLaren remarks, “Crichton’s books incarnate the spirit of the day. And instead of offering a view from the outside, they serve to put readers into the postmodern world so we can see the rest of the world, including the modern world, from its perspective” (COOS1 §12a, 161). The same is true for McLaren, who attempts to “incarnate the spirit” of his own socio-historical context. Born in 1956, McLaren attended a Plymouth Brethren church during the 1950s and 1960s before having “a powerful conversion” experience through the Jesus Movement of the 1970s.94 His faith journey began in dispensationalism as a boy, then Calvinism as an adolescent, only to transfer again into “charismaticism” as a young adult, and finally settling within mainstream evangelicalism as a pastor (NKOC §Intro, xx, xxiv). Eventually, however, McLaren concluded that none of these approaches provided the vigorous spirituality that he craved (FOWA §1, 4; SMJ §, xiii‒xv, 5‒6). The thesis of this chapter is that McLaren’s natural temperament and personal history have combined together to create a public theologian whose personal, educational, vocational, and spiritual experiences are the basis for his philosophy of religion.95 Three sections will support this thesis: 1) the effects of experiential knowledge on religious belief; 2) McLaren’s religious journey away from fundamentalism; and 3) his resultant spiritual disposition. It is first necessary to discuss how life experiences shape a person’s religious sensibilities.
2.1 Experiential Knowledge and Belief Formation
According to the behavioral sciences, human information-processing typically involves two trajectories (a “dual-systems” approach). The first system is intuitive (nonreflective), which displays an involuntary emotional response to stimuli, while the second is reflective, which is slower and more deliberate. Oftentimes, intuition is the default system that informs cognitive-based reflective reasoning; and unless there are sufficient reasons to dismiss it, information-processing will largely depend upon a person’s emotions.96 Consequently, experiential knowledge will almost always receive priority over indirect, propositional knowledge, meaning people are unlikely to believe something contrary to their personal experiences. Labeled the “affect-as-information model,” people rely on emotion and, thus, rarely change their established beliefs despite the potential wrong-headedness of their convictions.97 This means that experiential-affective knowledge is essential to the formation and strengthening of religious beliefs.98
Significantly, McLaren describes his estrangement from Christian fundamentalism as the result of “cognitive dissonance,” a theory originating in 1957 by Leon Festinger. “I was in a sense losing the faith that my parents and church had tried to give me. But this was necessary, because I had to find a faith with my own name on it, not just theirs. I guess psychologists would call this cognitive dissonance—that I had two conflicting value systems at work in my mind” (FFR §9, 181). According to cognitive dissonance theory, information that is inconsistent or contradictory to people’s religious beliefs will propel them to alleviate the resultant negative emotional state (“dissonance”).99 People often engage in a deliberate suppression of the conflicting data, which can then manifest in the form of irrationally rejecting counterevidence, restricting interactions only to those who have the same beliefs, attempting apologetic defenses of the religion’s validity, and ad hoc rationalizing to explain away the discordant information.100
Once these reactions reach a sufficient level of discomfort, however, people frequently abandon their original beliefs. Although cognitive dissonance can produce maladaptive behavior, forcing some to avoid important data altogether, others simply change their beliefs in various ways. For McLaren, his cognitive dissonance culminated in retaining an affection for Jesus, who he insists is still the answer to life’s great problems (SMJ §1, 5), while also abandoning Christian fundamentalism. As he explains, this separation was the only way for him to maintain faith in Christ (cf. EMC §5, 35; JMBM §2, 13‒24; §23, 211n8).101 With cognitive dissonance in mind, readers are able to appreciate the psychological consequences of McLaren’s life experiences.
2.2 McLaren’s Religious Odyssey
As the Rector of an Episcopalian church once told McLaren, “Scratch the paint off a liberal . . . and you’ll find an alienated fundamentalist underneath.” It is in this sense that McLaren admits to being on a similar spiritual quest as theological liberals (GO §1, 59), using his writings as a medium for confessing his spiritual struggles (JMBM §2, 13‒24; NKOCY §Preface, xii). In fact, there exist several elements from McLaren’s chronosystem (i.e., historical context) to suggest that his experiential knowledge is the strongest determiner of his philosophy of religion.102 Hence, readers should not attempt separating the man from his