Brian McLaren Tour Starts Soon

Excerpts
from

Lighthousetrailsresearch.com – Newsletter, February 4, 2008

Nazarene Universities Welcome Brian
McLaren

Read the entire newsletter at

http://www.lighthousetrailsresearch.com/newsletter012808.htm

The picture being painted at
Nazarene colleges and seminaries is no better than it was a year
ago. In fact, it may be getting worse. On February 7th-9th in
Nampa, Idaho at Northwest Nazarene University, emerging church
leader

Brian McLaren will be the

featured speaker. On March 28th-29th, he will be speaking at
Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego.

McLaren left his pastorate to focus more on speaking to students
at universities and colleges. His present

Everything Must Change tour is based largely on his new book
with the same title.

Over the past several years, many college personnel we have
spoken with said the reason they have a variety of speakers
address students is so they can be exposed to different views.
This is what occurred this week at Cedarville when a professor
explained why they had invited an emerging activist to campus.
However, this reasoning really must be challenged, and here is
why. First of all, at most of the Christian colleges we have
seen who invited emerging leaders, the speakers were billed in a
favorable light, often called “conversations.” Thus, the
speakers aren’t brought in to be challenged or debated but are
allowed to freely share their philosophies to the students
unhindered and without reservation or stern warning.

Today, Lighthouse Trails received a very interesting phone call.
It was from a student at a Christian college in New England. He
told us that for four years he had been continually introduced
to the writings of contemplatives and emerging church authors.
Professors required he and his fellow students to read the
books, then lectured them on how they themselves viewed the
books (almost always positively) and rarely allowed the students
in class interaction to question or challenge the ideas being
presented. We are pretty much left to ourselves to figure it all
out, he said. He also said that students who questioned the
contemplative/emerging authors (or the contemplative
promoting professors) were often scrutinized and belittled
publicly in class.

Regarding

Brian McLaren, legitimate questions must be asked. When
McLaren comes to Northwest Nazarene University and Point Loma
University in the next couple months, are students going to be
warned beforehand that McLaren rejects the substitutionary
atonement of Jesus Christ, and calls the doctrine of hell “false
advertising for God”?

2 Are they going to be forewarned that McLaren resonates
with Episcopalian priest

Alan Jones, who in his book

Reimagining Christianity calls the doctrine of the Cross
a vile doctrine and of interspirituality says:

“But another ancient strand of
Christianity teaches that we are all caught up in the Divine
Mystery we call God, that the Spirit is in everyone, and
that there are depths of interpretation yet to be
plumbed…. At the cathedral we ‘break the bread’ for those
who follow the path of the Buddha and walk the way of the
Hindus.” (p. 89)

Or are students going to be told
that McLaren teamed up in 2006 with interspiritualist

Marcus Borg even though Borg denies the virgin birth and
other fundamentals of the Christian faith?3
Incidentally, McLaren says he has “high regard” for Borg.4
Most likely, students will be asked to focus on McLaren’s
“good points,” and not to throw the baby out with the bath
water as is a most common argument by those defending
contemplative spirituality.

But when we stop to think about what happened to popular author
and speaker

Sue Monk Kidd, there should be serious reconsideration by
Christian college professors and staff who seem to find it so
necessary to expose their students to contemplatives and
emerging leaders.

Sue Monk Kidd started off as a conservative Southern Baptist
Sunday School teacher. One day, a co-worker handed her a copy of
a book by

Thomas Merton. Ray Yungen explains what happened to her
after that:

“Once Monk Kidd read it, her
life changed dramatically. What happened next completely
reoriented Sue Monk Kidd’s worldview and belief system. She
started down the contemplative prayer road with bliss,
reading numerous books and repeating the sacred word methods
taught in her readings. She ultimately came to the mystical
realization that:

“I am speaking of
recognizing the hidden truth that we are one with all
people. We are part of them and they are part of us
… When we encounter another person, … we should walk
as if we were upon holy ground. We should respond as if
God dwells there.”
(God’s Joyful Surprise pp. 233, 228)

One could come to Monk Kidd’s
defense by saying she is just referring to Christians and
non-Christians sharing a common humanity and the need to
treat all people well. Yet, while respecting humanity is
important, she fails to distinguish between Christians and
non-Christians thereby negating Christ’s imperative, “You
must be born again” (John 3:7), as the prerequisite for the
indwelling of God. Her mystical universalism is apparent
when she quotes someone who advises that the Hindu greeting
namaste, which translates, I honor the god in you,
should be used by Christians.
(Ibid., pp. 228-229)

Monk Kidd, like Merton, did not join a metaphysical church
such as the Unity Church or a Religious Science church. She
found her spirituality within the comfortable and familiar
confines of a Baptist church!
Moreover, when Monk Kidd found her universal spirituality
she was no teenager. She was a sophisticated, mature family
woman. This illustrates the susceptibility of the millions
like her who are seeking seemingly novel, positive
approaches to Christian spiritual growth. Those who lack
discernment are at great risk. What looks godly or
spiritually benign on the surface may have principles behind
it that are in dire conflict with Christianity….

[J]ust a few years after she had written the book I’ve
quoted, she wrote another book on spirituality. This one was
titled The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. If ever
there was a book confirming my message, this book is it.

In her first and second books, Monk Kidd was writing from a
Christian perspective…. But with her third and fourth
book, Monk Kidd had made the full transition to a spiritual
view more in tune with Wicca than with Christianity. Now she
worships the

Goddess Sophia rather than Jesus Christ:

“We also need Goddess
consciousness to reveal earth’s holiness…. Matter
becomes inspirited; it breathes divinity. Earth becomes
alive and sacred…. Goddess offers us the holiness of
everything.” (pp.
162-163)

There is one portion in Monk
Kidd’s book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter that,
for me, stands out and speaks right to the heart of this
issue…. No one can lightly dismiss or ignore the powers
behind contemplative prayer after reading this narrative:

“The minister was preaching.
He was holding up a Bible. It was open, perched atop his
raised hand as if a blackbird had landed there. He was
saying that the Bible was the sole and ultimate
authority of the Christian’s life. The sole and ultimate
authority.

“I remember a feeling rising up from a place about two
inches below my navel. It was a passionate, determined
feeling, and it spread out from the core of me like a
current so that my skin vibrated with it. If feelings
could be translated into English, this feeling would
have roughly been the word no!

“It was the purest inner knowing I had experienced, and
it was shouting in me no, no, no! The ultimate authority
of my life is not the Bible; it is not confined between
the covers of a book. It is not something written by men
and frozen in time. It is not from a source outside
myself. My ultimate authority is the divine voice in my
own soul. Period.”
(p. 76)(excerpt from

A Time of Departing,
chapter 7)

Later in that same book Monk Kidd
stated that God dwelled in everything, even excrement! That’s
where a contemplative mystic (Thomas Merton) took her.

Now we must soberly ask, where will Brian McLaren take the
Nazarene students?

“And that because of false
brethren unawares brought in, … to whom we gave place by
subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the
gospel might continue with you.” – the Apostle Paul
(Galatians 2: 4, 5)