Brian D. McLaren

We all know the standard traditions of marriage in America: something borrowed, something blue... the groom doesn't see the bride before the wedding... processional and recessional... the kiss, the toast... the newlywed couple cutting the cake and smearing it on one another's faces, throwing rice on the departing couple. But...

For 24 years of my life, I was a church planter and pastor. At the beginning of those years, I would have gladly called myself an Evangelical. But those years coincided with the rise of the Religious Right, and at the end, Evangelical meant something very different than before.

I...

In various religious communities, certain foods are considered acceptable and others unacceptable. For observant Jews and Muslims, for example, pork is unclean. For Hindus, any meat is unacceptable. Christians like me often adopt a food abstention of some sort during Lent.

I have a proposal for a different way...

When I was a young Evangelical Christian coming of age back in the early 1970s, I remember feeling that there were two paths before me. One was legalistic, anti-intellectual, combative and rigid. The other was missional rather than legalistic, reflective rather than anti-intellectual, communicative rather than combative, and supple rather...

It was probably about thirty-five years ago, before I had children of my own. I was part of one of those retreats, popular back in the seventies, where people were organized in small groups and each session began with an "icebreaker," a question to get people opening up and sharing.

On the death of Osama bin Laden, theologian Miroslav Volf expresses my sentiments when he writes:

We are right to feel a sense of relief that a major source of evil has been removed. But we should reflect also on the flip side of that relief:...

I grew up Evangelical and although I certainly don't fit in with religious right stereotypes, my heritage is still important to me. But two recent news items have me wondering as never before: What's happening to my heritage?

First came news that Donald Trump was garnering Evangelical support. He was...

Because of my own experience as a writer, I've been anticipating the baptism in hot water (or worse) that Rob Bell was about to experience with the publication Love Wins. And because of the old saying that it's not the attacks of your critics but the silence of...

With all the angst about the economy, the deficit, and a looming government shut-down, I'm still concerned that we're treating symptoms rather than diagnosing the underlying disease.

I know something about this. I spent a week in the hospital last year having loads of tests done -- blood work, heart...

You'll be hearing in coming days, if you haven't already, about the What Would Jesus Cut? campaign, launched by Jim Wallis and the good people of Sojourners. It assumes that massive budget cuts are coming, but raises the question of where we start. If budget cuts are a...

It's risky to make historical comparisons. If we say, "This event is exactly the same as that event," our comparison blinds us to the uniqueness of a historical moment. But if we say, "This event is in some ways like that event," our comparison can help us see meaningful resonances...

According to a recent article, the Pope is calling Catholic leaders to radical self-examination in reference to the escalating abuse scandal:

We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred ... We must ask ourselves what was wrong in...

I just returned from Cambodia, a place that has been close to my heart for 30 years now, all the more because my wife and I had the privilege of hosting Cambodian refugees in our home as they fled from the horrible genocide of the late 70s. I had the...

So the Florida group planning to burn the Quran has backed down. That's good. But does anybody doubt some other group will soon realize how gullible the media is to grant free publicity for irresponsibility and extremism, and try it again?

It's not enough to stop burning one another's holy...

A lot of contemporary movies picture American suburban life as banal, hypocritical, and morally bankrupt, a deceitful place where manicured landscapes and plastic surgery cover up empty, desperate realities. But in Rob Reiner's newly released Flipped, the American 'burbs provide the environment in which fragile, honest goodness is repeatedly tested...

What Larry Jacobson, Executive Director of the National Society of Professional Engineers, says about his profession could be said about almost any profession.

The problem, he suggests, is a design flaw in corporate structure: Employees are loyal to their employers, who are in turn loyal to owners or...

If you use a cell phone or computer, you're probably connected -- whether you know it or not -- to the long-standing conflict in Eastern Congo. Minerals mined there -- from tin, tungsten, and tantalum to gold -- find their way into many of devices we use every day (including...

I often say that one of my favorite parts of being a pastor for 24 years was pronouncing the benediction each week at the end of gathered worship. It wasn't that I was glad for our gatherings to be over; rather, I was thrilled to be deploying people into the...

Bruce Cockburn fans will recognize this verse from his song "Down Where the Death Squad Lives":

Like some kind of never-ending Easter passion, from every agony a hero's fashioned. around every evil there gathers love -- bombs aren't the only things that fall from above down where the dead...

This Sunday, I'll be preaching a sermon at my home church in a series called God in the Movies, where we seek to draw theological insight from the intersection of contemporary cinema and biblical revelation. I'll be exploring themes in Avatar, and their eery imitation of today's news. Let...