Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World

McLaren (Naked Spirituality) argues that Christians can respect other faiths while not diluting their own Christianity. He calls this “strong benevolence,” a way of remaining firmly Christian while honoring other religious—and nonreligious—traditions. The goal is communication, not conversion, and relationship, not repression. Using stories from his life and what he has gleaned, sometimes creatively, from theologians, McLaren focuses on ways Christians can reconfigure concepts such as Christology and the Trinity to build a robust emergent Christian faith that repudiates violence, coercion, and domination. Although he claims to reject a sugary Coke commercial version of interfaith “harmony,” McLaren’s utopian vision, however, might strike even his followers as overly sanguine in its downplaying of the problem of evil. Further, some of his personal anecdotes read more like Save the Children infomercials than slices of real life. Ultimately, McLaren remains worth reading, lively and passionate at translating progressive theology into a popular idiom. Agent: Kathy Helmers, Creative Trust. (Sept. 11)