McLaren was on Larry King Live

by djchuang · February 2, 2005

[a lost entry reconstructed]

Brian McLaren
was on Larry King Live last night, and I (still) don’t have cable (Why
don’t I have cable? Partly a family decision, partly a financial
decision.) A rush transcript of the Larry King Live show from last night, with a panel of several Evangelicals featured in this week’s Time magazine were on, along with McLaren.
[hat tip to designmc]

Salient contextless sound bites from McLaren or about McLaren:

“Well,
I heard about the list just a couple of days before I found out I was
on it. I’m probably one of the people Dr. LaHaye has never heard of. So
I felt quite surprised to be on the list. I felt quite different,
really, than many of the other people on the list…”
“I’m
not sure I fit it. Well, the thrust of the article focused on the role
of evangelicals in politics. And I probably represent a lot of people
who are not terribly comfortable with the direction that a lot of
Christian discourse in relation to politics has been going in recent
years.”
“Well, I think people of faith have to live out
their faith. We can’t hide it, we can’t pretend we don’t have it. And I
think we’re being more honest when we bring our faith out and explain
how it affects our beliefs and our values and our positions. But I
think there’s a wide range of issues that really matter to Christians.
And one of my concerns is that the word “evangelical” now is hard to
define for a lot of people. It only means a narrow range of issues on
one conservative side. So I really agree with what Dr. Jakes just said,
that we have to make sure that we don’t let our faith become captive to
any party.”
“I agree very much with what Bishop Jakes said.
I’m more interested in what we owe him. And one of the things I think
we as people of faith owe him is to call him to moral values, that’s
certainly true. But moral values including issues like making peace,
moral values like really caring for the poor and seeing what we can do
to make sure they have a greater share in our nation. I also think we
have to ask the president to care more about the environment as God’s
creation. I’m very pleased to see increasing numbers of evangelicals
sharing that concern. I would hope that we want to be a conscience for
the president and our country, but on a number of issues.”
“Well,
Larry, I think there’s so many pressing issues facing us. And I think
it’s tragic for the Christian and evangelical community to be known as
a community who are angry about one or two issues, and proportions
don’t make a lot of sense to me. I think, as Franklin Graham said, we
believe Jesus came to forgive our since [sic; sins]. We also believe
that he came to help us reconcile with one another. And I think one of
our great challenges is how we’re going to treat one another when we
don’t agree on this issue. And the Christian community is struggling
with how we can treat one another with love and respect even when we
disagree. I hope we can make progress in that.”
“Yeah, I am
very sympathetic with your call. I see, even though we might say that
people don’t individually hate, the language of culture wars — war is
a hate word. So I think we’ve got to get away from that kind of
language. And I think one of the greatest things that Christians can
do, especially Christians with the name evangelical, would be to start
making some friends and invite their neighbors over, and get to know
someone who’s gay, get to know someone who’s very different. And not to
just fix them or argue with them, but really to understand them as a
neighbor.”
I highly respect Reverend Jakes and Mr. McLaren
because they seem to be the most compassionate, understanding and
open-minded of the evangelicals.
“I think we’re all very,
very grateful for the initial good results from the election, so I have
nothing but gratitude that went so well. And I think we’re all so proud
of the Iraqi people for, at great risk, going out to vote. But I think
we still, many of us who are Christians are not spoken for, by a lot of
the most public voices. And a lot of us are raising very deep questions
about the U.S.’s role in the world, and is this really a sensible role
for us to take.”