In the 1920s, some American churches were experiencing what I will call a crisis of application. The Bible and orthodox doctrine felt increasingly remote from daily life. This crisis had been growing in mainline denominations since the Civil War, and was intensified by the recently ended First World War. In a time of suffering brought on by fanatical certitudes, how could churches make Christianity real again?

Modern liberal Christianity had an answer. God is love. Performing the works of Jesus would revive Christianity. Teaching ancient texts and creeds would seal its coffin.

J. Gresham Machen published a book in 1923 called Christianity and Liberalism. Speaking to the crisis of application, he wrote of a growing ignorance in churches and society (pp 176-177). "In countless cases, Christianity is rejected simply because men have not the slightest notion of what Christianity is." People can't apply what they don't know.

Then he made an arresting statement: "The growth of ignorance in the Church is the logical and inevitable result of the false notion that Christianity is a life and not also a doctrine; if Christianity is not a doctrine then of course teaching is not necessary to Christianity." "God is love" settles nothing until you teach who God is and what love means.

Throughout the 20^th century, conservative Protestants have emphasized the priority of doctrine, of orthodoxy. Emphasis on love became the mark of a liberal.

So we come to Brian McLaren's statements in A Generous Orthodoxy on the link between orthodoxy and orthopraxy-right thinking and right doing. He baits us to accuse him of old-fashioned liberalism.

McLaren has something right: Often, conservative believers are ruthless on scoring others' doctrine but lenient on scoring their own love. McLaren suggests that he learned this from experience (p 35). "My own upbringing was way out on the end of one of the most conservative twigs of one of the most conservative branches of one of the most conservative limbs of Christianity . . . ." This man saw some pious ugliness, and his point of view is shared by many.

But the bitterness of those scenes-whatever they may have been-leads McLaren to slash sarcastically at the modern problem (pp 30-31). He wants the link between thinking and doing to be tighter-much tighter.

"To link orthodoxy with a practice . . . makes this book seem ridiculous because many orthodoxies have always and everywhere assumed that orthodoxy . . . and orthopraxy could and should be separated, so that one could at least be proud of getting an A in orthodoxy even when one earned a D in orthopraxy, which is only an elective class anyway [italics original]."

Let's lay aside the failed attempt at a measured judgment ("many orthodoxies . . . always and everywhere"). Let's even lay aside the overstatement (the orthodoxies "assumed"). We'll just say McLaren's an ironic guy.

Let's focus on the accuracy of his core assertion: The typical theological approach is that thought and practice "could and should be separated." I think all theological traditions agree that thought and practice should be distinguished-for the sake of discerning how the two interact. I think all struggle to hold believers accountable for their integrity. But I cannot think of any traditions that teach that thought and action could be "separated." I cannot think of any that "assume" the two "should" be. And I cannot think of any that would call orthopraxy "an elective class."

What we have from McLaren is not an exhortation to integrity, but a rant-probably against somebody back home.

McLaren presents his pleas for orthopraxy as revolutionary-and maybe this is more sarcasm-but in fact he is repeating a commonplace. Church history echoes with calls for believers to live up to their doctrines, and those calls have been needed in every era. The calls have come, frankly, with greater rhetorical force, the force of a yearning not twisted by irony.

Here is one sentence from Francis Schaeffer: "I have been waiting for years for a time when two groups of born-again Christians who for good reasons find it impossible to work together separate without saying bitter things against each other."

In our current crisis of application, should we grade McLaren on The Mark of the Christian?