Brian McLaren and the Substitution of the Political for the Gospel
Brian McLaren, the founding voice of the Emerging Church and a faculty member of the Center for Action and Contemplation, has stated his theological method more plainly in the 2026 CAC Daily Meditations introduction than in any of his books to date. This paper reads that statement against the Urantia Book and argues that what McLaren names a renewal of Christian faith is in fact the substitution of a political and contemplative program for the gospel itself, exactly along the lines Paper 99 and Paper 195 anticipated.
Brian McLaren and the Substitution of the Political for the Gospel: A Urantia Reading of the 2026 CAC Daily Meditations
Derek Samaras
Urantia Book Network, urantiabooknetwork.com
May 2026
Keywords: Brian McLaren, Emerging Church, Red Letter Christians, Center for Action and Contemplation, Richard Rohr, Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, theological liberalism, post evangelical Christianity, Bible as literary artifact, deconstruction, Urantia Book, Paper 99, Paper 195, social gospel, socialized Christianity, evolutionary religion, religion of revelation
Abstract
Brian McLaren occupies a unique position in contemporary American Christianity. He is the founding voice of the Emerging Church movement, a co founder of Red Letter Christians alongside Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and Richard Rohr, the author of nearly twenty books, and a current faculty member of the Center for Action and Contemplation. His introduction to the 2026 CAC Daily Meditations, recorded as a video address and transcribed in the program's promotional material, is the most direct public statement of his theological method that he has yet released. This paper treats that transcript as a primary source. It argues that McLaren's project, read on its own terms, performs three substitutions of escalating consequence: the Bible as literary artifact replaces the Bible as revelation, the Christ event as ethical exemplar replaces Jesus as Michael of Nebadon, and an explicitly political and contemplative program replaces the gospel itself. The paper grants two points where McLaren is correct against the evangelical Christianity from which he departed, both of which the Urantia Book also grants. It then identifies the structural failure of his constructive position by reference to Paper 99:1.1 and Paper 195:9.7, and concludes with an account of what the Urantia Book reader is positioned to offer the audience McLaren is currently teaching.
Methodology and Sources
This paper is a companion to the longer treatment of process theology and emergent Christianity published in The Not Yet God Is Not the Universal Father. The reader is referred to the parent paper for the broader argument against the movement's central metaphysical commitments. The present paper narrows focus to one figure and one document.
The primary source is the introductory address by Brian McLaren to the Center for Action and Contemplation's 2026 Daily Meditations program, distributed as a video and transcribed by the CAC for public release. All quotations of McLaren in this paper are taken verbatim from that transcript. Secondary sources on McLaren's theological development include McLaren's own books A New Kind of Christian (2001), A Generous Orthodoxy (2004), and A New Kind of Christianity (2010), as well as the conservative evangelical critique of his work assembled by Tim Challies in his False Teachers series. The Urantia Book is cited in the standard Paper:Section.Paragraph format, verified verbatim against the canonical 1955 publication.
The paper proceeds in seven sections. Section 1 establishes the McLaren position. Section 2 reads the 2026 CAC transcript closely and identifies the three substitutions that organize the rest of the paper. Sections 3, 4, and 5 treat each substitution in turn. Section 6 addresses the question of what McLaren is correct about and where the Urantia Book agrees with him against the evangelical position. Section 7 concludes. Table 1 provides a structured comparison.
1. The McLaren Position
Brian McLaren, born in 1956, trained in English literature at the University of Maryland, served as founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church from 1986 to 2006, and turned to writing and public lecturing full time after stepping down from pastoral ministry. His 2001 novel A New Kind of Christian received Christianity Today's Award of Merit and established the literary frame around which the Emerging Church movement subsequently organized itself. Time magazine named him one of the twenty five most influential evangelicals in America in 2005, under the heading Paradigm Shifter. In 2006 he co founded Red Letter Christians with Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, and Richard Rohr, an organization framed around the project of liberating Christianity from both right wing and left wing American politics by returning to the words of Jesus, with a working emphasis on social justice rather than the conventional evangelical focus on sexual ethics. He has since accepted faculty appointments at the Center for Action and Contemplation, the contemplative formation institute founded by Richard Rohr, where he co teaches and contributes to the daily meditations program.
McLaren's theological development has been continuous rather than punctuated. A Generous Orthodoxy in 2004 framed itself as a personal confession and a manifesto of the emerging church conversation. A New Kind of Christianity in 2010 advanced ten questions central to the emergence of a postmodern, post colonial Christian faith. Across this body of work, McLaren has publicly reconsidered or rejected the literal nature of hell and its eternality, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the exclusive sufficiency of Christ as the way to the Father, and the conventional evangelical position on same sex relationships. In 2012 he led a commitment ceremony at the same sex marriage of his son.
The conservative evangelical reception of this trajectory has been uniformly negative. Challies, representative of the Reformed wing of that reception, characterizes McLaren as a leader in a revived form of theological liberalism whose treatment of scripture frees him to revise whatever doctrine fails to accord with modern sensibilities. The progressive Christian reception has been correspondingly enthusiastic. McLaren currently has one of the largest platforms in post evangelical American Christianity, which is the reason this paper takes him as its subject. Influence has consequences, and the consequences of his work are now visible in the spiritual lives of a generation.
This paper does not engage McLaren on the evangelical terms by which his work is conventionally attacked. It engages him on the terms of the Urantia Book.
2. The Three Substitutions
The 2026 CAC Daily Meditations introduction is approximately seven minutes long in its recorded form. It is the cleanest available statement of McLaren's mature theological method in his own voice. Three quotations from the transcript organize the argument of this paper.
The first quotation states the method of biblical interpretation that will govern the program:
"First, we won't read the Bible as if it were a divinely dictated book that descended out of Heaven on a parachute. Instead, we'll be reading the Bible as a set of precious literary artifacts that emerge in the unfolding story of humanity." (McLaren, 2026 CAC Daily Meditations introduction.)
The second quotation states the political and ethical orientation of the program:
"We need to come together as never before to address our environmental and climate crises. We need to come together as never before to resist authoritarian movements that have the power of billionaires, the power of social media and AI at their disposal to divide us further and further... We won't read the Bible as if it were a manual to help people dominate and exploit the Earth and other people... we will instead explore the Bible for inspiration, for creative and nonviolent resistance to that kind of domination and exploitation." (McLaren, 2026 CAC Daily Meditations introduction.)
The third quotation states the spiritual practice the program will offer:
"We won't read the Bible as if it were an evacuation plan, preparing us to give up on the Earth and beam up to Heaven. Instead, we will explore the Bible as a prompt for both deep contemplation and for deep loving action... where leadership looks like service, and where the power of love outlasts and overcomes the love of power." (McLaren, 2026 CAC Daily Meditations introduction.)
These three quotations together constitute the McLaren position in 2026. They state, in order, a theory of scripture, a program of social and political action, and a contemplative practice. Each is a substitution. The Bible as literary artifact substitutes for the Bible as revelation. The political and ethical program substitutes for the gospel of the kingdom. The contemplative practice substitutes for the religion of personal relationship with the Father through the indwelling Adjuster. The remainder of this paper treats each substitution in turn.
3. The First Substitution: Literary Artifact for Revelation
The McLaren position on scripture is presented as a corrective to a fundamentalist literalism whose excesses the Urantia Book reader will recognize and reject. The Bible did not descend on a parachute. It is not a divinely dictated transcript. The fundamentalist position McLaren is rejecting is wrong. The Urantia Book is unambiguous on this. Paper 92, "The Later Evolution of Religion," treats the entire stream of human religious literature, including the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, as a real historical product of human religious development. The Bible is, in significant part, exactly what McLaren says it is. A set of precious literary artifacts emerging in the unfolding story of humanity.
The Urantia Book then makes the move McLaren cannot make. It distinguishes that evolutionary religious literature from the religion of revelation, the genuine inbreaking of higher truth from outside the evolutionary stream. Paper 92, "The Later Evolution of Religion," states the distinction with care:
"Evolutionary religion is sentimental, not logical. It is man's reaction to belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit world, the human belief-reflex, excited by the realization and fear of the unknown. Revelatory religion is propounded by the real spiritual world; it is the response of the superintellectual cosmos to the mortal hunger to believe in, and depend upon, the universal Deities. Evolutionary religion pictures the circuitous gropings of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory religion is that very truth." (92:4.3)
The full doctrine of revelation in the Urantia Book is substantially more developed than this single passage indicates. Paper 92:4 records five epochal revelations across the planetary history of Urantia: the Dalamatian teachings, the Edenic teachings of Adam and Eve, the work of Melchizedek of Salem, the bestowal of Michael as Jesus of Nazareth, and the Urantia Papers themselves. Each is a real intervention from outside the evolutionary stream, supplementing rather than displacing the genuine evolutionary work of human religious thought. The biblical canon, on this account, is a partially preserved record that contains both evolutionary religious material and the residue of three of those five epochal revelations.
McLaren's position has the first half of this doctrine and not the second. He correctly perceives the evolutionary character of the religious literature. He cannot grant the inbreaking from outside, because the entire frame of his theological project depends on its absence. The result is a Bible that is sympathetic, instructive, occasionally inspiring, and finally inert. It teaches us about the unfolding story of humanity. It does not communicate from the Father. The Urantia Book reader holds both. The biblical canon is a human achievement and contains the residue of divine revelation, and the two facts are not in competition.
This is the deepest reason a Urantia reader leaves McLaren hungry. He has correctly diagnosed the problem with the parachute model. He has not given anything substantial in its place.
4. The Second Substitution: Political Program for Gospel
The 2026 transcript is unusually direct about the political content of the program McLaren is teaching. The phrase "authoritarian movements that have the power of billionaires, the power of social media and AI at their disposal" is a specific contemporary political reference, recognizable to any American reader as the language that the post 2024 American center left has used to characterize the present political moment. The language of domination and exploitation, of nonviolent resistance, and of leadership as service is the established vocabulary of the progressive Christian and Catholic Worker traditions. None of this is concealed. McLaren is teaching a politically engaged Christianity, and he says so.
The Urantia Book reader has to get this question right because it is easy to get it wrong in either direction.
The first wrong move is to dismiss social and political concern as a betrayal of the gospel. The Urantia Book is socially and politically engaged across the second half of Part III. Paper 70 treats the evolution of human government, war, slavery, and social justice in detail. Paper 71 treats the development of the state and the ethical demands placed on it. Paper 72, "Government on a Neighboring Planet," is an extended description of a more advanced civilization's political and economic arrangements. Paper 99, "The Social Problems of Religion," frames the social mission of religion in terms many progressive Christians would recognize, and Paper 99:1.5 explicitly affirms that religion has a social obligation. The revelation is not politically quietist.
The second wrong move is to grant McLaren the framing that political engagement is the gospel. It is not. Paper 99 opens with a careful statement of the boundary:
"But religion should not be directly concerned either with the creation of new social orders or with the preservation of old ones. True religion does oppose violence as a technique of social evolution, but it does not oppose the intelligent efforts of society to adapt its usages and adjust its institutions to new economic conditions and cultural requirements." (99:0.2)
And Paper 99 closes its first section by naming the deeper resource that no political program can supply:
"A godless humanitarianism is, humanly speaking, a noble gesture, but true religion is the only power which can lastingly increase the responsiveness of one social group to the needs and sufferings of other groups." (99:1.5)
The order of these two propositions is the entire point. Religion is not the engine of any particular social order, neither the maintenance of an old one nor the construction of a new one. Religion is the source of the spiritual responsiveness from which durable social transformation flows. McLaren has inverted that order. The new social order, framed in his case as resistance to authoritarianism, environmental healing, and nonviolent action, has become the content of religion rather than its consequence. The actual relationship between mortal and Father through the indwelling Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth has become a contemplative aesthetic that supports the political program rather than the source from which the political program must flow.
This is the substitution. It is not that McLaren cares about social justice. The revelation cares about social justice. It is that the political program has replaced the gospel as the core of his religion. Paper 195:9 calls this the failure mode of the present age, and uses the term socialized Christianity. The 2026 CAC transcript is the cleanest available example of that mode in current English language Christian publishing.
5. The Third Substitution: Contemplation for Sonship
The third move in the 2026 transcript is the most delicate to address because the spiritual practice McLaren commends is genuinely valuable and the Urantia Book reader has no business attacking it directly. Contemplation, the quieting of reactivity, the examination of bias, the seeing of the divine in creation and in one another, are real spiritual goods. The Center for Action and Contemplation's contemplative tradition descends from authentic Christian sources, principally the Franciscan and Carmelite mystical lineages, and Richard Rohr's working synthesis of those sources is in many places consonant with what the Urantia Book teaches about worship, prayer, and the indwelling presence.
The substitution operates at a level above the practice itself. The Urantia Book teaches that the deepest spiritual reality available to a mortal of Urantia is the personal relationship between the human soul and the Thought Adjuster, the fragment of the Universal Father that indwells every normal human mind from the age of moral choice forward. Paper 110, "Relation of Adjusters to Individual Mortals," develops the doctrine in detail. The relationship is personal, dialogical, and constitutive of the survivor's eternal identity. The Spirit of Truth, poured out on all flesh after Pentecost, is the active spiritual presence of the Master Son and is universally available to every sincere mortal. Paper 194, "Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth."
McLaren's contemplative program does not deny these realities. It simply does not include them. The deep contemplation he commends is contemplation of nature, of one another, and of the imagined inner divine. There is no Father, in the personal absolute sense, to whom the contemplation is addressed. There is no Adjuster, in the indwelling sense, who is the partner of the contemplation. There is no Michael, in the sovereign personal sense, who is the source of the Spirit of Truth that is the medium of the contemplation. The practice is the same shape as Christian contemplative prayer, but the metaphysical content has been quietly removed.
This is why the program produces so many sincere participants who report a sense of spiritual exhaustion after several years of practice. The form of the relationship is being maintained without the relationship. The contemplative posture is being held toward an emptied center. Paper 5:5.6 names the working principle that the McLaren program loses: "Religious experience, being essentially spiritual, can never be fully understood by the material mind; hence the function of theology, the psychology of religion." (5:5.6) Without the personal Father, the personal Son, and the indwelling Adjuster, the psychology of religion has nothing to work on. It dissolves into anthropology and ethics.
Paper 102 names the failure mode with unusual directness. The passage is worth quoting at length, because the diagnosis it offers of the contemplative retreat tradition is more developed than anything elsewhere in the revelation:
"Evolutionary man does not naturally relish hard work. To keep pace in his life experience with the impelling demands and the compelling urges of a growing religious experience means incessant activity in spiritual growth, intellectual expansion, factual enlargement, and social service. There is no real religion apart from a highly active personality. Therefore do the more indolent of men often seek to escape the rigors of truly religious activities by a species of ingenious self-deception through resorting to a retreat to the false shelter of stereotyped religious doctrines and dogmas. But true religion is alive." (102:2.7)
"Again, there are other types of unstable and poorly disciplined souls who would use the sentimental ideas of religion as an avenue of escape from the irritating demands of living. When certain vacillating and timid mortals attempt to escape from the incessant pressure of evolutionary life, religion, as they conceive it, seems to present the nearest refuge, the best avenue of escape. But it is the mission of religion to prepare man for bravely, even heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. Religion is evolutionary man's supreme endowment, the one thing which enables him to carry on and 'endure as seeing Him who is invisible.' Mysticism, however, is often something of a retreat from life which is embraced by those humans who do not relish the more robust activities of living a religious life in the open arenas of human society and commerce. True religion must act. Conduct will be the result of religion when man actually has it, or rather when religion is permitted truly to possess the man. Never will religion be content with mere thinking or unacting feeling." (102:2.8)
The passage at 102:2.8 is, on its own, a complete diagnosis of the McLaren program. The sentimental ideas of religion as avenue of escape from the irritating demands of living. Mysticism as a retreat from life embraced by those who do not relish the more robust activities of living a religious life in the open arenas of human society and commerce. The mission of religion as the preparation of mortals for bravely, even heroically, facing the vicissitudes of life. None of this is consonant with the contemplative posture the CAC commends. The revelation is not anti contemplative; worship and prayer are central to its teaching. But it refuses contemplation as substitution for the active religious life, and it identifies the substitution as a particular temptation of "vacillating and timid mortals" rather than a higher form of spiritual maturity.
Paper 160, in which the philosopher Rodan of Alexandria sets out his appraisal of the gospel, presses the diagnosis to its sharpest point:
"Religion implies the existence of undiscovered ideals which far transcend the known standards of ethics and morality embodied in even the highest social usages of the most mature institutions of civilization. Religion reaches out for undiscovered ideals, unexplored realities, superhuman values, divine wisdom, and true spirit attainment. True religion does all of this; all other beliefs are not worthy of the name. You cannot have a genuine spiritual religion without the supreme and supernal ideal of an eternal God. A religion without this God is an invention of man, a human institution of lifeless intellectual beliefs and meaningless emotional ceremonies." (160:5.5)
The phrase "an invention of man, a human institution of lifeless intellectual beliefs and meaningless emotional ceremonies" is not subtle. The revelation is naming the failure mode by description, and the description fits the post evangelical contemplative program with uncomfortable precision. The McLaren synthesis cannot supply the supreme and supernal ideal of an eternal God, because its theological method has dissolved the absolute Father into a process and the personal Michael into a wisdom teacher. What is left is precisely what 160:5.5 calls it. The Urantia Book does not consider this a minor variant of religion. It considers it not religion at all.
6. The Rejections That Are Correct, and What They Do Not Excuse
A precise critique has to be precise about where the subject is correct. The Urantia Book agrees with McLaren on the items on his rejection list. Where the disagreement falls, sharply and without compromise, is on what he has put in the place of what he rejected.
The fundamentalist treatment of the Bible as a parachute dropped transcript is wrong. The revelation rejects that doctrine.
Substitutionary atonement distorts the character of the Father. The revelation rejects the doctrine in language more direct than McLaren has ever used:
"The barbarous idea of appeasing an angry God, of propitiating an offended Lord, of winning the favor of Deity through sacrifices and penance and even by the shedding of blood, represents a religion wholly puerile and primitive, a philosophy unworthy of an enlightened age of science and truth. Such beliefs are utterly repulsive to the celestial beings and the divine rulers who serve and reign in the universes. It is an affront to God to believe, hold, or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath." (4:5.4)
An evangelical Christianity organized around hell, exclusive truth claims, and a hostile posture toward sexual minorities and political opponents has lost contact with the religion of Jesus. The revelation supplies the religion of Jesus as the corrective.
These three points are concessions to the diagnostic accuracy of his early career. They are not concessions to the constructive position he has built since. The rejections do not earn the substitutions. A correct rejection of fundamentalist literalism does not entitle a teacher to rebuild Christianity around a deity who is "an invention of man, a human institution of lifeless intellectual beliefs and meaningless emotional ceremonies" (160:5.5). Diagnosis and prescription are separate acts. McLaren has been correct in the first and incorrect in the second, and the second is the act for which his audience is paying the price.
Table 1. The McLaren rejections and the Urantia Book replacements.
| McLaren rejects | Urantia Book also rejects | What the Urantia Book affirms in its place |
|---|---|---|
| Bible as parachute dropped transcript | Yes | A canon containing real evolutionary religion and the residue of epochal revelation |
| Substitutionary atonement | Yes, in stronger terms | The bestowal life of Michael as a self giving revelation of the Father |
| Literal eternal hell | Yes | A real but limited annihilation for the unrepentant after due process |
| Jesus as the only path to God | Yes, in the narrow Christian sense | Jesus as Michael of Nebadon, the Sovereign of this universe and the incarnate Father revelation |
| Domination of nature and others by religion | Yes | A planetary stewardship grounded in the brotherhood of all peoples under one Father |
The table is the argument. The Urantia Book has done what McLaren tried to do, and has done it without sacrificing the metaphysical content that makes religion more than ethics with vocabulary.
7. Conclusion
The inherited fundamentalism of late twentieth century American evangelicalism is no longer a livable spiritual home for thoughtful adults. McLaren is correct about that. The rejection of his rejections is not the right response. The right response is the offer of the constructive content he has refused to supply, and the honest naming of the cost his refusal has imposed on the people who trust him.
The cost is real. The audience that has followed McLaren out of evangelicalism has been led into a religious frame in which the Father is no longer absolute, the Son is no longer sovereign, the Spirit of Truth is no longer present, and the indwelling Adjuster is not even a category. What is left is contemplative practice, political activism, and the vocabulary of Christianity draped over both. Sincere participants in this frame report, year after year, the same arc: initial relief, sustained engagement, gradual depletion, eventual departure. Paper 195 named that arc seventy years before it became the publishing genre of a generation. The substitution McLaren has built and continues to teach is, by the revelation's own description, "an invention of man, a human institution of lifeless intellectual beliefs and meaningless emotional ceremonies" (160:5.5). The Urantia Book reader is not free to be polite about this. Polite avoidance does not serve the people who are spending their spiritual lives on the substitution.
What the Urantia Book reader is free to do is to engage with the conviction Rodan named, and the tact and tolerance the Master modeled. The Bible is not a parachute, and it is not only a literary artifact. It is in part a record of real revelation, supplemented and clarified by the fifth epochal revelation we call the Urantia Book. Substitutionary atonement is wrong, and the bestowal life of Michael of Nebadon is the truth that replaces it. Hell is not eternal torture, and final annihilation for the willfully unrepentant is the actual end of the story. Jesus is not the only path to God in the narrow exclusivist sense, and he is the personal Sovereign of this universe whose actual life and teaching are the deepest spiritual material available to mortals of this world. The political program is not the gospel, and the gospel will produce a more enduring social transformation than any political program can imagine.
The Urantia Book reader's task is to be present in the room when McLaren's students reach the limit of what his program can give, and to offer the religion of Jesus as the real answer to the questions his program has been correctly raising and incorrectly answering. That is what the moment requires of us.
Related Reading
- The Not Yet God Is Not the Universal Father. The longer treatment of the broader process theology synthesis of which McLaren's position is one expression.
- After Pentecost, We Are Never Alone. The cosmic effect of Pentecost on the present spiritual situation, including the universal availability of the Spirit of Truth.
References
Primary Source
The Urantia Book. 1955. Chicago: Urantia Foundation. References by paper, section, and paragraph as follows.
Paper 4: God's Relation to the Universe (4:5.4). Paper 5: God's Relation to the Individual (5:5.6). Paper 70: The Evolution of Human Government. Paper 71: Development of the State. Paper 72: Government on a Neighboring Planet. Paper 92: The Later Evolution of Religion (92:4.3, 92:4). Paper 99: The Social Problems of Religion (99:0.2, 99:1.5). Paper 102: The Foundations of Religious Faith (102:2.7, 102:2.8). Paper 160: Rodan of Alexandria (160:5.5). Paper 110: Relation of Adjusters to Individual Mortals. Paper 194: Bestowal of the Spirit of Truth. Paper 195: After Pentecost. Paper 196: The Faith of Jesus (196:1.3).
McLaren and Emerging Church Literature
McLaren, Brian D. 2001. A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
McLaren, Brian D. 2004. A Generous Orthodoxy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
McLaren, Brian D. 2010. A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith. New York: HarperOne.
McLaren, Brian D. 2026. Introductory address to the Center for Action and Contemplation Daily Meditations program. Albuquerque: Center for Action and Contemplation. Video and transcript distributed by the CAC for public release.
Critical Literature
Challies, Tim. The False Teachers: Brian McLaren. Online publication at challies.com.
Machen, J. Gresham. 1923. Christianity and Liberalism. New York: Macmillan.
DeYoung, Kevin. 2014. Taking God at His Word. Wheaton: Crossway.
Note on Citations
Every direct quotation from the Urantia Book is verbatim from the cited paragraph and was verified against the canonical 1955 publication. Citations follow the standard Paper:Section.Paragraph format used in Urantia Book scholarship. The McLaren transcript is quoted verbatim from the publicly distributed 2026 CAC Daily Meditations introduction. Secondary literature follows the Chicago author date format. The paper does not quote any copyrighted secondary source at length.
Author Information
Derek Samaras is the editor of the Urantia Book Network and the author of articles on Urantia Book cosmology, comparative ancient history, and the contemporary religious situation. Correspondence to discosteed8@gmail.com.