The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof published a piece last Saturday entitled, “What Religion Would Jesus Belong To?” which was really a review of Brian McLaren’s new book The Great Spiritual Migration. In the past, I have appreciated some of Kristof’s forays into religious commentary, and I believe he is sincere when he tries to untangle the reality of the Christian movement from the caricature that is so common in popular media (here is an old example, and this one more recent). In this review, however, he uncritically adopts McLaren’s false dichotomy between a care for theological doctrine and the love of neighbor, a decision that ultimately undermines his larger critique of religious hypocrisy.
In reality, the Christian choice is not between doctrine and love, but between true belief (which is both doctrinally robust and personally generous) and hypocrisy. This is an important distinction because it recognizes that both right doctrine and apparently generous living can be used as a cover for hypocrisy.
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