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A new reformation—at least an attempt at one—is brewing. "Doesn't the religious community see that the world is changing?" plead the new reformers. They say the culture is being transfigured by postmodernism. They say the church is stuck in the modern era. They conclude that the church must become postmodern or die.

This is the basic outline of an increasing number of conferences, Web pages, and books produced by the postmodern reformers. The most recent and controversial example is Brian D. McLaren's A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey (Jossey-Bass, 2001). McLaren describes nine experiences (what he calls his "data") he has been wrestling with, his frustrations with the church and culture he finds himself in.

These data drive him to ask these questions: "Doesn't the religious community. … have anything fresh and incisive to say? Isn't it even asking any new questions? Has it nothing to offer other than the stock formulas that it has been offering? Is there not a Saint Francis or Søren Kierkegaard or C. S. Lewis in the house with some fresh ideas and energy?"

McLaren's plea is typical of postmodern reformers. Indeed, their passion is admirable, and their cultural analysis is keen. But I fear they would merely slap a coat of paint on a sagging building whose foundation needs attention. They would do well to take lessons from the very people they say they admire.

C. S. Lewis, for example, was uninterested in "saying something fresh." His prologue to The Problem of Pain is typical: "I have believed myself re-stating ancient and orthodox doctrines. If any parts of the book are 'original,' in the sense of being novel or unorthodox, they are against my will and as a result of my ignorance."

The same holds true in Mere Christianity: "For I was not writing to expound something I could call 'my religion,' but to expound 'mere' Christianity, which is what it is and was what it was long before I was born and whether I like it or not."

Kierkegaard's scathing critique of his church culture was based not on his take on how "the world was changing" (though as a leading philosopher of his day, he would very well have known how it was changing). Instead, he looked backward. He weighed the church's shortcomings against what he called "original Christianity." In a very typical passage, he asked, "How many are able to say they are truly Christians in the New Testament sense, or that their lives are even close to resembling those of the first disciples?"

Francis lived in an era of profound church corruption—popes and bishops waging war in the name of Jesus, accruing wealth and political power, winking at dalliances with mistresses and prostitutes. But Francis spent little time wrestling with these "data." Instead he grappled with the teachings of Jesus—especially his injunctions about poverty (what Francis called "apostolic poverty"). He so patterned his life on Jesus' teachings that many refer to him as "the second Christ."

In fact, nearly every agent of church renewal began by comparing the church or himself not with intellectual and cultural trends but with the faith of the ages, particularly with biblical teaching. The monastic movement began when Anthony of the Desert heard Matthew 19:21 read in church. The Reformation began when Luther, after years of internal struggles, finally understood Romans 1:16. The Pentecostal movement took off because people believed they were living again in "apostolic" times, in which Acts 2 was a living reality. Indeed, all these reformers adapted their biblical insights to their day—but not until they had thoroughly wrestled not with their church or culture but with Holy Scripture. They knew that there is nothing so fresh and incisive for every era as the so-called stock phrases of Scripture.

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April 1 2002, Vol. 46, No. 4