Congratulations on making TIME magazine's '25 Most Influential Evangelicals' list. How did you feel about being included?

It's complicated because my sense is that the article was really trying to equate the word 'evangelical' with 'conservative Republican.' Although I think there are many wonderful things about conservative Republicans, I don't fit in that category. So I felt I probably was the oddest duck in the article (laughs). On the other hand, I was glad if I could be an example of someone from an evangelical background who is not happy with the tone of the religious right. So if I provided an alternative voice, I'm glad that I could be included.

From an interview in the Dallas Morning News:

Many conservative Christians feel that the interests of America and the interest of the kingdom of God are closely aligned - they might even say the interests of the Republican Party. (Laughs). I think that is a deep area of tension. Many of us certainly love our country, but we don't think that the kingdom of God is in the pocket of any political party, or in a nation, or even in Western civilization.

From an interview on PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly:

A lot of critics are really frustrated that homosexuality is a question you're not very definitive on. Why do you not want to go on the record on that?

That's a great question, and we could talk for hours about this. I think, as I said before, when an issue is badly framed, we're not wise to just rush in and try to answer it. And I think the issue of homosexuality is badly framed. One of my concerns about the framing of it is that I'm worried that the religious community is being manipulated by the political world and that the political community, in some ways, has decided this is a wedge issue, and we can use this issue to shave off voters from one party or another party. And so they've wanted the issue to be a political issue. I'm worried that the religious community has been manipulated by some of this political machination. I don't mean that as a conspiracy theory, but I just mean let's be realistic about how these things work. It seems to me it's worked that way; that's the first thing.

The second thing is that the issue of homosexuality is so complex, and as a pastor I have to sit across the table from people, from a young man who's raised in a wonderful Christian family and says, "Look, you know, I'm 19 years old. I've never been attracted to women. I didn't ask for this. I've been ashamed to tell anybody. You're the first person I've ever told." Well, when I have a conversation like that, or with a young woman who grew up -- her father is a minister, and she lived with this deep self-hatred for many, many years. She considered suicide and all the rest. When you have conversations like that, you can't just walk around making pronouncements like so many people in the media do. You realize these are real human beings we're talking about. And you realize that the issues are not as simple as many people make them sound. Then add to that the biblical dimension of it and the way of interpreting the Bible that yields these very easy, black-and-white [answers], throw people in this plastic bin or in that plastic bin and now we got them sorted out, here are the good ones, here are the bad ones. You know, I just think that's absurd. The Bible's so much more complex then that. If people want to start picking out a verse from the Bible here and picking out a verse there, and picking out a verse, we're going have stonings going on in the street. It's a crazy way to interpret the Bible, in my opinion. Now that doesn't mean that we just throw out the Bible, but we've got to learn ways to engage with the wisdom in the Bible that help us be more ethical and more humane and not less.

From an article in Christianity Today where McLaren responds to Mel Gibson's recent Jesus movie:

There are millions of poor Muslims who see the West as decadent, strident, arrogant, selfish, careless, and pugilistic, and of course, they are right. Can you see how offering them a fine movie could just make things worse? Instead, why don't we show them some Christians (in the West but not of it) who are honest, upright, peacemakers, compassionate, humble, and generous?

Our world is torn by ethnic, class, and religious hatred. Don't show the emerging culture a movie about Jesus: show them a movement of people living like Jesus--people who like him love the different, even the enemy, whose doors are open and tables are set with welcome.

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