According to Marcus Borg, "Christianity in North America today is marked by rapid change and conflict. At a foundational level, the change and conflict concern two very different ways of seeing the Bible, the Christian tradition, and the Christian life." Borg, who is a world-renowned Jesus scholar, best-selling author and a professor at Oregon State University, presented his view of The Heart of Christianity in a lecture at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville on Thursday evening, March 25.

In his just-published book, The Heart of Christianity: How We Can Be Passionate Believers Today, Borg delineates two radically different paradigms in Christianity today which are not simply about specific issues of faith and practice but are about much larger matters. These two paradigms are, indeed, quite different visions of what it means to be Christian.

The "earlier paradigm" described by Borg is very familiar. Affirmed by fundamentalist, most conservative-evangelical and many Pentecostal Christians, it dominates Christian television and radio and is therefore the most publicly visible vision of Christianity and the Christian life. Put in simple terms, Borg says this view centers on "believing in Christianity now for the sake of salvation later." Although its proponents often claim it is "traditional Christianity," it is no less a product of modernity, a response to the intellectual challenges of The Enlightenment, than the alternative "emerging paradigm."

Borg does not dismiss the value of the earlier paradigm in the faith journey of those for whom it is functional. "If it works for you," he says, "if it hasn't become an obstacle and it genuinely nourishes your life with God and produces growth and compassion within you, there's no reason for you to change." But for those millions who are unpersuaded by a literalist and exclusivist view, the emerging paradigm "provides a way of taking Christianity and the Christian life seriously." The emerging paradigm is about a relationship with God that transforms life in the present.

Borg reclaims terms and ideas once thought to be the sole province of evangelicals and fundamentalists: he shows that terms such as "born again" have real meaning for all Christians; that the "Kingdom of God" is not a bulwark against secularism but is a means of transforming society into a world that values justice and love; and that the Christian life is essentially about opening one's heart to God and to others.