Sync Communications Brian McLaren's latest book is "Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope."

NEW YORK — Author Brian McLaren is among the most influential American religious thinkers of the last decade. His break with rigid orthodoxy and embrace of new worship styles is at the center of what is called the emerging church — a movement that has gone viral. The emerging church reclaims ancient practices and prayers, and creates new ones, while re-examining Scripture to learn how modern-day Christians should live.

Since no denomination is dominant in the view of McLaren and evangelical thinkers like him, their views have been embraced by a range of religious groups, including conservative and liberal Protestants and Roman Catholic congregations.

Emerging church leaders have earned praise as innovators, especially in their ability to inspire young people. Yet, many conservative Christians remain suspicious of the movement and its approach to theology. Emerging thinkers contend that evangelicals and others have been too influenced by the broader culture in their reading of Scripture. The emerging church says this has marginalized important Bible teachings and hurt the faith.

McLaren has explained his thoughts in more than 10 books. His latest, "Everything Must Change: Jesus, Global Crises and a Revolution of Hope," argues that Christians must move beyond traditional charity and work for systemic change that addresses the causes of human suffering. He talked about the book and the future of emerging churches.

Q: How is what you recommend different than the humanitarian work churches do already?

A: It's not working within the paradigm that a lot of Christians work, which is all that God is ultimately interested in is extracting souls for heaven. And we might do some good works on Earth, but we don't really expect any of it to work because the world is sort of, the toilet has been flushed and it's going down.

Q: What do you mean by systemic change?

A: You can make incremental changes within a subsystem, but to actually change a whole system, you have to get a lot of the parts changing all at once. ... You can pour money into building a school, but then if there's a war, the war wipes out all the benefit you got and the school shuts down. You can improve agriculture, but if HIV runs through, then there's so much upheaval, you can't maintain the advances in agriculture.

Q: But there's an impression churches are already so active on these issues. Why does anyone need to urge churches to do this?

A: One of the really important concepts is the difference between mercy and justice. One way to describe it is unjust systems throw people into misery and mercy brings us to relieve some of their misery, but until we confront the unjust systems by doing justice, we're never going to make a change. ... I think what churches in America, especially evangelical churches, are just waking up to is the way they have to deal with systemic injustice, not just charitable giving to people in misery.

Q: Are you trying to create heaven on Earth?

A: As a Christian, I'm just trying to be faithful. I'm trying to live out what I pray when I pray the Lord's prayer, May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth.' ... I'm not a utopian in any way.