Susan Campbell > Quotes

“So you raise up a few generations of young girls, telling them that they should step to the back of the bus, ingrain that in their psyche, preach it to them from the pulpit, hold up as ideal examples women doing precisely that, and in a few years, you can step back; you need say no more. Your work is done, because you have carefully created a herd of women who know and even begrudgingly accept that their place is secondary, just outside the limelight, clapping for and cheering on the important people who were never taught to put others first.”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

“A lot of people think that in order to be attractive, you need to appear cool, together or confident. But REAL confidence comes from accepting yourself as you are, and sharing the real you. When you share you do so simply in the interest of being transparent and not trying to get a certain favorable response. Letting go of trying to control other peoples' responses to you is one of the greatest confidence-builders I know of. And from my own experience, I have come to the conclusion that I am most lovable when I am most transparent.”
― Susan Campbell

“When your heart speaks, take good notes.”
― Susan Campbell

“Shoulds keep you from owning your power to create the life you want. They keep you in denial about your actual feelings and situation.”
― Susan Campbell, Getting Real: 21 Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life

“I wish I could just believe that God loves women, but the indoctrination I endured at the hands of well-meaning (or so I assume) Christians is difficult to erase. So I must search for believable (and scholarly) counterpoints because I don't quite trust myself. And until I can dissuade myself of the notion that God plays favorites, I cannot honestly sing or pray. Nor can I turn loose of this anger.”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

“Can't we look to Mary Magdalene as simply an early church leader whose rightful place next to Christ should have been acknowledged? There are no Scriptures to place her anywhere but right next to Jesus. Even a cursory reading of the Bible shows her to be a godly woman responding wholeheartedly to a message that must have appealed to her greatly. But the fastest way to rob a woman of her power is to make her a sexual suspect. It certainly has worked all these years for MM.”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

“I don't worry much about offending. I have long since learned that my approach to religion will offend someone; I just don't want to hurt anyone.”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

“Based on a survey of approximately five hundred people, the research demonstrated that about 80 percent of the average person′s communications are geared toward controlling things that are actually beyond the person′s control: a huge waste of human energy.”
― Susan Campbell Ph.D., Getting Real: 21 Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life

“Busting out of your comfort zone might be the most fun thing you ever did — after you get over the idea that you have to be safe, appropriate, perfect, right — or that you have to be anything.”
― Susan Campbell, Getting Real: 21 Truth Skills You Need to Live an Authentic Life

“[H]istorically, the coast is where new ideas are first collected, from people who arrive here from other places. Flux lives on the coasts. Fashion starts in the East and moves west. Spiritual movements start in the West and move east. And bedrock faith rests in the middle.”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

“[I]t is helpful to remind ourselves that the church - and its writings - did not come into existence until forty years after Jesus' resurrection. Things got lost. Things got whispered down the lane. Original meaning could have been abandoned completely in favor of a less egalitarian faith. What else did we lose in the interim between Jesus and the recordings? And will we ever get it back?”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl

“But slowly, evangelicalism's emphasis on social reform began to be seen by some of its adherents as its own form of apostasy, or abandonment of the movement's early tenets. The idea that Christians could and should effect social change on a large scale appeared, to some, to smack of theocracy, a blending they could not countenance. The notion of separation began to take hold; fundamentalists within the evangelical movement found themselves focusing more on Jesus's intended return to earth, and they began to view what they saw as society's ills as the scriptural fulfillment of the last days. To try to improve the world was to risk moving into the distance the day of Jesus's triumphant return. Proponents of the social gospel, in the eyes of the fundamentalist, were "making people too much at home in the world," rather than”
― Susan Campbell, Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism, and the American Girl