Robert S. McElvaine > Quotes

“This heretical perversion of the message of Jesus that most often passes for Christianity today has been aptly termed churchianity. People go to church, profess a belief in Jesus totally devoid of a belief in his teachings, and then self-righteously proclaim themselves to be "Christians.”
― Robert S. McElvaine, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America

“Doing what comes naturally was (and is) no longer the appropriate response in many circumstances that arose in what had become an unnatural environment. It became the major social role of religion to bridge the gap between a human nature developed for one environment and the altered environment in which that nature now had to operate. People had to be persuaded to act unnaturally, as Jesus and other religious prophets would preach.”
― Robert S. McElvaine, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America

“Much as the Nazis created an "Aryan Jesus" because the real Semitic Jesus was not to their liking, the Lite Christians have created an American Jesus or a Muscular Jesus or a Consumerist Jesus because they don't like the real nonviolent/turn-the-other-cheek/love-your-enemy/meek-shall-inherit-the-earth/easier-for-a-camel-to-go-through-the-eye-of-a-needle-than-for-a-rich-man-to-enter-heaven/drive-the-moneychangers-from-the-temple Jesus. They simply re-create Jesus in their own image.”
― Robert S. McElvaine, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America

“Yet, on one point after another, what Jesus is urging on us are behaviors more commonly associated with women then with men: gentleness, compassion, and forgiveness. The Sacred Heart is a bleeding heart. Friedrich Nietzsche understood this when he ridiculed Christianity's "slave morality," which he contrasted to Herren-Moral, "master morality" or "man's morality.”
― Robert S. McElvaine, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America

“Eve's Fall symbolizes women's invention of agriculture, which came to be seen as the Original Sin that caused the loss of Paradise. The revolutionary changes in the human environment to which agriculture led required the introduction of the unnatural values Jesus (and other religious prophets) taught to "save" humanity from the disconnect between human nature and the environment that resulted from what is represented by Eve's eating from the Tree of Knowledge.”
― Robert S. McElvaine, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America

“proselytizers”
― Robert S. McElvaine, The Great Depression: America 1929-1941

“The essence of having faith in what Jesus had faith in and being a Jesus Follower is to engage in a very simple but extraordinarily difficult practice that is best captured in a single word: empathy.”
― Robert S. McElvaine, Grand Theft Jesus: The Hijacking of Religion in America