Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

by Brian D. McLaren

Christianity evolved as, among other things, a language, a set of words pointing to a set of ideas. This language was necessary to liberate people from another language, the language of empire and domination. This liberating language evolved and shaped the inner architecture of generations of Christians, furnishing them with foundational terms like sin, grace, and salvation. These terms were woven together in stories, and the stories were woven together in a framing story—another phenomenon of language. But like everything, language evolves. Meanings modify. What once was liberating can become a cage in which we pace, dreaming of freedom. Many people today are pacing the cage. Old Christian words have been emptied of their substance, or their meanings have mutated. The old framing story doesn’t fit the reality we experience and feels instead like a conspiracy theory or manic fantasy. We can’t help but feel that the language of Christianity creates a make-believe world, a rabbit hole, an alternate reality, where angels and demons are real but climate change and evolution aren’t. The gap between actual reality and the Christian linguistic reality stretches our credulity to a breaking point. That’s why many can no longer stay Christian, and that’s why many of us who choose to stay Christian must deconstruct the Christianity we inherited—and shake off much of its language. But we can’t underestimate the staying power of conventional Christianity. Even if millions of us renounc...