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

by Brian D. McLaren

___ Determine what outcomes we intend from our sermons. Determine whether longer sermons should be replaced with shorter sermons followed by dialogue, or whether sermons should be replaced entirely with conversations. ___ Rewrite our eucharistic liturgy so that the meanings we intend are clear each time we celebrate. ___ Review our current facilities. Are they necessary? Can they be better used by us and by other organizations to contribute to our larger vision? Should they be sold? ___ Review our foundational documents—creeds, doctrinal statements, bylaws, etc. Do the same with our website. Decide how elements of each can be replaced, clarified, simplified, or otherwise improved, and hold a vote to do so. ___ Remember that we won’t get this right the first time. We are embarking on a long-term growth process, so these steps are just a beginning. Plan a celebration when we complete these first steps. Then learn from our mistakes and continue the process.

Any who embark on a process like this should prepare for conflict, because no meaningful change process has ever gone unopposed. When opposition inevitably arises, we need to remember: even critics and opponents cannot be thrown away. So we will need to learn how to win their trust when t...

I understand why many want to throw Christianity away. But again: if you throw Christianity away, someone else will have to deal with it, because there is no away.

I believe now is the time to rediscover the redeemable, recyclable qualities of Christianity and other religions, to re-consecrate them and appropriately reverence them, even as we tell the inconvenient and unpopular truths of their harmful histories. Beneath the obvious flaws there are still treasures, treasures we would be fools to discard.

A simple thought experiment, I think, can remind us of those treasures. To put a spin on John Lennon’s beautiful song, imagine there’s no religion. Imagine there’s no set of institutions, movements, and communities dedicated to human meaning, human morality, and human imagination of a better future. Imagine there’s no set of practitioners who are dedicated to the development of the human capacities for wonder, generosity, repentance, and grace. Imagine there’s no set of human traditions seeking to preserve the deepest spiritual wisdom of our ancestors and passing that wisdom on to new generations. Imagine there’s no network of local spiritual communities—Catholic nuns and friars serving the poor and forgotten, Evangelical missionaries caring for addicts and the homeless, Mainline Protestants and Eastern Or...

It may be that we will only see the secular’s true value by imagining the loss of it. When we imagine those scenarios, I think we begin to see that the religious and the secular are not enemies. Like male and female, like day and night, like waking and sleep, like faith and doubt, they need each other. It’s not that religion is holy and the secular is profane. It’s that both religion and the secular can be holy, and both can be desecrated, recalling again Wendell Berry’s wise words.7 Ultimately, the religious and the secular are not two things, but one: life.

Doctrine of Discovery,

Diana Butler Bass, Kaitlin Curtice, Brian Zahnd, Jacqui Lewis, Jonathan Martin, Anne Lamott, Doug Pagitt, Lisa Sharon Harper, Rob Bell, Sarah Bessey, Philip Clayton, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Steve Chalke, Tripp Fuller, Fr. Richard Rohr, Sr. Joan Chittister, Doug Pagitt, Sr. Simone Campbell, Fr. James Martin, Sr. Ilia Delio, Fr. James Alison, Mike McHargue, David Dark, Pete Enns, Frank Schaeffer, Glenn Siepert, and Wil Gafney.