David Crumm > David's Quotes

“Better is one day in the company of those bullied by Christians but loved by Jesus than thousands in the company of those wielding scripture to harm the weak and defenseless.”
― David P. Gushee, Changing Our Mind: A call from America's leading evangelical ethics scholar for full acceptance of LGBT Christians in the Church

“I just called the slaveholder version of Christianity "false." I believe that. But note that in situations of conflict participants view reality differently. The more intractable the conflict, especially where both sides have the capacity to hurt each other, the more difficult it is to determine who is "victim" and who is "oppressor." Think about how nothing is quite as predictable and fruitless as hearing estranged spouses blame each other for being abusive or oppressive. Liberation theology dealt with this perceptual gulf in conflicted situations by speaking of the "epistemological privilege of the poor/oppressed." This meant: the view of the truth of a conflictual situation is clearer from the underside than from the position of power. But this assumes that we know who is on the underside and who holds the power. I am not saying that the exodus-liberation-deliverance motif is invalidated; I am saying that few situations present themselves to us in such clarity as Exod. 1-2 enslavement and infanticide do.”
― David P. Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World's Future

“Human life is sacred: this means that each and every human being has been set apart for designation as a being of elevated status and dignity. Each human being must therefore be viewed with reverence and treated with due respect and care, with special attention to preventing any desecration or violation of a human being.”
― David P. Gushee, The Sacredness of Human Life: Why an Ancient Biblical Vision Is Key to the World's Future

“American evangelicalism now requires acquiescence to attitudes and practices that fundamentally (aha!) negate core teachings of Jesus”
― David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity

“The sense that card-carrying American evangelicalism now requires acquiescence to attitudes and practices that negate core teachings of Jesus is fueling today’s massive exodus.”
― David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity

“Yet whether a culture condemns or accepts homosexuality, heterosexuality prevails and homosexuality survives.”
― David P. Gushee, Changing Our Mind: Definitive 3rd Edition of the Landmark Call for Inclusion of LGBTQ Christians with Response to Critics

“It is a loop between church, Spirit, and Bible, and it is enough.”
― David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity

“It says something really terrible when the least safe place to deal with sexual orientation and identity issues is the Christian family and church.”
― David P. Gushee, Changing Our Mind: Definitive 3rd Edition of the Landmark Call for Inclusion of LGBTQ Christians with Response to Critics

“It is also not as simple as saying that Christians accept the moral laws offered in the Old Testament, just not the ceremonial, cultic, dietary, or civil laws—because, as Old Testament scholar Martin Noth wrote, “Here in the Old Testament … there is no question of different categories of commandment, but only of the Will of God binding on Israel, revealed in a great variety of concrete requirements.” [24] Any differentiation of authority in terms of categories of Old Testament legal materials is foreign to the materials themselves. And no clear delineation along these lines is offered in the New Testament. It is also not as simple as saying Christians may not accept all the laws offered in the Old Testament, but we do seek to practice the principles behind them, as Gordon Wenham, among others, has suggested. [25] While this move is often compelling, other times the principles are not clear, and still other times they are clear but we cannot accept them as Christians. Consider the principle of collective responsibility and therefore collective punishment of the entire population of a town for its prevailing religious practices, or the principle that the “unclean” (like menstruating women) should be excluded from community.  If we say that Christians may not accept all the laws or the principles offered in the Old Testament, but we are committed to belief in the core character of God as revealed there, such as the idea that God is holy and demands holiness, this is better. But this does not resolve the question of whether all same-sex relationships violate the character of a holy God.”
― David P. Gushee, Changing Our Mind: Definitive 3rd Edition of the Landmark Call for Inclusion of LGBTQ Christians with Response to Critics

“If evangelical gatekeepers can swallow keeping children in cages, mocking the Sermon on the Mount, and following leaders in thrall to Trumpist bigotry, why would anyone respect their discernment, value their praise, or fear their critique?”
― David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity

“In general, evangelical fear of liberal learning has contributed to what Mark Noll properly described as “the scandal of the evangelical mind”—which is, in Noll’s immortal phrase, “that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”
― David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity

“Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art: Thou my best thought by day or by night, Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light. .”
― David P. Gushee, Yours Is the Day, Lord, Yours Is the Night: A Morning and Evening Prayer Book

“It may not be quite enough to find a nice inclusive Episcopal church led by Progressive White Cleric to replace the lily-white rocking megachurch led by Conservative White Guy in Jeans on Stage.”
― David P. Gushee, After Evangelicalism: The Path to a New Christianity

“We can share hope with others.
It's a powerful pillar in my life. In other words: Hope is not merely one person's dream in isolation. From the very beginning of human life on earth, hope has been a currency we can give and receive.”
― Howard Brown

“(Observing the chaos during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago from his hotel room high above the fray) A great stillness rose up from the street through all the small noise of clubbing and cries, small sirens, sigh of loaded arrest vans as off they pulled, shouts of police as they wheeled in larger circles, the intersection clearing further, then further, a stillness rose through the steel and stone of the hotel, congregating in the shocked centers of every room where delegates and their wives and Press and campaign workers innocent until now of the intimate working of social force, looked down now into the murderous paradigm of Vietnam there beneath them at this huge intersection of this great city.”
― Norman Mailer, Miami and the Siege of Chicago

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut