Testimony Quotes

“The wisdom of Martin Luther King Jr. had been long forgotten. “The church must be reminded that it is not to be the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state—never its tool,” King said. “As long as the church is a tool of the state it will be unable to provide even a modicum of bread for men at midnight.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Evangelicals love the Bible. They live their entire lives by it. But they have hugged the Bible so tightly that they have suffocated it.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Do you want to be known for your demands for your rights, even at the potential cost of other people’s lives? Or do you want to be known as the type of Christian who is happy to be inconvenienced to serve the weak around us?”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“And don’t forget, the Son of God himself spent his entire life on earth far from the mountaintop. . . . He was persecuted and punished by a “mountain king” named Pilate and executed next to a thief. When he rose, he appeared not to Caesar but to a small band of ordinary men and women who would become martyrs, not rulers. Christ prevailed . . . not by fighting from the commanding power of the heights, but by fighting from “utterly different terrain.” When scripture calls Christians to “take up your cross and follow me,” it’s declaring . . . that “our mountain is Golgotha”—the dusty Israeli hill where Christ was crucified.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“If we care about knowledge, freedom and peace, then we need to stake a strong claim: anyone can believe anything, but liberal science—open-ended, depersonalized checking by an error-seeking social network—is the only legitimate validator of knowledge, at least in the reality-based community.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“In the life of many churches, the habits of anti-intellectualism are planted early. Children are encouraged to open themselves up to the influence of God, and once they do so, they are told with great specificity what God's will is. When they are young, they often don't realize that what is represented as God's will is really just the views and preferences of those in charge. Adherents may be encouraged to surrender not just their will, but also their independence of thought. They may use their intellect, but only within the narrow structures set up by the rules and teachings of the leaders.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Ignoring politics is possible for those who are comfortable, have enough to eat, do not worry about where they will sleep or what they will wear, and are not victims of injustice. It is a luxury to check out.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Truth starts with the questions. It requires an openness—to other points of view and experiences, to being wrong, to changing one’s mind. A commitment to truth involves a passionate embrace of critical thinking.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“But I was not really shown how to take up my cross and actually follow Christ. The crisis of American Christianity basically boils down to this failure. I still don’t claim to know how to walk the way of the cross or the path of resurrection very well. But I think that the quest to do so is still at the heart of a meaningful faith. What does it look like to live sacrificially but also incarnationally? Christ was God incarnate, made flesh. How do we walk through death to life, here, now?”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“The weak were on their own. This friend felt that those at risk should bear the burden of responsibility for protecting themselves rather than imposing on others precautions against spreading the virus. This was the perfect crystallization of a hyper-individualistic Christianity. In his view, none of us are part of a whole. We are atomized souls who speak to Jesus one on one. “America’s idolatry of individual rights over the common good has made fertile ground to see any inconvenience as persecution,” wrote Shane Claiborne, a Christian author and activist.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“It all brought to mind the words of C. S. Lewis: “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Culture is not a territory to be won; it is instead a resource we are called to steward.”4”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“I felt abandoned by my own father. But it helped me understand how good people could stand by and make excuses for bad people in power. They could not see past their own resentments and bias, even when people they loved were hurting or scared.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“I began to see that the pattern of American history was not a straight line of progress on race but rather an uneven and often painful process of progress followed by backlash. We hadn’t moved as a country from the Emancipation Proclamation to Martin Luther King Jr. to Barack Obama. Rather, the rights of Blacks to vote and hold office and own property were steadily eroded and erased after the end of Reconstruction, the bodies of Black men and women stayed effectively enslaved through convict leasing, and this apartheid system was upheld and enforced through terrorism, mob torture, and vigilante justice.3 Slavery had effectively continued in many parts of the country, under other names, even as America was liberating Europe during World War II.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Our churches always wanted to keep life from being too complicated or messy. We wanted to keep breathing the same purified air we thought we were breathing all the time. Keep the mess out. Keep the complications away. Keep smiling. Keep praying. Keep singing praise songs. Keep raising your hands and closing your eyes. Keep feeling the Holy Spirit. Keep feeling joyful. Keep your soul in hope and faith. Keep your eyes on Jesus.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“There was never an end to the spiritual hamster wheel we were taught to stay on, always measuring our intensity of feeling and spiritual vigor.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“The term stumbled was a gussied-up euphemism, one of the many ways in which we cloaked normal human experience in spiritual language.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“I remember getting the impression that if people left our church and went to another, there was something wrong with them. Only our church had the answers.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Certainty disguised as faith, it turns out, can take people to some bizarre places.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Piper talked forcefully about how the greatest strength of true Christianity is that it gives people the courage to endure defeat and even suffering without bitterness and that this is the way that the faith will advance, not through vanquishing enemies.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“The Advent season offers something remarkable to the church—the calling to live in two places at once,” Rutledge said in a 2016 sermon.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“More than one person I know said that many of the deaths from COVID-19 were among older people or those with bad health. The clear implication was that, well, these people were going to die anyway. But this wasn’t something they said in lament, sad that we had been unable to protect people by doing as much as we could to value life.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“when Jesus was crucified, “the image of God was one of absolute vulnerability.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“I was reminded that retribution does not break cycles of violence and injustice, but grace might.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“It was weak to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Rather, you should do unto others as you feared they were going to do unto you. Better to preemptively strike than to let “them” get you first.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“let someone else praise you, and not your own mouth” (Prov. 27:2).”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much,” Christ said (Luke 16:10).”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“As I looked around me in 2016, I saw conservative White Christians demonstrating much more fear than faith.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“Much of this war mentality came from their theology. They rejected the idea that the line between good and evil runs through the human heart. Rather, they saw the dividing line as running through an invisible world of angels and demons.”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation

“I stripped down my faith to essentials and resolved to build my identity around Jesus Christ, his sacrifice for me, and nothing else. I”
― Jon Ward, Testimony: Inside the Evangelical Movement That Failed a Generation