Christianity After Religion Quotes

“Christianity did not begin with a confession. It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community, into forming relationships based on love and service.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

“If we think of belonging only as membership in a club, organization, or church, we miss the point. Belonging is the risk to move beyond the world we know, to venture out on pilgrimage, to accept exile. And it is the risk of being with companions on that journey, God, a spouse, friends, children, mentors, teachers, people who came from the same place we did, people who came from entirely different places, saints and sinners of all sorts, those known to us and those unknown, our secret longings, questions, and fears.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

“There is, however, something odd about this pattern. Other than joining a political party, it is hard to think of any other sort of community that people join by agreeing to a set of principles. Imagine joining a knitting group. Does anyone go to a knitting group and ask if the knitters believe in knitting or what they hold to be true about knitting? Do people ask for a knitting doctrinal statement? Indeed, if you start knitting by reading a book about knitting or a history of knitting or a theory of knitting, you will very likely never knit.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

“Spiritual awakening is not ultimately the work of invisible cultural forces. Instead, it is the work of learning to see differently, of prayer, and of conversion. It is something people do.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening

“Although churches seem the most natural space to perform spiritual awakening, the disconcerting reality is that many people in Western society see churches more as museums of religion than sacred stages that dramatize the movement of God's spirit.”
― Diana Butler Bass, Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening