Disunity in Christ Quotes

“People can meet God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that’s what Jesus did in the incarnation and on the cross.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“The biases we hold against other groups have the ability to wreak havoc on our crosscultural interactions. Before we enter into such interactions, we must do the difficult work of addressing our biases and blind spots.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Here's the thing: I rarely come across Christian organizations that truly want diversity. Oh, everyone says they want diversity, and some organizations even go through all of the pomp and circumstance of launching expensive diversity initiatives from time to time. But really, what many people want is a group of happy minorities who will happily pose for media publications and happily assimilate to the dominant culture without so much as a peep. Everyone wants diversity, but no one wants to actually be diverse.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“we adopt an inclusive identity, we are more likely to see how other groups can help us and are more willing to receive constructive criticism from them.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Rather than using his power to distance himself from us, Jesus uses it to approach us. He follows his own commandment to love your neighbor as yourself—often to his detriment, I might add—by pursuing us with great tenacity in spite of our differences. He jumps a lot of hurdles to reach us.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“If we are a body, then we are one that is afflicted with an autoimmune disease.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Research suggests that diversity initiatives are doomed to fail among Christian groups that idolize their cultural identities. Due to this idolatry, minority group members are not invited as valuable members of the all-inclusive we and their cultural perspectives are not seen as valuable and necessary. Rather, they are seen as threatening and wholly inaccurate simply because they are different from our idolized cultural perspectives. As a result, if they are invited to participate in the organization at all, they are invited to participate as them—subordinate "others" and second-class citizens who are bound to be dissatisfied. This is no good. Until we relativize our cultural identities and adopt an inclusive group identity, our diversity initiatives are doomed to failure because we will never fully appreciate our diverse brothers and sisters and they will not feel appreciated.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Examples of black sheep are a pro-choice Republican and a pro-death-penalty Democrat. For the most part, the individual buys into the majority ideology, but fails to toe the party line when it comes to one issue. Yeah, we hate those people.

As ingroup members who disagree on one or two issues, black sheep blur the cultural lines that separate the ingroup and the outgroup. For this great offense, ingroup members hate black sheep and reserve their worst judgment for them. In fact, studies show that ingroup members treat black sheep worse than they treat outgroup members.

Outgroup members are supposed to disagree with us. As such, we are not as threatened by their disagreement. If anything, their disagreement with us further solidifies ingroup/outgroup boundaries by showing us that we are different from them. Ingroup members, on the other hand, are supposed to agree with us, so we are shocked and appalled if they express disagreement. Further, the fact that they disagree with us blurs the ideological lines between the groups. If one of our group members agrees with them on this important issue, then maybe we are not so different from them after all. The mere thought of this makes us feel angry and threatened.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“Describing the views of many Christians, Emerson and Smith write, "People are comfortable with different worship styles, want to be with familiar people, and have different expectations about congregations. For these reasons, if congregations end up being . . . homogeneous, it is acceptable, if not preferable."

Many of the evangelicals that Emerson and Smith interviewed believed that their desire to remain in a homogenous church had nothing to do with bigotry or intolerance. However, research on group processes shows that group separation and prejudice have a bidirectional relationship—that is, prejudice tends to result in division between groups and division between groups tends to result in prejudice. What begins as seemingly harmless homogeneity often snowballs into distrust, inaccurate perceptions of other groups, prejudice and hostility.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“As we'll discover in the following chapter, culturally homogeneous churches are adept at targeting and attracting a certain type of person and creating a strong group identity. However, attendees at such churches are at a higher risk for creating the overly simplistic and divisive Right Christian and Wrong Christian labels that dangerously lead to inaccurate perceptions of other Christians as well as hostility and conflict. What often begins as an effective and culturally specific way to reach people for Christ ends up stifling through growth as disciples. Perhaps this is because we often fail to make a distinction between evangelism and discipleship. People can meet God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that's what Jesus did in the incarnation and on the cross. Discipleship is crosscultural. When we meet Jesus around people who are just like us and then continue to follow Jesus with people who are just like us, we stifle our growth in Christ and open ourselves up to a world of division. However, when we're rubbing elbows in Christian fellowship with people who are different from us, we can learn from each other and grow more like Christ. Like iron sharpens iron.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart

“If we are a body, then we are on that is afflicted with an autoimmune disease.”
― Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep Us Apart