The Courage to Be Protestant Quotes

“What is to be gained if we are so intent in reaching out to the unchurched that we then unchurch the reached?”
― David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World

“The experience of living in this modernized world has, indeed, shaken many of the assumptions upon which belief rests. It does so most often in indirect ways. It is more the psychology of our times that undermines Christian belief than it is, say, the arguments against it mounted by the new atheists”
― David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today's World

“What has happened, of course, is that over a period of time our society has slowly exited the moral world and it now lives, instead, in a psychological world. The difference is that in one there is right and wrong and in the other there is not. In this other world, we are comfortable or not, psychologically healthy or not, dysfunctional or not, but we are never sinners.”
― David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today's World

“t takes no courage to sign up as a Protestant. After all, millions have done so throughout the West. They are not in any peril. To live by the truths of historic Protestantism, however, is an entirely different matter. That takes courage in today's context.”
― David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Truth-lovers, Marketers, and Emergents in the Postmodern World

“There are professors, Plantinga drily notes, who have left faculty meetings feeling more enlightened by what they said than by what they heard!”
― David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today's World

“Truth and integrity lie very close to one another. In the absence of what is true, all that remains are power and manipulation. What takes the place once occupied by truth are private agendas, community ideals, rhetorical force, savage ad hominem attacks, fabrications, exaggerations, and power seeking. In the absence of truth, lying becomes the common coin of the realm. And this lying takes on especially virulent forms when it becomes religious. For then God is pressed into service for our personal advantage. The stage is then set for terrible things to happen.”
― David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today's World

“It is true, of course, that great preachers are always few and far between in any age. But in every age there should be enough preachers to do the job, preachers who are conscientious, who know what it is to labor over Scripture during the week and then on Sunday deliver its truth with some conviction, with some insight, with some depth, and with some application to life, and in the Holy Spirit’s power.”
― David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant: Reformation Faith in Today's World