Do I Stay Christian? Quotes

“What if the growth of the new movement, the new humanity, the new social creation or construction depends on the old one losing its hegemony?”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“The question that must be addressed is not how to care for the planet, but how to care for each of the planet’s millions of human and natural neighborhoods, each of its millions of small pieces and parcels of land, each one of which is in some precious way different from all the others.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Since many Christians see God as an absolute authoritarian, we shouldn’t be surprised when they prefer authoritarian leaders to democratic ones.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“one of the truest, most honest sentences of our lives: “Wow, we don’t really know.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“do we Christians want to continue to enfranchise scoundrels who hold the right beliefs but perpetuate harm?”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“They must constantly negotiate among their own moral and spiritual instincts, the interests of their institutions, their personal concerns about their own salaries and retirement accounts, and professional and social status. In short, they must master the art of ethical compromise as a matter of vocational survival”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“most Protestant Reformers did not reform the violence to which the Catholic Church had surrendered itself.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Protestants had a special appetite for witch trials; over 90 percent of the trials took place in Protestant lands.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“In the end, Christian Zionism reduces Jews to the status of pawns in the fulfillment of end-times prophecies that many Christian preachers love to speak and write about.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Nobody is born a religious jerk. It takes a religion to help someone become that way.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“You may be frustrated to see how susceptible to authoritarianism people in these early stages are, especially because, as C. S. Lewis famously quipped, they may be as willing to kill for their faith as die for it.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“will eventually find myself an isolated misanthrope,”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“knowing that people may not want to hear what I really feel needs to be written”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“need to renounce my citizenship?4”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“What identity is more fraught with self-delusion and unacknowledged wrongdoing than American citizenship?”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Traditional theologians use another word for solidarity: incarnation,”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Won’t I be seeking some status of superiority?”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“If you see Christian identity as a pathway to innocence—as many if not most Christians currently see it,”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“In fact, it’s hard to find an arena of public life where the innocence formula isn’t a factor, providing a fast and easy shortcut to both purity and superiority.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“But to feel both innocent and superior because of my innocence doesn’t seem terribly innocent.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Each white person gets to be considered on their own terms, and every other group must answer as a whole for the crimes of the one or the few.”1”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Christian white people are afforded the luxury of individuality that is denied for religious and ethnic minorities.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“part in the story, but nobody has the last word. I must see myself and my colleagues in the same way, with humility, because unless we proceed wisely, our branch on the evolutionary tree of life will also be short. There is more than one way to go extinct.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“if that’s true, might we, far from being disloyal heretics, actually have the opportunity to become the evolutionary descendants of Jesus who are called to carry on his radically progressive vision in our brief time on this earth?”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“and metaphorical message that required me to face life’s paradoxes squarely and be humbled by them.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“we consider the religion a lost cause anyway).”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“How one is remembered doesn’t matter when one is focused on integrity.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Actually, maybe the problem is not us. Maybe the problem is Christianity. Maybe the product doesn’t perform according to its advertising. Maybe there’s something wrong with the religion itself, at least in its current form.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“a patriarchal religion with a violent past it has yet to acknowledge and address, a haven for authoritarian leaders and the followers who serve them, happy to exploit the labor and enjoy the adulation of women, people of color, and sexual minorities, but defiant against accepting them as equal partners in ministry.”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned

“Why can’t we admit that focusing on getting our words and beliefs right has not succeeded in helping us be good?”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned