Home > Author > Brian D. McLaren
181 " 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
182 " 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. "
183 " Won’t I be seeking some status of superiority? "
184 " Some of them moved to the desert or wilderness, seeking to create monastic communities where faith expressing itself in love could be experimented with as the norm. Others formed schools and missions or launched new congregations, orders, and movements, translating their spiritual breakthrough into compassionate organizing and action. "
― Brian D. McLaren , Faith after Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do about It
185 " stay Christian while rejecting supremacy and embracing solidarity instead. "
186 " Traditional theologians use another word for solidarity: incarnation, "
187 " What identity is more fraught with self-delusion and unacknowledged wrongdoing than American citizenship? "
188 " need to renounce my citizenship?4 "
189 " But to feel both innocent and superior because of my innocence doesn’t seem terribly innocent. "
190 " knowing that people may not want to hear what I really feel needs to be written "
191 " will eventually find myself an isolated misanthrope, "
192 " 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. "
193 " helping human nature and society mature in their moral and spiritual development, evolving in the direction of nonviolence and love before it’s too late. "
194 " If enough individuals are full of despair and anger in their hearts, there will be violence in the streets. If enough individuals are full of greed and fear in their hearts, there will be pollution in the rivers and toxins in the air. If enough individuals are full of supremacy and privilege in their hearts, there will be racism and oppression in society. You can’t remove the external social symptoms without treating the corresponding internal personal diseases. But "
― Brian D. McLaren , The Great Spiritual Migration: How the World's Largest Religion Is Seeking a Better Way to Be Christian
195 " In each case, the answer is the same: we clergy (I speak as part of the problem) are caught in a tangled web of conflicts of interest, most (if not all) involving money. Because of my years in parish ministry, I feel the pain on all sides. I understand why a large percentage of our pastors become the kinds of company men we considered in the previous chapter. 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. "
196 " Why can’t we admit that focusing on getting our words and beliefs right has not succeeded in helping us be good? "
197 " 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. "
198 " 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. "
199 " have no hope for the church reforming or renewing. My only hope is that it collapses and dies soon, before it does too much more harm, so something new can be resurrected.” Others had hope for renewal but talked in terms of centuries, not years or even decades. Latter-Day Saints, Adventists, Unitarians, and many others have reached out to me about their similar spiritual frustrations in their unique contexts. "
200 " Locate an evil, and you’ll find the love of money at or near the root of it. "