Some have found or formed creative faith communities where they can walk a new path of deeper contemplation, spiritual activism, and more expansive theology. Others have dropped the Christian label while becoming more Christ-like than they’ve ever been in their day-to-day way of life.

Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the

I was taught the heroic stories of Christian missionaries, of special interest to me because my paternal grandfather was a Scottish missionary to Angola. (But I was never taught about the harmful legacy of much missionary activity or about the catastrophic effects of European colonialism, to which the modern missionary movement was often fused at the hip.4) McLaren ends the book by calling for a radical redefinition of Christianity to match his humanist vision: “I could not stay a Christian if my only option was the old way, the old way of white Christianity, the old way of patriarchal Christianity, the old way of Theo-Capitalistic Chris­tianity, the old way of violent, exclusive, and authoritarian Christianity with its suppressed but real history of cruelty.” Lest his readers begin to lose hope at this point, he moves forward into a positive vision for Christian faith:

We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation and Activation What lies ahead is speculative, but it involves change both institutionally and personally. Any change, however, will rest on the foundation that proceeds from an honest assessment of what is. And that assessment is the most valuable contribution by McClaren..." The stories we typically tell ourselves about Christianity keep us living in our comfortable delusion of innocence. For example, as a young Christian, I was taught that heroic Christians like William Wilberforce ended slavery. (I wasn’t taught that other Christians gained unimaginable wealth through slavery, or that the vast majority of white Christians in the South defended slavery either actively or tacitly, or that America’s largest denomination formed to perpetuate slavery on biblical grounds.2) The citizens of Strasbourg rounded up the community of [2,000] Jews, brought them to the Jewish cemetery, and said that it was their religion that was leading them to poison the wells where Christians drank—and that was the source of the bubonic plague. They had either to renounce their religion or be killed on the spot. Half of the Jews held to their religion, and they were burned alive. It’s not hard to see how this kind of vicious rhetoric, smoldering deep in the German Christian psyche, caught fire in the Nazi death camps, gas chambers, and mass graves four centuries later.

Do I Stay Christian? - Macmillan Do I Stay Christian? - Macmillan

Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-faith World Frankly, I am among them. Some days, I think the “brand” of Christianity is unsalvageable, and I suspect that the religion’s ugliest, most dangerous days are ahead of us, so it’s best to get out now. Other days, I think things may finally be getting bad enough that more Christians will be ready to face and embrace the changes we need, so I should stay in the struggle as an insider. I was an early adopter of Brian McLaren but haven’t kept up with his writing because a lot of it was reiterating arguments I was already familiar with. Your podcast has spurred me on to catch up with his latest thinking.Rome’s empire created a domination pyramid that put a powerful and violent man on the top, with chains of command and submission that put everyone else in their place beneath the supreme leader. God’s empire created a network of solidarity and mutuality that turned conventional pyramids upside down and gave “the last, the least, and the lost” the honored place at the table.

Do I Stay Christian? by Brian D. McLaren | Review

Christianity can be defined politically, as a way of organizing people for political action (or inaction). To be a Christian is to act as part of a coalition with shared theo-political aims. The Rev. Wil Gafney, Ph.D.+, The Right Rev. Sam B. Hulsey Professor of Hebrew Bible, Brite Divinity School, Ft. Worth, Texas I’ve lost touch with Chad in recent years. He was a likable leader of a Christian organization who read my books and sought me out privately for guidance on a few occasions. He once invited me to speak at a large conference he organized. When I arrived, he escorted me through the crowd and whispered in my ear, “We’re glad to have you speak to our conference. But we almost lost some of our major donors when they found out we invited you. That’s why we couldn’t have you give a lecture, but could only let you be interviewed onstage. We had to title your session ‘Interview with a Heretic.’ I hope you don’t mind us calling you a heretic. It’s the only way we can get you in front of our constituency.” Regarding Pope Francis, McLaren, says: “Of course, he isn’t saying and doing everything some of us wish he would. He knows he has to bring his people along at a pace that won’t blow up the whole Catholic Church, and I can only imagine the threats and resistance he faces behind the scenes. But when you read his letter to the world, Laudato si, don’t you feel how incredibly blessed we are to have him at a time of ecological and economic collapse? And when you read its sequel, Fratelli tutti, don’t you see it as a call to exactly the kind of solidarity we dreamed of in the previous chapter? In light of these remarkable breakthroughs, how could we give up now?” Christianity can be defined demographically, as a sociological or anthropological identity. To be a Christan is to identify yourself as a member of a recognized group.A priest/historian from later in that century, Jakob Twinger von Königshofen (1346–1420), recounted that the motives for the massacre included money as well as plague-inspired panic. After the slaughter,