“So if the difference between Christian faith and all other forms of spirituality is that Christian faith offers a relational dynamic with God, why are we cloaking this relational dynamic in formulas? Are we jealous of the Mormons?” Author Donald Miller, in “Searching for God Knows What”
“You’ve seen that repeatedly if you watch much religious television. The health-wealth-and-prosperity gospel advocated by so many televangelists is the ultimate example of this kind of fantasy faith… Christ is no longer the focus of the message. While His name is mentioned from time to time, the real focus is inward, not upward. People are urged to look within; to try to understand themselves; to come to grips with their problems, their hurts, their disappointments; to have their needs met, their desires granted, their wants fulfilled.” John MacArthur
“The Christian thing freaks out my Jewish friends, who know me as a know-it-all, self-educated Marxist intellectual with leftist tendencies. My response to them is that throughout history, potent political force comes when spiritual fervour is mixed with the struggle for social justice. That’s the essence of Jewish and African-American traditional music. This is a dark time in human history. In the face of fear and oppression we can find joy in spiritual music. It reaches for transcendence. It’s about trying to break out of the present and reaching a universal place.” Jewish vocalist David Wall, on singing traditional gospel music
“The Gnostics’ beliefs were often viewed by bishops and early church leaders as unorthodox, and they were frequently denounced as heretics. The discoveries of Gnostic texts… have produced a new generation of Christians who now regard the Bible not as the literal word of God, but as a product of historical and political forces that determined which texts should be included in the canon, and which edited out. For that reason, the discoveries have proved deeply troubling for many believers. The Gospel of Judas portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus, but as his most favored disciple and willing collaborator.” New York Times, “‘Gospel of Judas’ Surfaces After 1,700 Years”
“Houston megachurch pastor and inspirational TV host Osteen offers an overblown and redundant self-help debut. Many Christian readers will undoubtedly be put off by the book’s shallow name-it-and-claim-it theology; although the first chapter claims that ‘we serve the God that created the universe,’ the book as a rule suggests the reverse: it’s a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals… Theologically, its materialism and superficial portrayal of God as the granter of earthly wishes will alienate many Christian readers who can imagine a much bigger God.” Publishers Weekly, on Joel Osteen’s book, “Your Best Life Now : 7 Steps to Living At Your Full Potential”
“Anything that gets people talking about Jesus is good… People are very interested in the idea that the Church has secret information they are hiding. It demonstrates that we no longer live in the ‘modernist’ world. You can not take some rational points and reason up from them. The saddest thing is that a lot of people are desperate for spiritual answers but the last place they’d look for them is in the church. That’s a real indictment.” Early Christianity historian Dr. Tom Wright, on The Da Vinci Code
“What Jesus meant is the most deeply potent political, cultural, social question. To ignore it, or leave it to the bullies and the salesmen of the televangelist sects, means to walk away from a central battle over American identity. At the moment, the idea of Jesus has been hijacked by people with a series of causes that do not reflect his teachings. The Bible is a long book, and even the Gospels have plenty in them, some of it seemingly contradictory and hard to puzzle out. But love your neighbor as yourself - not do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but love your neighbor as yourself - will suffice as a gloss. There is no disputing the centrality of this message, nor is there any disputing how easy it is to ignore that message… American churches, by and large, have done a pretty good job of loving the neighbor in the next pew… But if the theology makes it harder to love the neighbor a little farther away - particularly the poor and the weak - then it’s a problem. And the dominant theologies of the moment do just that. They undercut Jesus, muffle his hard words, deaden his call, and in the end silence him.” Bill McKibben, The Christian Paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong
“There’s no question that the president’s faith is real, that it’s authentic, that it’s genuine, and there’s no question that it’s calculated.” Doug Wead, a George W. Bush family friend
“There is definitely a secular bias, because speaking emotionally doesn’t work anymore. There’s a rational, scientific privilege, and all other sorts of language are matters of the heart and don’t have a place.” Munir Jiwa, anthropologist
“Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” Revelations 4:2