Quotes from Brian D. McLaren

Spiritual practices are ways of becoming awake and staying awake to God.

In case after case in the past, there is a kind of Bible-quoting intoxication under the influence of which we religious people lose the ability to distinguish between what God says and what we say God says.

There's one thing worse than a failed old religion: a naïve and arrogant new one.

In other words, when the community of faith gathers, its purpose is to equip its members for a life of love and good deeds when the community scatters.

In religion as in parenthood, uncritical loyalty to our ancestors may implicate us in an injustice against our descendants: imprisoning them in the errors of our ancestors.

When would-be reformers arise, they are rejected as heretics, turncoats, troublemakers, disturbers of the peace, traitors, and enemies.

Spiritual] Practices are not for know-it-alls. Practices are for those who feel the need for change, growth, development, learning. Practices are for disciples.

The life-and-death question for each of our churches and denominations may boil down to this: are we a club for the elite who pretend to have arrived or a school for disciples who are still on the way?

Yes, you can choose to say you believe something. But whether you actually and authentically do believe it is less choosable than it seems.

In Christ, God is supreme, but not in the old discredited paradigm of supremacy: God is the supreme healer, the supreme friend, the supreme lover, the supreme life-giver who self-empties in gracious love for all. The king of kings and lord of lords is the servant of all and the friend of sinners. The so-called weakness and foolishness of God are greater than the so-called power and wisdom of human regimes.

we pose a serious threat to the very existence of humanity.

With Sir Isaac Newton's laws of physics, and God being seen as the powerful machine operator who perfectly controls the machine through these orderly laws, we end up with the opposite problem, the very opposite of the ancient situation. Now, instead of chaos reigning and us wondering if there's any order, order reigns supreme, and we wonder if there's any freedom.

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?

My arguments with my Inner Fundamentalist tend to end like this Ã¢â'¬Â¦ or not end. They just go on and on.

A growing proportion of smart and honest Christians of each new generation will abandon the sinking ship, just as they have been doing for centuries in Europe and decades in the United States. In the not-too-distant future, Christianity will only exist in those enclaves where authoritarian leaders rule over submissive flocks who enfold their religious lives within the assumptions of the first axial age.

War is one of the hallmarks of the old humanity.)

the supreme value of all authoritarians: winning, by concentrating power in the hands of their group and its supreme leader.

they continue to perpetuate patriarchy and proclaim a patriarchal universe.

If you see Christian identity as a pathway to innocence—as many if not most Christians currently see it

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?

They uncritically deploy verses like Romans 13:1–2 to squash dissent ("Submit to the governing authorities, for all authority is instituted by God and anyone who opposes authority is standing against what God has established").

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

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.

Won't I be seeking some status of superiority?