Quotes from Diana Butler Bass

Theologians pitted devotion and morality against belief, defining faith no longer as a way of life but rather as intellectual assent to certain creeds or confessions; their books were filled with "quarrelling, disputing, scolding, and reviling."38

The Abrahamic religions refer to God as Spirit, the holy wind animating life.

A People's History is not a nostalgia trip. In these pages I hope it is clear that no period of church history is superior to another. Rather, each time unfolds on its own historical merits, as Christians struggle to enact Jesus's command to love God and neighbor in a unique human context.

hope. And the possibility of history's transformation lies through that door…. Spiritual visionaries have often been the first to walk through that door, because in order to walk through it, first you have to see it, and then you have to believe that something lies on the other side.2 A

Phyllis Tickle, Marcus Borg, Brian McLaren, Barbara Brown Taylor, Jim Wallis, and Lauren Winner for their encouragement, support, and friendship. Anne Howard, Joseph Stewart-Sicking, Linnae Himsl Peterson, Kathy Staudt, Jonathan Wilson, and Howard Anderson are good friends who offered insights along the way.

doubting their faith, and those just hanging on is that church or Christianity has failed them, wounded them, betrayed them, or maybe just bored them—and they do not want to

The biggest issue of the twenty-first century is not necessarily the "decline" of neighborhood. It may be that we have all moved to a new neighborhood and have not learned how to get along with the new neighbors.

When I get a little money I buy books," he confessed to a friend. "If any is left, I buy food and clothes."13

When I asked about this, my mother replied that there were Jesus's rules and there were Methodist rules. The first set, apparently, were inviolate; and the second, not so much. She said that Methodist rules were "old-fashioned.

Christianity succeeded because it "prompted and sustained attractive, liberating, and effective social relations and organizations."3 Translated from sociologist-speak, that means Christians did risky, compelling, and good things that helped people.

Although churches seem the most natural space to perform spiritual awakening, the disconcerting reality is that many people in Western society see churches more as museums of religion than sacred stages that dramatize the movement of God's spirit.

Christianity did not begin with a confession. It began with an invitation into friendship, into creating a new community, into forming relationships based on love and service.

With social media, you have the chance to be the Lutherans that Luther imagined.