Part II is also divided into ten chapters providing ten reasons to say yes. The chapter titles provide short descriptions of their contents. I've provided the ten chapter titles (i.e. ten reasons to say yes) in the following spoiler. 11. Because Leaving Hurts Allies (and Helps Their Opponents) 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. We’ve seen parallel trendlines of decline emerging among Roman Catholics, Mainline Protestants, and Evangelicals/ Charismatics/ Fundamentalists/ Pentecostals, as increasing numbers of younger Christians drop out of their parents’ traditional expressions of Christianity.

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

There is a way to say both yes and no to the question of staying Christian, McLaren says, by shifting the focus from whether we stay Christian to how we stay human. If Do I Stay Christian? is the question you’re asking—or if it’s a question that someone you love is asking—this is the book you’ve been waiting for. Later that year, Pope Charles IV officially pardoned the city for its crimes of mass murder and theft.9 Some might call that pardon an act of mercy, but it has the scent of coverup and complicity.

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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, In the letter I explained that my approach to parenting was strongly influenced by Christian leaders whose teachings I am now repulsed by.1 I trusted those leaders because they were respected in the Evangelical community to which I belonged and because they used a magic word, biblical, to describe their teaching. Now, I’ve come to see that what they called biblical was actually authoritarian, and I am coming to terms with how much better a parent I could have been if I had found better teachers. This breaks my heart, I wrote, because fatherhood has been the most meaningful experience of my life and I sincerely wanted to do it right. And yet. He believes Christianity can still be a force for good, and it would be a shame to give up on the wealth of its (comparatively short) history and the paragon that is Jesus (whom he provocatively describes as “an indigenous man who prepared for his public ministry with a forty-day vision quest”). The arguments in this section are more emotional, whereas in the previous section they were matter-of-fact. However, McLaren poses a middle option between leaving the religion dramatically and remaining meekly; he calls it “ staying defiantly.” My husband and I read this as a buddy read, and that will be an important concept for us: how can we challenge the status quo of our church, our denomination, this too often staid faith?

Christian Century Brian McLaren offers 10 solid reasons - The Christian Century

But even so, my spiritual life has been restless. I have struggled with Christian identity constantly. Perhaps people could sense this, which would explain why so many people have "come out" to me over the years as thinking about leaving Christian identity. Significant numbers of them have been clergy; when they work "behind the curtain," they see things that make it harder and harder to stay. After laying out reasons to leave and stay, McLaren, in the third and final section of his book, begins by reframing the questions: “ Will we stay Christian? and Will Christianity survive? are less important questions than these: How shall we humans survive and thrive? What good future shall we strive for? How can we align our energies with the divine energy at work in our universe?” In this section, McLaren lays out an agenda that humanists both Christian and secular will likely agree on.As always, McLaren’s writing offers reasoned, thoughtful support for struggling and frustrated Christians, among whom I consider myself to be one. This book will take me another reading and lots of discussion to digest, not because it is difficult to read ( it is not), but because some of the information is so new to me. For example, in the chapter on toxic theology, he details how Christianity has been based on a model of the universe where “worldly things”are allowed to change and evolve, but “ eternal things” are considered perfect and cannot change. He challenges this assumption and offers a gentle introduction to what I believe is “process theology” and asks” why can’t we Christians admit that we, like everything else in the universe are in process and that our religion, like all religions, is actually an event, constantly, unavoidably changing, for better or worse?”

Do I Stay Christian? — The Sophia Society Do I Stay Christian? — The Sophia Society

The basic premise is simple: the faith in which we grew up, or that we adopted, no longer seems to fit the reality of today’s world as we encounter it. So, McLaren suggests three paths: get out (No to the question of the book’s title), stay (Yes), and survive (How). Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, author of The Universal Christ I should probably preface this review by saying I am not sure what my emotional and spiritual status would be if I had not retired in 2014 and been working only part time as a visitation pastor during Trump and COVID. Christianity can be defined liturgically or pragmatically, as a set of rituals you practice. To be a Christian is to engage in some version of Christianity's rituals or practices.

Part Three, “How,” offers ideas for how to build a resilient faith that prioritizes harmony with the environment and with others while sidelining economic concerns. He may not believe in literal hell, but he’s as end-times-oriented as any fire-and-brimstone preacher when he insists, “we have to prepare ourselves to live good lives of defiant joy in the midst of chaos and suffering. This can be done. It has been done by billions of our ancestors and neighbours.” He ends with a supremely practical piece of advice: ask yourself “ whether your current context will allow the highest and best use of your gifts and time.” Lucid and well argued, this is a book I’d recommend to anyone questioning the value of Christianity. The psychology of anti-Semitism is as complex and convoluted as its history. But one thing is clear: anti-Semitism is not like a freak accident that happens randomly to individuals. It’s more like a conspiracy theory that an unscrupulous cable news station spreads among susceptible groups, recruiting the naive as accomplices in ignorance, lies, and bigotry. For most of its history, the Christian religion has been this tawdry cable news station, hosting a wide array of dangerous anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, and in many places, it continues to do so. Important book…Helps you find a deeper and wiser faith " — Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, author of The Universal Christ The step that many of us need to learn how to take at this moment is a step of learning how to simultaneously transcend and include. Many times we want to transcend and reject – I’ve moved beyond something, I now reject it, I hate it, I want to destroy it. But that’s where you recently were, and there are a whole lot of people who are still there.” 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.