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

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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?” By the time I was a young pastor, all things Jewish were downright trendy, and many Evangelicals started celebrating “messianic Passover Seders” and many joined “messianic synagogues.” Rome’s empire was preoccupied with money. God’s empire was preoccupied with generosity and was deeply suspicious of money. Christianity can be defined missionally, as a program, plan, or movement for intentional action in the world. To be a Christian is to take on that mission as your own.

Do I Stay Christian Book Review of Brian McLaren’s Do I Stay Christian

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?” I am not truly considering leaving Christianity, but I suspected McLaren would be able to help me put into words many of the feelings I've been wrestling with over the last few years. I was right. McLaren was raised in a very conservative strain of Christianity and spentAs a clergyperson who communicates with religious skeptics on a regular basis, my instinct is that most people struggling with faith will find the first section (leave) more convincing than the second (stay). However, for those on the fence who are looking for reasons to stay, the second section will prove helpful. In part two, McLaren lays out ten reasons for remaining Christian. For example, he argues that leaving hurts the people who are trying to transform Christianity into something better, and they need our help, not our abandonment. And if we stay, we can fight for a better faith from the inside, providing critique and energy for reformation. Also, rather than going it alone, we need the help of a global network of like-minded people to make the world better. He also notes that Christianity is still young, historically speaking, and needs more time to mature and improve. I put my whole heart into parenting my four kids. They’re now adults, two with kids of their own, and judging by the way our kids turned out, you would think I was an amazing dad. But last night I wrote a letter to one of our adult children to ask forgiveness for a significant flaw in my fatherhood: my approach to discipline.

Do I Stay Christian?” Book Review of Brian McLaren’s “ Do I Stay Christian?”

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) I was born a decade after the Holocaust, at a time when fundamentalist Christians like Jerry Falwell, Sr., seemed to embrace Judaism as Christianity’s equal partner in creating the West in general and the United States in particular. Falwell constantly spoke of the “Judeo-Christian tradition.” (A rabbi friend of mine noted, with appropriate skepticism, “Judeo-Christian usually just means Christian.”) Falwell’s son carried on the pairing.11 Along with TV preacher John Hagee and many others, the Falwells became fervent supporters of the nation of Israel, offering further evidence, to some at least, of their anti-anti-Semitism. It’s clear, however, that their brand of Christian Zionism bears only superficial resemblance to Jewish Zionism. In the end, Christian Zionism reduces Jews to the status of pawns in the fulfillment of end-times prophecies that many Christian preachers love to speak and write about. 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.

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This elitist attitude has been central to Christian anti-Semitism through the centuries. Large swaths of Christians embraced and still embrace a doctrine called “supersessionism.” Yes, the Jews were “God’s chosen people” in the past, this doctrine says, but ever since they rejected Jesus, we Christians have replaced (or superseded) them. Some modified their supersessionism to say that God chose two groups of people, first Jews and then Christians. But either way, the supposed pro-Israel stance of many conservative Christians today has a chilling dimension: Jews in Israel are useful to these Christians because of their supposed role in bringing in “the last days,” during or after which they will either convert or be sent to the fires of hell—as if God in the end will outdo the worst Christian hate crimes against Jews. Dubbed “a heroic gate-crasher” by New York Times bestselling author Glennon Doyle, Brian D. McLaren explores reasons to leave or stay within the church and if so how… In Do I Stay Christian?, McLaren wrestles the scandalous theological questions and conscientiousness objections that keep so many of us awake at night—and he does so with the courage and grace that have become his trademark. If you're wondering whether it's time to shake off your sandals and walk away from Christianity, I beg you to read this book before making up your mind." The problem is, white evangelicals haven’t gotten the message. Their Faustian deal with Donald Trump gave them enormous political power, as well as a willing strongman to enforce their white fundamentalism on the wider culture. Worse, their compromised Supreme Court is now handing down theocratic rulings that will have an impact on American public and private life for decades to come. The current evangelical attempt to bring heaven down to earth has resulted in unleashing a veritable hell. And though they are declining in numbers, their power over culture is increasing, providing uncomfortable similarities between the United States in 2022 and South Africa in the dying days of white rule. Driven by militant Christianity, America is drifting toward an apartheid system, leaving many of us to wonder if America’s future is South Africa’s past. Is it any wonder then, why millions of us want nothing to do with this corrupted form of faith?

ANNOUNCING: Do I Stay Christian? (May 2022) - Brian McLaren

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. THIS is a book about conversion. Brian McLaren, an American pastor and writer, poses his title question to those who can’t quite accept a Christianity that they have outgrown. Over these years, we’ve seen the Religious Right become more strident and powerful, creating alliances with white supremacists, climate change deniers, and more recently, anti-masker/anti-vaxxer insurrectionists. We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation and Activation 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)

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? by Brian D. McLaren | Waterstones

McLaren is one of the important gurus in my life. This follows on closely from his previous book, Faith after Doubt, which I reviewed last year. You might think that the title question is only rhetorical and the answer is a firmly implied Yes. But what’s refreshing is that the author genuinely does not have a secret agenda. He doesn’t mind whether you continue to consider yourself Christian or not; what he does care about is inviting people into a spiritual life that includes working towards a regenerative future, the only way the human race is going to survive. And he believes that people of all faiths and none can be a part of that.

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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.”