Current Read

My current read is Do I Stay Christian? by Brian D. McLaren.

In this book McLaren takes an honest look at both the good Christianity has done over time as well as the failures and hurt caused in the name of Christianity historically and today. I am still early in this read but find that McLaren has done his homework in creating an informative read with history we all should be aware and an acknowledgement of the current environment we should have eyes wide open to as we live and act out our faith.

The book is broken down into three parts:

In Part 1, Answers the title’s question with a firm “No.” I survey the ten strongest reasons I’ve encountered to leave the faith.

In Part 2, “Yes,” I explore ten reasons why some Christians are choosing to stay, even in light of the problems we faced in Part 1.

Then in Part 3, I ask the question “How?” — whether we stay or go, how are we going to live?

Brian McLaren describing how he came to write this book:

When my first book came out back in 1998, you didn’t hear words like “deconstruction,””exvangelical,” and “postChristian” as part of everyday conversation. But over the last 20+ years, we’ve witnessed a sea-change in the Christian community, here in the US and in many other places as well.

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’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.

We’ve seen repeated reports of sexual scandals and revelations of widespread sexual abuse and coverup that have eroded the moral authority of Christian leaders in the minds of everyone except many of those leaders themselves. And we’ve watched those same leaders further squander their dwindling reserves of moral authority as they lined up to support — or refused to denounce — big lies, wild conspiracy theories, authoritarian conmen, anti-science fantasies, and other expressions of moral and intellectual decay.

Along the way, we’ve seen the curtain pulled back on surprising numbers of megachurch pastors, exposing them as power-hungry, money-hungry, narcissistic, and abusive behind the scenes. As a result, more and more of the religious industrial complex looks more and more like a big scam.

Over these two decades, more LGBTQ people came out of the closet. Gay marriage became legal. For women, glass ceilings began to shatter across our culture — albeit slowly. Yet large percentages of Christians doubled down on male domination and LGBTQ stigmatization. Similarly, as thousands of us took to the streets to assert the dignity of Black, Asian, Indigenous, and other people of color’s lives, many of these same Christians showed that they were more interested in preserving white supremacy than dismantling it.

As a result, staying Christian feels increasingly compromised, even dirty, a cover for siding with regressive attitudes and perpetuating systems of harm.

But this depressing picture is not the whole story. Just as a dark night makes the stars shine bright, hopeful signs of spiritual renaissance are popping up across the Christian landscape … among a small but growing number of pastors, priests, scholars, writers, activists, nuns, friars, popes (!), and other leaders, and also among simple, down-to-earth, good-hearted people for whom Jesus’ core message of revolutionary love has become a guiding light for daily life.

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.

So here we are. Millions of us are asking the question, “Do I stay Christian?”

Frankly, I am among them. Some days, I think the “brand” of Christianity is unsalvageable, and I suspect that the religion’s ugliest, most dangerous days are ahead of us, so it’s best to get out now. Other days, I think things may finally be getting bad enough that more Christians will be ready to face and embrace the changes we need, so I should stay in the struggle as an insider.

That’s why I wrote this book, Do I Stay Christian?