Brian McLaren “Question one moral absolute and you’ll soon be questioning everything.” For Sam, it started in the young adult Bible study group at his church. All the other group members believed that because a certain political candidate wanted to criminalize abortion,…
Brian McLaren Once they practiced denial, deception, and cover-up Of course, now that I’m a bit older and have had my own skirmishes with self-sabotage, I’ve come to wonder if my colleagues and I had it all wrong. It…
Brian McLaren All these observations piled up like a stack of firewood Before becoming a pastor, I thought more time in Bible study, more time in prayer, more time exposed to hymns and worship songs, more time in Christian fellowship meant my…
Brian McLaren, Uncategorized Faithful Creation Care Check out this Q&A from the 2021 Wild Goose Festival:
Brian McLaren What makes religious doubt so challenging What makes religious doubt so challenging is that in almost every religious community, the box of normative beliefs contains beliefs of each kind - personal, historical, aesthetic, scientific, moral, and…
Brian McLaren Voting is a covenant. We’ll use our pulpits to demand it be supported. By Auburn Senior Fellows https://religionnews.com/2021/10/20/voting-is-a-covenant-well-use-our-pulpits-to-demand-it-be-supported/
Brian McLaren When the meaning and belonging modules are out of alignment Now when it comes to intellectual doubt, you’re dealing primarily with your meaning module, the part of your brain committee that thinks critically and analytically. But your meaning module’s independent…
Brian McLaren For them, the conceptual side of faith simply isn’t that important Some people don’t think much about their faith. For them, it’s primarily a matter of belonging (I enjoy being part of a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, or dharma group) or…
Brian McLaren Your three-member committee Your singular human brain functions like a three-member committee. Each of your three primary modules includes many distinct submodules that in turn contain even smaller submodules, and the interactions among…
Brian McLaren When a paradigm fails For many of us, faith is our map of reality, our map of the universe. It tells us where we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going, where to turn.…
Brian McLaren By the second half of life, they’ll be long gone Back in 2011, Richard Rohr wrote a book called Falling Upward. Richard, a warmhearted Franciscan brother, Catholic priest, insightful teacher, and bestselling author, is founder of the Center for Action…
Brian McLaren Spirit Today’s guest quote is by Brian D. McLaren, from Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: “Pentecostalism in its first dynamic century has helped us see (among…
Brian McLaren Secular Today’s guest quote is by Brian D. McLaren, from Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: “What we call the secular is actually the realm or domain…
Brian McLaren Dismantling the White Nationalist Jesus by Caleb Lines and Brian McLaren https://www.redletterchristians.org/dismantling-the-white-nationalist-jesus/
Brian McLaren Questioning Paradigms and dogma can be defended and enforced with guns and prisons, bullets and bonfires, threats and humiliations, fatwas and excommunications. But paradigms and dogma remain profoundly vulnerable with anomalies…
Brian McLaren Good Fruit Today’s guest quote is by Brian McLaren, from A New Kind of Christianity: We pray that God will create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of…
Brian McLaren The storming of the US Capitol by Christians was a sickening sight by Brian McLaren https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/The-storming-of-the-US-Capitol-by-Christians-was-a-sickening-sight/ Tragically, too many American churches have become aggregators for Trumpist organizers, rendering sincere but gullible believers tools in Trump's delusional power-grab.
Brian McLaren Ortho- Today’s guest quote is by Brian McLaren, from A New Kind of Christianity: Our faith is vain and self-centered if it only brings blessing for us or to us. It also…
Brian McLaren Set the Story Today’s guest quote is by Brian McLaren, from A New Kind of Christianity: As I allowed Genesis, Exodus, and Isaiah—rather than Plato, Aristotle, and Caesar—to set the stage for the biblical…
Brian McLaren God Creates Good Today’s guest quote is by Brian McLaren, from ”A New Kind of Christianity” If Genesis sets the stage for the biblical narrative, this much is unmistakably clear: God's unfolding drama is…
Brian McLaren Fundamentalism Today’s guest quote is by Brian McLaren, from A New Kind of Christianity: Fundamentalism—whether in its Catholic, Protestant, Anglican, Pentecostal, or Orthodox form (for it exists in all streams of Christian…