Zach Hoag > Quotes

“The apocalypse that has visited Christian faith in America is challenging us to repent and reform without deconstructing ourselves to death (or undeath), without dismantling our faith to annihilation, leaving only a shell. The necessary suffering that invites us to deconstruct our empire business is not a permanent condition. It is a temporary work meant to bring us into a second-half-of-life faith, into true flourishing.”
― Zach Hoag, The Light Is Winning: Why Religion Just Might Bring Us Back to Life

“Deep emotional and spiritual damage are the legacy of authoritarianism in the church. It has left many of us picking up the pieces of our lives, trying to make sense of them, trying to keep hoping and believing, sometimes in vain.”
― Zach Hoag, The Light Is Winning: Why Religion Just Might Bring Us Back to Life

“The deconstructive process is a total kind of thing, with no easy answers, no quick solutions. When you are no longer under any illusions about God or church or community or calling or family or relationships, you can’t just switch gears, pull a U-ey, and head on back to Happytown. You’ve got to face the pain in its fullness. You’ve got to feel your way through the darkness. There’s no other choice, unless you want to live in denial, unless you want more of the lie.”
― Zach Hoag, The Light Is Winning: Why Religion Just Might Bring Us Back to Life

“The status quo illusion is so glaringly offensive because it is incapable of empathy toward those who have suffered this kind of trauma and loss. And two, speaking the reality of such experiences is not irrelevant to the many who have never experienced such things. The common rebuttal to stories of trauma or abuse in the church is that these are exceptions, bound to produce disgruntled believers or ex-believers, but irrelevant to the discussion of larger issues, like doctrine, belief, and practice or the phenomenon of religious decline. They’d say that these experiences color people’s perspectives so that they don’t see clearly. But I think the opposite is often true: experiences of severe Christian authoritarianism or abuse can, when there has been significant time to process them, produce a sharper eye for the ways empire business is harming the church.”
― Zach Hoag, The Light Is Winning: Why Religion Just Might Bring Us Back to Life