Bryan Loritts > Quotes

“God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated churches where the gospel is cherished—these are the birthplace of the kind of racial harmony that gives long-term glory to God and long-term gospel good to the world.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Intentionality is a nonnegotiable for those with a heart for reconciliation.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Competence isn’t enough, there has to be the right culture as well.”
― Bryan Loritts, Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic

“Lukewarm indifference is a greater threat than white-hot hatred.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The gospel will dominate a person and part of the reconstruction of that person will be a reorienting of our view of everything, including race.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Reconciliation and bridge building is messy, be it organizationally, culturally, or relationally. It is not for the faint of heart. There are tough calls and it can often feel like three steps forward and two steps back. Perseverance is crucial.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“T. S. Eliot has said: “The last temptation is the greatest treason: To do the right deed for the wrong reason.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Peter understood that in a technology-driven age people no longer need to go to church for a test drive, they can do it right at home behind their computers. Podcasts and staff pictures speak more loudly than plastered vision statements.”
― Bryan Loritts, Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Some have closed their eyes to the poor, others to the educational injustice and economic disparities that continue to plague our country. And, yes, some continue to close their eyes, not wanting to do the hard work of going to the other part of town getting to know someone who doesn’t think like, act like, look like, or vote like me.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I believe that it was the Greeks who said that great messages were composed of logos and pathos—content and passion.”
― Bryan Loritts, Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic

“So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Racial ignorance is a luxury of the majority culture. We really must be willing to place ourselves in the posture of a learner.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self-purification; and direct action.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“we still creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Sociologists don’t just throw around the term multiethnic when it comes to worshiping communities. They do have a benchmark, and it’s called the 80/20 rule. What this means is one ethnic group cannot make up more than 80 percent of a church or worshiping community.”
― Bryan Loritts, Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic

“I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Yes, which is why the number one rule in hiring a minority is that there has to be a person on the team who represents the demographic you’re going after.”
― Bryan Loritts, Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic

“The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“he reflected on how his mother had raised him, that if he was ever in a situation where there were no seats and women were standing, the chivalrous thing to do would be to give up his seat. He didn’t want to do that on this day; so he reasoned that if he would just close his eyes and not see women standing, he could continue his comfortable life.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If our vertical reconciliation to God required intentionality, then our horizontal reconciliation necessitates the same intentionality.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Larry Acosta says that we hurt in isolation but heal in community.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an “I-it” relationship for an “I-thou” relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things.”
― Bryan Loritts, Letters to a Birmingham Jail: A Response to the Words and Dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“The effective C2 preacher talks infinitely more about Jesus Christ than he does race and ethnicity. In fact, any remarks on race, a C2 leader will connect to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
― Bryan Loritts, Right Color, Wrong Culture: The Type of Leader Your Organization Needs to Become Multiethnic