Alisa Harris > Quotes

“We seek in one another the assurance that there is just one correct interpretation of the world, that everything is so simple that anybody can see it unless they're malicious or stupid or willfully ignorant; and we punish one another for proving with our differing conclusions that the truth is not that easy. We think we must suppress dissension to present the unified front we need to gain power over our enemies. But there are pro-life Democrats, pro-choice Christians, feminists who love their families, and conservatives who care about poor people.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“These questions are difficult. The answers are not obvious, and so there should be some pausing, some angst, some honest uncertainty as people struggle to decide the best course of action. But I see none of this in the press releases and reports I read. Instead I see both sides telling us that to be uncertain, to dialogue instead of rail, is to betray the cause.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“The more ardently I see humanity as a glorious abstract that must conform to my ideal of how the world should be, the harder it is for me to love the person on the other side of the picket line who is holding up progress. I can love the downtrodden in the abstract, but as I shivered under the bridge that night with Jorge, I realized that it's harder to love the illegal immigrant with the bottle-slashed face and the body unwashed for weeks, the workers gathering to eat day-old bread and chicken and rice out of foam containers, the crowd of thousands clamoring for bread and fish and healing, the unclean woman hoping to touch the hem of the Savior's robe.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“[T]he Bible is neither an eighteenth-nor a twenty-first-century policy textbook. It endorses neither the fiefdom nor the global superpower. America is not a "uniquely Christian" nation, and it never was.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“[W]hen injustice, robbery, and inequity are not just individual but institutional, it's time to take a political stand.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“I had stopped believing in the perfect leader who could say 'Let there be justice' and by the force of his word change the whole earth into heaven. Instead I determined to grab hold of the truth I'd always known—that the Leader had already come, had chosen instead to say, 'My kingdom is not of this world,' and had been despised and rejected because His message was bigger than the first-century political pundits had predicted.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“I struggle to let go of the drive to dominate and instead remember that heaven isn't forced on earth through my pursuit of power.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“Conservatives argue that this human tendency toward corruption means that unemployment benefits and government health insurance will make the poor lazy, that they will become food stamp gobblers with no incentive to work for themselves. But I side with the poor and powerless since—as we've seen—they have far less ability to destroy all our lives.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics

“[O]ur primary job as Christians is to love people, and we can't love from behind a barricade. But we have other God-given responsibilities too—to fight against those who make unjust decrees, rob the needy, and deprive the poor of their rights. We can make political the things that are political and make spiritual the things that are spiritual.”
― Alisa Harris, Raised Right: How I Untangled My Faith from Politics