Meredith Martinez

“If exile language is used to bemoan a “darkening” or “growingly hostile” culture, rather than to see our situation as fundamentally the same as every other era before us, then we don’t understand what the Bible means by exile. Exile language does away with both a sense of entitlement and with a siege mentality. We don’t look to merge into whatever seems “normal” around us—and we don’t rage when we’re not accommodated there. We see our normal situation as not occupation but pilgrimage.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“I couldn’t help but wonder if the plot twist to the story of American conservative Christianity was that what we thought was the Shire was Mordor all along.”
― Russell Moore, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America

“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing Christians that oppression is godly. Their God ordained some people, simply because of their sex or skin color (or both), as belonging under the power of other people.”
― Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth

“Once sin is allowed to settle in your heart, it will not be turned out at your bidding. Custom becomes second nature, and its chains are not easily broken. The prophet has well said, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil" (Jeremiah 13:23). Habits are like stones rolling down hill--the further they roll, the faster and more ungovernable is their course. Habits, like trees, are strengthened by age. A boy may bend an oak when it is a sapling--a hundred men cannot root it up, when it is a full grown tree. A child can wade over the Thames River at its fountain-head--the largest ship in the world can float in it when it gets near the sea. So it is with habits: the older the stronger--the longer they have held possession, the harder they will be to cast out.”
― J.C. Ryle, Thoughts For Young Men