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The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back?
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Unsurprisingly, sexual orientation is a strong indicator of church attendance. According to the 2020 Cooperative Election Study at Harvard University, a heterosexual man is almost three times as likely to attend church at least once a year
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“In fact, I must tell you that in the past couple years I’ve become convinced that perhaps nothing is so important for our walk with the Lord as good friends. I think God gives us good friends as sacraments – means of grace given to us as indices of God’s presence and conduits for our sanctification.”
― Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition
― Letters to a Young Calvinist: An Invitation to the Reformed Tradition
“Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.”
― This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
― This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
“Subtraction stories Accounts that explain “the secular” as merely the subtraction of religious belief, as if the secular is what’s left over after we subtract superstition. In contrast, Taylor emphasizes that the secular is produced, not just distilled.”
― How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor
― How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor
“In strange, often unintended ways, the pursuit of “justice,” shalom, and a “holistic” gospel can have its own secularizing effect. What begins as a gospel-motivated concern for justice can turn into a naturalized fixation on justice in which God never appears. And when that happens, “justice” becomes something else altogether—an idol, a way to effectively naturalize the gospel, flattening it to a social amelioration project in which the particularity of the revelation of God becomes strangely absent. Given the newfound appreciation for justice and shalom among evangelicals, we do well to see such trajectories as a cautionary tale, like a visitation from the ghost of Christmas future showing us where we could end up.”
― Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology
― Awaiting the King: Reforming Public Theology
“The crucifixion is the touchstone of Christian authenticity, the unique feature by which everything else, including the resurrection, is given its true significance. The resurrection is not a set piece. It is not an isolated demonstration of divine dazzlement. It is not to be detached from its abhorrent first act. The resurrection is, precisely, the vindication of a man who was crucified. Without the cross at the center of the Christian proclamation, the Jesus story can be treated as just another story about a charismatic spiritual figure. It is the crucifixion that marks out Christianity as something definitively different in the history of religion. It is in the crucifixion that the nature of God is truly revealed. Since the resurrection is God's mighty transhistorical Yes to the historically crucified Son, we can assert that the crucifixion is the most important historical event that has ever happened. The resurrection, being a transhistorical event planted within history, does not cancel out the contradiction and shame of the cross in this present life; rather, the resurrection ratifies the cross as the way "until he comes.”
― The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ
― The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ
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Amanda’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Amanda’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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2,370 books
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213 friends
2,010 books
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134 friends
270 books
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143 books
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88 friends
2,964 books
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67 friends
2,781 books
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1,735 books
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209 friends
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