Josh

“[The] church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards humanity.… A worship that can be conducted by persons who refuse to give shelter to the houseless, to give bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, and who enjoin obedience to a law forbidding these acts of mercy, is a curse, not a blessing to humankind.… The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.… Many of its most eloquent Divines … have shamelessly given the sanction of religion and the Bible to the whole slave system.… For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! welcome atheism! welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by those Divines!… These ministers make religion a cold and flinty-hearted thing, having neither principles of right action, nor bowels of compassion. They strip the love of God of its beauty, and leave the throng of religion a huge, horrible, repulsive form. It is a religion for oppressors, tyrants, man-stealers, and thugs.… [A] religion which favors the rich against the poor; which exalts the proud above the humble; which divides humankind into two classes, tyrants and slaves; which says to the person in chains, stay there; and to the oppressor, oppress on; it is a religion which may be professed and enjoyed by all the robbers and enslavers of humankind.10”
― Brian D. McLaren, Do I Stay Christian?: A Guide for the Doubters, the Disappointed, and the Disillusioned