The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church - a valuable goal. In actuality, however; it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy… — Christian Smith Copy Share
Adults have their own issues and their own problems, which are understandable, and some adults are working through their own adolescent issues.- — Christian Smith Copy Share Image
“From the isolated, individualistic perspective of most white evangelicals and many other Americans, there really is no race problem other than bad interpersonal relationships.” — Christian Smith Copy Share Image
“variety of kinds of practices of generosity are positively and significantly associated with five important good life outcomes. Giving money, volunteering, being relationally generous, being a generous neighbor and friend, and personally valuing the importance of being a generous person are all significantly, positively correlated with greater personal happiness, physical health, a stronger sense of purpose in life, avoidance of… — Christian Smith Copy Share
“Persons in their most developed form are conscious, reflexive, embodied, self-transcending centers of subjective experience, durable identity, moral commitment, and social communication who—as the efficient cause of their own responsible actions and interactions—exercise complex capacities for agency and inter-subjectivity in order to sustain their own incommunicable selves in loving relationships with other personal selves and with the non-personal world.” — Christian Smith Copy Share
Evangelicals come from all ethnic and racial backgrounds, but nearly 90 percent of Americans who call themselves evangelicals are white. — Christian Smith Copy Share Image
“Claude Monet's Water Lilies (The Clouds) consists of nothing more than dabs of different colored paint on a canvas.14 But because of the particular arrangement of those dabs of paint, Monet has produced not simply a piece of canvas with dabs of paint on it. Monet has produced for us a painting, a unique picture, a cognitively recognizable and culturally… — Christian Smith Copy Share
“Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship,1 they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. Thus, they are generally not counter-cultural. With some significant exceptions, they avoid “rocking the boat,” and live within the confines of the larger culture. At times they have been able to call for and realize social change, but most typically their… — Christian Smith Copy Share
“Are we simply self-conscious animals improbably appearing for a moment in a cosmos without purpose or significance? If so, that has implications for life, which even ordinary people can work out. Or are we rather illusions of individuality destined to dissolve into the ultimately real Absolute? That would make a difference. Are we instead really materially acquisitive hedonists or carnally… — Christian Smith Copy Share
“generosity involved in proactively forgiving other people. This form of generosity, and the positive feelings it evokes in generous forgivers, have been shown by studies to reduce stress, tension, and sadness, and to lead to lower heart rates, lower skin conduction levels, and lower blood pressure. By contrast, those who ungenerously hold grudges are more angry, feel less in control… — Christian Smith Copy Share
“Some sacred projects are so doggedly committed to advancing their particular, packaged views of believed orthodoxies that they can become blinded to good evidence… — Christian Smith Copy Share Image
The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church - a valuable goal. In actuality, however; it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers… — Christian Smith Copy Share
The problem is that, regardless of what our theologies tell us about the purpose of the clergy, the actual effect of the clergy profession… — Christian Smith Copy Share Image
