Christian Smith Quotes & Sayings

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 influence has been limited to alterations at the margins. So, despite having the subcultural tools to call for radical changes in race relations, they most consistently call for changes in persons that leave the dominant social structures, institutions, and culture intact. This avoidance of boat-rocking unwittingly leads to granting power to larger economic and social forces. It also means that evangelicals' views to a considerable extent conform to the socioeconomic conditions of their time. — Christian Smith

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 of their lives, and, partly as a result, exhibit symptoms of unhealthy physical conditions. — Christian Smith

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 whose students never graduate. — Christian Smith

In my experience, one of the very nice things about Catholic Churches is how diverse, ordinary, and natural they are and feel. So many evangelical churches, by contrast, seem to me to be very earnest in trying so hard to be and do something or other - to be sincere or happy or vibrant or dynamic or appealing or whatever. By contrast, in my experience, most Catholic parishes are simply unperturbed in doing the regular business of being Church. They've been doing it for 2,000 years and will keep doing it till Christ returns. — Christian Smith

However, one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities [that resulted from such separation] and in them are brought up in the faith of Christ, and the Catholic Church accepts them with respect and affection as brothers. . . All who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians, and with good reason are accepted as brothers in the Lord by the children of the Catholic Church. — Christian Smith

Capitalism is not merely a system for the efficient production and distribution of goods and services; it also incarnates and promotes a particular moral order, an institutionalized normative worldview comprising and fostering particular assumptions, narratives, commitments, beliefs, values, and goals. — Christian Smith

Human social life, I suggest, is the magma that erupts and builds up, so to speak, at the fault lines where natural human capacities meet and grind against and over natural human limitations ... . This meeting of powers and limitations produces a creative, dynamic tension and energy that generates and fuels the making of human social life and social structures ... . It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures. — Christian Smith

The problem is that, regardless of what our theologies tell us about the purpose of the clergy, the actual effect of the clergy profession is to make the body of Christ lame. This happens not because clergy intend it (they usually intend the opposite) but because the objective nature of the profession inevitably turns the laity into passive receivers. — Christian Smith

The same is true about husbands being the "spiritual heads" of their households (not one verse says that), about Sunday and not Saturday being Christians' set-apart day of rest and worship (just ask Seventh Day Adventists), — Christian Smith

Rather than leaving generous people on the short end of an unequal bargain, practices of generosity are actually likely instead to provide generous givers with essential goods in life - happiness, health, and purpose - which money and time themselves simply cannot buy. That is an empirical fact well worth knowing. — Christian Smith

Part of the irony of religion's role is that in strengthening micro bonds between individuals, religion contributes to within-group homogeneity, heightens isolation from different groups, and reduces the opportunity for the formation of macro bonds - bonds between groups - that serve to integrate a society. — Christian Smith

Most young people today know they need to approach their careers with a variety of skills, maximal flexibility, and readiness to retool as needed. That itself pushes youth toward extended schooling, delay of marriage, and, arguably, a general psychological orientation of maximizing options and postponing commitments. — Christian Smith

In fact, during his life on earth, there were parts of God the Father's plan that Jesus himself did not know (Mark 13:32). As for us, God tells us what we need to know and instructs us to get on with living in light of what he does tell. — Christian Smith

The Catholic Church does not offer certainty in human knowledge in the way that some ex-evangelicals seem to want to have it. So forget about that. Learn, have faith, seek understanding, and be prepared to give an account. Be forgiven and forgive. Be formed by the sacraments and practices of the Church, particularly the Eucharist, and learn Christian love for God and your neighbor. That's it. — Christian Smith

Catholics actually think about prayer a little differently than evangelicals. Prayer is not simply praise and intercession. Prayer is, first of all, "the raising of one's mind and heart to God" (Catechism 2559). Prayer can also involve "the requesting of good things from God." But more fundamentally, "prayer is the living relationship of the children of God with their Father who is good beyond measure, with his Son Jesus Christ, and with the Holy Spirit. . . Thus, the life of prayer is the habit of being in the presence of the thrice-holy God and in communion with him — Christian Smith

Evangelicals come from all ethnic and racial backgrounds, but nearly 90 percent of Americans who call themselves evangelicals are white. — Christian Smith

Evangelicalism, as perhaps the strongest Protestant religious movement in the United States, relies heavily on marketing principles for its strength and growth, often intentionally segmenting its market, targeting specific populations, and using homogeneity to its advantage to create religious meaning and belonging and dense ingroup social ties. Although this evangelical vigor can and is used to address racial division in unique ways, the movement also, by its heavy reliance on racially homogenous ingroups and the segmented market, ironically undercuts many of its own best efforts. — Christian Smith

Why stash little ones away in a nursery downstairs with volunteers, who are hard to recruit and who themselves then miss the service, when they can actually be part of God's people in worship? This can make it hard sometimes when children are acting up. But it keeps families together. — Christian Smith

The emergent properties of my computer have existence not because they inhere in the component parts that compose them. They do so because those component materials are related to one another by careful design to work together as a single system in order to produce those properties. The visual, informational, and computational abilities of my computer are new realities, yet not present in the sum total of the inputs of which my computer is constituted. It is only through their systemic relationships that those amazing abilities have being. The novel reality takes existence not through the parts but through their relationships and interactions. Reality is thus significantly constituted through relationality, not merely composition. — Christian Smith

Evangelicals usually fail to challenge the system not just out of concern for evangelism, but also because they support the American system and enjoy its fruits. They share the Protestant work ethic, support laissez-faire economics, and sometimes fail to evaluate whether the social system is consistent with their Christianity. — Christian Smith

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

Or take the belief common among some evangelicals that every individual needs an identifiable point of personal faith conversion to create a "personal relationship with Jesus." That's certainly a key to evangelical revivalism, and one can definitely find various Bible verses that seem to buttress such a claim. But, altogether, the direct biblical evidence for that theology and rhetoric is in fact pretty thin. — Christian Smith

Protestant insistence on the written word in the Bible as the only and sufficient Christian authority for faith and practice relies on an impossible anachronism that artificially projects a modern standard of authority and means of knowledge conveyance retrospectively back into a pre-modern reality that operated by different but reliable and legitimate standards. — Christian Smith

Adults have their own issues and their own problems, which are understandable, and some adults are working through their own adolescent issues.- — Christian Smith