Quotable: Joshua Searle and Theology after Christendom – Take 2

Posted by on Aug 13, 2018 in Blog | 2 comments

I’ve changed the usual Monday format and instead of a series of quotes from a notable figure, I’m selecting some key passages and quotes from interesting books I am currently reading. This is a second look at Joshua T. Searle’s thought provoking and challenging work Theology After Christendom: Forming Prophets for a Post-Christian World (Cascade, 2018). Searle is a tutor in Theology and Public Thought at Spurgeon’s College, London, and I had the pleasure of meeting him and teaching in some of his classes during my recent stay at Spurgeon’s.

  • …bad theology can be compared to spiritual junk food. Joshua Searle (p34)
  • Meeting in church buildings on Sunday mornings and singing escapist songs that make vacuous professions of romantic love to Jesus will not change the world, but will merely perpetuate a religious subculture and widen the gap between faith and life. Joshua Searle (p38)
  • Within post-Christendom there is the necessary exposure of the fallacy of assuming that spiritual growth into Christlikeness will simply happen, provided that people attend enough church services, sing enough hymns, listen to enough sermons or say enough prayers. Joshua Searle (p44)
  • In the very act of educating we are in the process of forming or deforming the human soul. Parker Palmer (p43)
  • Christianity is the revelation of another world, and to make it conform to this world is to betray it. Nikolai Berdyaev (p52)

As always, nice chatting…

2 Comments

  1. Hello Brian thank you for your blog this morning from Joshua Searle
    Point number three really spoke to me. How will spiritual growth into Christlikeness happen? Merle Silver from Umhlanga Baptist.

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