Brennan Manning on American Christian Culture

"If Christian men and women are to live the gospel today in our
post-industrial American culture, if we are to be in the world and not of
the world, then we must be willing to assume personal responsibility for the
ways in which our faith has been accommodated to possessiveness, pleasure,
and domination. And we must be willing to repent, reform, and be renewed."

"The church is the living extension of Jesus Christ in time and space. It is
countercurrent to the drift into cultural idolatry. The church in American
society today is, of necessity, a community of resistance to the gods of
modern life, i.e. nuclear stockpiling, money, ego, sexual muscle, racism, pride
of place."

"We are the pilgrim people of God with no lasting city here on
earth, a community of free men and women whose freedom is not limited by the
frontiers of a world that is itself in chains."

"Let us be bold enough to ask ourselves, as Christians, whether the church of
the Lord Jesus in the United States has anything to say to our nation and
its ideologies of materialism, possessiveness, and the worship of financial
security. Are we courageous enough to be a sign of contradiction to
consumerism through our living faith in Jesus Christ? Are we committed
enough to his gospel to become a counter-current to the drift? Or have we so
accommodated the faith of our fathers to consumption that the question of
simplicity of life, sharing of resources, and radical dependence on God's
providence no longer seem relevant? How do we build the kingdom of God on
earth if what we incarnate in our lives is the dogma of our culture rather
than the revelation of Jesus?" - Brennan Manning

--Still grappling with how to surrender my whole life to Christ and live as a stranger in this place.