Christian Smith famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

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 limitationsâ€¦. 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 structuresâ€¦. It is real human persons living through the tensions of natural existential contradictions who construct patterned social meanings, interactions, institutions, and structures.
-- Christian Smith

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

#White #Backgrounds
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

#Opposites #Purpose #Lame
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

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

#Issues #Adults #Problem

The moment that any life, however good, stifles you, you may be sure it isn't your real life.
There's something to be said in favor of working in isolation in the real world.
The obedient in art are always the forgotten . . . The country is glorious but its beauties are unknown, and but waiting for a real live artist to splash them onto canvas . . . Chop your own path. Get off the car track.
A visual understanding of great composition and how to use a camera and expensive lenses can be learned, but drive and a real hunger for making photos and telling stories... I don't think that part can be learned. You either have that inside, or you don't.
I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.
A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.
Creative freedom is a huge carrot.
On Positive Liberty: The business of the State is to use its organizing powers for the purpose of furnishing the necessary conditions which allow this people freely to unfold its creative faculties.
We can either save the planet from catastrophic warming, or protect fossil fuel CEOs. Not both. Do the math(s)
You can have a healthy fossil-fuel balance sheet, or a relatively healthy planet

Christian Smith famous quotes

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