Allan Boesak Quotes

• Ubuntu is not a biblical concept but an ancient African one. Nevertheless it falls back on one simple thing: that humans have been created for togetherness, and what drives us apart is greed, lust for power, and a sense of exclusion, but those are aberrations.

  Allan Boesak

  Philosophy, Fall, Biblical

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  116 Copy quote

• The God of the Bible is the God of liberation rather than oppression; a God of justice rather than injustice; a God of freedom and humanity rather than enslavement and subservience; a God of love, righteousness and community rather than hatred, self-interest and exploitation.

  Allan Boesak

  Spiritual, Self, Justice

  Allan Aubrey Boesak (1978). “Black theology, black power”

  25 Copy quote

• I've been a politician and so I'm sometimes cynical about what politicians won't do. When I hear a politician say something that makes no sense whatsoever, I think there's one of two things there: There's money or the promise of money.

  Allan Boesak

  Money, Thinking, Two

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  27 Copy quote

• If your starting point for understanding humanity is a racialist viewpoint, with superiority and inferiority projected onto people because of the color of their skin, then it's so easy to take the next step of justifying that point theologically and reading it into the Christian scripture. And that makes it harder to understand what scripture is actually saying!

  Allan Boesak

  Christian, Reading, Color

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  21 Copy quote

• I believe scripture is not just resilient but rebellious against its abuse by people. Scripture says it refuses to be used in that way for long. That is why the gospel that has been used by the oppressors is the same gospel that liberated the oppressed: They were reading the same book. Something in the DNA of Christian faith and in the Bible agitates against that kind of misuse.

  Allan Boesak

  Christian, Believe, Book

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  14 Copy quote

• Ordinary people - churches, too - have a role to force politicians to respond. Governments are not impressed with theories, but governments are impressed with people who change their minds about things.

  Allan Boesak

  Government, People, Mind

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  12 Copy quote

• And besides, it drives the dragon crazy when you sing about his downfall even though you are bleeding

  Allan Boesak

  Crazy, Dragons, Bleeding

  Allan Aubrey Boesak (1987). “Comfort and Protest: Reflections on the Apocalypse of John of Patmos”

  8 Copy quote

• The fundamentalists may have created a personalized Jesus we don't even recognize, but the liberals' Jesus, too, is an individualized Jesus who serves the empire - a Jesus painfully divorced from his ministry of justice.

  Allan Boesak

  Jesus, Justice, May

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  8 Copy quote

• What always strikes me in the story of Cain and Abel is how often the word "brother" is used. Cain killed his "brother." God says it was "the blood of your brother." The killing was done to another human being, a child of God like you, breaking that sacred bond of common humanity.

  Allan Boesak

  Brother, Children, Blood

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  9 Copy quote

• I think "post-racial" is a dangerous trap. You can fall into complacency and give your complicity a much more dangerous character.

  Allan Boesak

  Fall, Character, Thinking

  Source: reflections.yale.edu

  10 Copy quote

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