Top 40 Soong-Chan Rah Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “You cannot discover lands already inhabited. That process is known as stealing, conquering, or colonizing. The fact that America calls what Columbus did ‘discovery’ reveals the implicit racial bias of the country – that Native Americans are not fully human.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

2. “The American church avoids lament. The power of lament is minimized and the underlying narrative of suffering that requires lament is lost. But absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart forget. The absence of lament in the liturgy of the American church results in the loss of memory. We forget the necessity of lamenting over suffering and pain. We forget the reality of suffering and pain.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

3. “The evangelical culture moves too quickly to praise from lament. We do not hear from all of the voices in the North American evangelical context. Instead, we opt for quick and easy answers to complex issues. We want to move on to the happier message of success and triumph and cover up the message of those who suffer.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

4. “The depth of pain endemic to racial hostility requires full disclosure for complete healing. The church should become the place where the fullness of suffering is expressed in a safe environment. Liturgy, worship, leadership, small groups and other aspects of church life should provide the safe place where the fullness of suffering can be set free. Stories of suffering can never be buried when lament is an important and central aspect of the church’s worship life. Lamentations.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

5. “The strongest warnings Jesus gives are directed at his disciples when they begin believing that because they are with Jesus they are somehow privileged and better than others.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

6. “The United States of America does not hold a morally exceptional position greater than Nazi Germany. We are not more just. Our sense of equality is not any superior. Our nation has never been Christian. We have just won our wars. And therefore, for centuries, we wrote our own history. And that has proven to be incredibly dangerous.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

7. “The language of sin as used by Western Christianity does not provide the necessary nuance to understand how a victim of sin experiences sin. “Traditional theology has emphasized one-sidedly the sin of all people, while ignoring the pain of the victim. Its doctrine of sin must be complemented by dealing with the suffering of the victim.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

8. “Christendom is the prostitution of the church to the empire that created a church culture of seeking power rather than relationships.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

9. “Western concepts of sin lead us to feel guilty when we do something bad, but we often do not have the language of shame when we are sinned against.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

10. “The tendency to view the holistic work of the church as the action of the privileged toward the marginalized often derails the work of true community healing. Ministry.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

11. “Seeing injustice in the city through an abstracted lens allows the individual to disassociate from the reality of injustice. Injustice can be objectified and depersonalized. Hunger, homelessness and racism are very real injustices, but they can be misunderstood when taken in an abstracted form. One of the most effective means of disengaging the church from the work of justice is making injustice a philosophical concept.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

12. “The dismantling of privilege requires the disavowal of any pretense of exceptionalism.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

13. “The sin of the Doctrine of Discovery is the determination that the full expression of the image of God is found only in certain races. If the full expression of God’s image is found in the rational common sense mind of the European, then the white European American is elevated above other bodies and minds.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

14. “The painful stories of the suffering of the African American community, in particular, remain hidden. Often, American Christians may even deny the narrative of suffering, claiming that things weren’t so bad for the slaves or that at least the African Americans had the chance to convert to Christianity. The story of suffering is often swept under the rug in order not to create discomfort or bad feelings. Lament is denied because the dead body in front of us is being denied. But.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

15. “Repentance is not just sorrow and confession, it is the turning around of wrong behavior towards right and just action. Repentance from sinful corporate behavior therefore requires systemic change. For many, the cost of that repentance may be too high.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

16. “The triumph-and-success orientation of our typical church member needed the corrective brought by stories of struggle and suffering. These.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

17. “For American evangelicals riding the fumes of a previous generation’s assumptions, a triumphalistic theology of celebration and privilege rooted in a praise-only narrative is perpetuated by the absence of lament and the underlying narrative of suffering that informs lament.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

18. “To the white supremacist mind, the most charitable act and the most benevolent blessing they can bestow is allowing those of the lower race to associate with them.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

19. “American Christians that flourish under the existing system seek to maintain the existing dynamics of inequality and remain in the theology of celebration over and against the theology of suffering. Promoting one perspective over the other, however, diminishes our theological discourse. To only have a theology of celebration at the cost of the theology of suffering is incomplete. The.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

20. “The myth of redemptive violence allows Americans to see themselves as having superior intellect and value and therefore the ability to handle weapons capable of incredible violence in an appropriate manner.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

21. “Christian communities arising from celebration do not want their lives changed, because their lives are in a good place. Tax rates should remain low. Home prices and stocks should continue to rise unabated, while interest rates should remain low to borrow more money to feed a lifestyle to which they have become accustomed.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

22. “American Christians may be fearful of the dramatic changes that have already occurred in the world and in American Christianity. Could that fear be rooted in a loss of power as the demographics of world Christianity begin to favor non-Western nations? But these changes in Christianity may be exactly what God intended, requiring American Christians to relinquish a historical dominance and embrace a greater mutuality, equality and reciprocity in twenty-first-century world Christianity.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

23. “All worship is contextual, but there may be an underlying assumption of European American primacy in worship and the failure to recognize the captivity of the church to European American norms.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

24. “Because the more familiar term “racial reconciliation” implies a preexisting harmony and unity, we propose the use of the term “racial conciliation.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

25. “Our heroes should not be those who relish in masculine triumphalism but rather those whose hearts are tuned to the heart of God.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

26. “The victors write the history. And that is incredibly dangerous.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

27. “We have embraced the stories of success and exceptionalism rather than engaging the narrative of suffering and oppression.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

28. “The Civil War was an internal spat between the North and the South, who could not agree on the best way to keep white supremacy intact.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

29. “We have yet to engage in a proper funeral dirge for our tainted racial history and continue to deny the deep spiritual stronghold of a nation that sought to justify slavery.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

30. “The evangelical culture moves too quickly to praise from lament. We do not hear from all of the voices in the North American evangelical context. Instead, we opt for quick and easy answers to complex issues.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

31. “The language of lament is the language of humility.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

32. “Lament recognizes the struggles of life and cries out for justice against existing injustices. The status quo is not to be celebrated but instead must be challenged. If.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

33. “The tendency to view the holistic work of the church as the action of the privileged toward the marginalized often derails the work of true community healing. Ministry in the urban context, acts of justice and racial reconciliation require a deeper engagement with the other – an engagement that acknowledges suffering rather than glossing over it.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

34. “Lament is honesty before God and each other. If something has truly been declared dead, there is no use in sugarcoating that reality. To hide from suffering and death would be an act of denial. If an individual would deny the reality of death during a funeral, friends would justifiably express concern over the mental health of that individual. In the same way, should we not be concerned over a church that lives in denial over the reality of death in our midst?”

— Soong-Chan Rah

35. “Lament challenges the church to acknowledge real suffering and plead with God for his intervention. The.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

36. “Shalom, therefore, does not eschew or diminish the role of the other or the reality of a suffering world. Instead, it embraces the suffering other as an instrumental aspect of well-being. Shalom requires lament.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

37. “The fact that America calls what Columbus did ‘discovery’ reveals the implicit racial bias of the country – that Native Americans are not fully human.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

38. “Lamentations reminds us that the proper response to tragedy and suffering is lament.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

39. “In another important area of church life, the worship life of the congregation, the Western priority of the individual determines the approach to worship over the biblical guidelines for worship. Worship in the white captivity of the church is oftentimes a collection of individuals who happen to be in the same room. Worship is just between the individual and God, and the church service exists to help facilitate that individual communion.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

40. “Lament will not allow us to revert to easy answers. There is no triumphalistic and exceptionalistic narrative of the American church that can cover up justice. There are no easy answers to unabated suffering. Lament continues.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

41. “What does it mean to be the church in the face of changing demographics and a changing culture? What is the church’s role in this changing landscape? Will we flee in fear from the cultural changes or will we engage the culture in a relevant but transformative way?”

— Soong-Chan Rah

42. “The funeral dirge opening of Lamentations and the first three verses of Lamentations 1 reminds us that grief that emerges from a very real and painful history must be acknowledged.”

— Soong-Chan Rah

43. “Lament leads to petition which leads to praise Gods’ response to the petition.”

— Soong-Chan Rah