Nadia Bolz-Weber, founder of the edgy church called House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, just finished her second book, “Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People.” It follows her 2013 memoir, “Pastrix,” a New York Times best seller that chronicled her spiritual journey and gained her lots of fans. Because in the end, there is still Jesus.Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close Menu The power of unbounded mercy, of what we call The Gospel, cannot be destroyed by corruption and toothy TV preachers. I believe that the power of Christianity - the thing that made the very first disciples drop their nets and walk away from everything they knew, the thing that caused Mary Magdalene to return to the tomb and then announce the resurrection of Christ, the thing that the early Christians martyred themselves for, and the thing that keeps me in the Jesus business (or, what my Episcopal priest friend Paul calls “working for the company”) - is something that cannot be killed. It will survive our mistakes and pride and exclusion of others.

Christianity has survived some unspeakable abominations: the Crusades, clergy sex-scandals, papal corruption, televangelist scams, and clown ministry.

I fully understand why people make that choice. “There are many reasons to steer clear of Christianity. “My spirituality is most active, not in meditation, but in the moments when: I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and when I am unable to judge the sin of someone else (which, let’s be honest, I love to do) because my own crap is too much in the way, and when I have to bear witness to another human being’s suffering despite my desire to be left alone, and when I am forgiven by someone even though I don’t deserve it and my forgiver does this because he, too, is trapped by the gospel, and when traumatic things happen in the world and I have nowhere to place them or make sense of them but what I do have is a group of people who gather with me every week, people who will mourn and pray with me over the devastation of something like a school shooting, and when I end up changed by loving someone I’d never choose out of a catalog but whom God sends my way to teach me about God’s love.”Īccidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People

Pastrix by Nadia Bolz-Weber