In my view, the greatest, most profound, and most dangerous ignorance within the church is not the dumb things that people affirmatively believe (although there is plenty of that), but the ways that people in the church remain ignorant about the full breadth and depth of the Christian tradition, and about the harms that Christianity has wrought. Ignorance, for example, about how European colonizers and missionaries were instrumental not just in genocide and cultural imperialism, but also in the fundamental construction of pervasive modern categories like “race” and “religion.” Likewise, ignorance of the depth of the contemplative and mystical strands in Christianity have been extremely deleterious to individual Christians and to the church as an institution.
In my view, the greatest, most profound, and most dangerous ignorance within the church is not the dumb things that people affirmatively believe (although there is plenty of that), but the ways that people in the church remain ignorant about the full breadth and depth of the Christian tradition, and about the harms that Christianity has wrought. Ignorance, for example, about how European colonizers and missionaries were instrumental not just in genocide and cultural imperialism, but also in the fundamental construction of pervasive modern categories like “race” and “religion.” Likewise, ignorance of the depth of the contemplative and mystical strands in Christianity have been extremely deleterious to individual Christians and to the church as an institution.