quotations about church
The directions which are given in Holy Writ for the formation of the church in the time of the Apostles, are to be applied to the same society in all ages.
WILLIAM HEY
Tracts and Essays
We believe that there is one church of God, catholic and universal, and dispersed throughout the whole world; this church is the kingdom, the body, the spouse of Christ; Christ alone is Prince of this kingdom, the head of this body, the Bridegroom of this spouse.
BISHOP J. JEWELL
attributed, Day's Collacon
The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.
JOHN STEINBECK
East of Eden
I’m such an alcoholic that I go to church just for communion.
JAROD KINTZ
$3.33
Now to get back to our given Church: it lives almost entirely for modesty and moneyed piety. It zealously inveighs against the harm done to Joseph and the sheep, but it has made its arrangements with the upper classes and serves as their spiritual defender. It bristles at see-through blouses, but not at slums in which half-naked children starve, and not, above all, at the conditions that keep three quarters of mankind in misery. It condemns desperate girls who abort a fetus, but it consecrates war, which aborts millions. It has nationalized its God, nationalized him into ecclesiastic organization, and has inherited the Roman empire under the mask of the Crucified. It preserves misery and injustice, having first tolerated and then approved the class power that causes them; it prevents any seriousness about deliverance by postponing it to St. Never-Ever's Day or shifting it to the beyond.
ERNST BLOCH
Man on His Own
The church must grope her way into the alleys and courts and purlieus of the city, and up the broken staircases, and into the bare room, and beside the loathsome sufferer; she must go down into the pit with the miner, into the forecastle with the sailor, into the tent with the soldier, into the shop with the mechanic, into the factory with the operative, into the field with the farmer, into the counting room with the merchant. Like the air, the church must press equally on all the surfaces of society; like the sea, flow into every nook of the shoreline of humanity; and like the sun, shine on things foul and low as well as fair and high, for she was organized, commissioned, and equipped for the moral renovation of the whole world.
BISHOP SIMPSON
attributed, Holy Thoughts on Holy Things
There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea--that idea which the church has never ceased to embody--I AM!
HENRY ADAMS
Esther
What has made the Church of Christ what it is to-day? Our struggles? Did we face the persecutions of Nero? Did we flee from the persecuting hordes in the Waldensian valleys? Did we fight the battles with the Duke of Alva on the plains of Netherlands? Did we struggle with hierarchical despotism at Worcester and at Naseby? Did we face the cold and the suffering of New England? Others have struggled for us, and we have taken the fruit of their struggles; and if our posterity are to have a nation worthy of their possession, it will be because in us there is also some hand-to-hand wrestling, some self-denial, some struggle with the forces of corruption and evil in our own time. This is the great general law which Paul has expressed in the declaration, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now." Vicarious sacrifice is not an episode. It is the universal law of life. Life comes only from life. This is the first proposition. Life-giving costs the life-giver something. That is the second proposition. Pain is travail-pain, birth-pain; and it is a part of the divine order -- that is, of the order of nature -- that the birth of a higher life should always be through the pain of another.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Church members are either pillars or caterpillars. The pillars hold up the church, and the caterpillars just crawl in and out.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Reader! To whatever visible church, synagogue, or mosque you may belong! See if you do not find more true religion among the host of the excommunicated than among the far greater host who excommunicated them.
MOSES MENDELSSOHN
Jerusalem; or
The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "What are you complaining about?" said God. "They won't let Me in either."
BRENNAN MANNING
The Ragamuffin Gospel
Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.
NEAL STEPHENSON
Snow Crash
Temples and churches have become social centers. They have lost their original purpose because the minds of the people are more attracted to worldly things than to prayer. The lips repeat the prayer mechanically like a phonograph record, but the mind wanders to other places.
SRI S. SATCHIDANANDA
The Yoga Sutras
I think most people come to the Church by means the Church does not allow, else there would be no need their getting to her at all.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
letter to "A.", Aug. 9, 1955
The nearer the church, the further from God.
BISHOP ANDREWS
sermon on the Nativity before James I, 1622
We're gonna make it to the church on time
Need to hear the preacher
Give me a sign
We're gonna make it to the church on time
BEN HARPER
"Church on Time"
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
EMILE ZOLA
attributed, What Great Men Think of Religion
When a church is faithless to its duties, the real church is outside its walls, in the community.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Let us pray for the Catholic Church;
for the Churches throughout
the whole world;
that is, for their truth, unity, and stability;
that in all charity may flourish,
and truth may live.
For our own Church,
that what is lacking in it may be supplied;
what is unsound, corrected;
that all Heresies, Schisms, Scandals,
as well public as private,
may be removed.
Correct the wandering,
convert the unbelieving,
increase the faith of the Church,
destroy Heresies,
discover the crafty enemies,
crush the violent.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
The Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes
Behind this Church, made out of the blood and bricks you see before you, there is another Church, infinite and invisible, whose flags are raised towards heaven. This Church lives in the hearts of the millions of the faithful who love Christ and his message. It will be reborn from its ashes and fill the world.
JUAN GOMEZ-JURADO
God's Spy