Church Quotes

One of the Christian's biggest fears is appearing 'too Christian'. God forbid, because that's often characterized as god-awful! We want to be one, but without being 'one of them'.

~ Criss Jami

Tea Party adherents seemed to arrive at their dislike of the federal government via three routes--through their religious faith (the government curtailed the church, they felt), through hatred of taxes (which they saw as too high and too progressive), and through its impact on their loss of honor.

~ Arlie Russell Hochschild

My politics is my religion, my religion is my politics.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

The governments and their policies have failed, the church is the last hope of the common man, I value a church that is a home for all.

~ Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Government should not be involved in marriage at all, I believe. There’s no reason for it. I don’t get the value of my marriage government, I get it from God. I want the government out of my life. If you want to find a church that marries a gay couple, that’s totally fine. My church does not do that and it will fundamentally change what i believe is the eternal family, the basic building block. And I have a right to believe that, and I have a right to go to a church that believes that and we have a right to practice. As long as I’m not trying to force you to do anything.

~ Glenn Beck

Let me speak plainly: The United States of America is and must remain a nation of openness to people of all beliefs. Our very unity has been strengthened by this pluralism. That's how we began; this is how we must always be. The ideals of our country leave no room whatsoever for intolerance, anti-Semitism, or bigotry of any kind -- none. The unique thing about America is a wall in our Constitution separating church and state. It guarantees there will never be a state religion in this land, but at the same time it makes sure that every single American is free to choose and practice his or her religious beliefs or to choose no religion at all. Their rights shall not be questioned or violated by the state.-- Remarks at the International Convention of B'nai B'rith, 6 September 1984

~ Ronald Reagan

You haven't heard a damn word I've said. See, this is why I can't stand your kinds. You light your candles and mumble your latin spells and pray to a god who isn't there, doesn't care, or is just plain crazy or cruel or both. The world burns and you praise the asshole who either set it or let it.

~ Rick Yancey

For those he has ignored, he allows them this. He allows them God, their only ally. Places to worship, but no one to teach.

~ Greg Rucka

Evidence is of no longer consequence when hope enters the fray, and this iswhere faith is born—a seemingly abundant commodity certain powerfulorganizations feed on fervently, if not lavishly.

~ Justin Villanueva

If heaven really exists: then, technically, living is an activity that believers keep themselves busy with — while they wait for their death.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

The first obligation for every church is to teach their members the value of hard work.

~ Sunday Adelaja

But pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his blind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light the gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate the solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to all.

~ Herman Melville

For a Christian to be a Christian, he must first be a sinner. Being a sinner is a prerequisite for being a church member. The Christian church is one of the few organizations in the world that requires a public acknowledgement of sin as a condition for membership.

~ R.c. Sproul

Protestants at one time were confident that their free form of confession was a vast improvement upon Catholic private confession to a priest because it is voluntary, demystified, and not routinized. But amid the acids of modernity it has volunteered itself right out of existence. Demystification has dwindled into desacralization. The escape from routinization has become a convenient cover for the demise of repentance. The postmodern pastor is trying to learn anew to listen to the deeper range of feelings of others, without forgetfulness of the Word of God.

~ Thomas C. Oden

Reproof is unavoidable. God’s Word demands it when a brother falls into open sin. The practice of discipline in the congregation begins in the smallest circles. Where defection from God’s Word in doctrine or life imperils the family fellowship and with it the whole congregation, the word of admonition and rebuke must be ventured. Nothing can be more cruel than the tenderness that consigns another to his sin. Nothing can be more compassionate than the severe rebuke that calls a brother back from the path of sin. It is a ministry of mercy, an ultimate offer of genuine fellowship, when we allow nothing but God’s Word to stand between us, judging and succoring. Then it is not we who are judging; God alone judges, and God’s judgment is helpful and healing. Ultimately, we have no charge but to serve our brother, never to set ourselves above him, and we serve him even when we must speak the judging and dividing Word of God to him, even when, in obedience to God, we must break off fellowship with him. We must know that it is not our human love which makes us loyal to the other person, but God’s love which breaks its way through to him only through judgment. Just because God’s Word judges, it serves the person. He who accepts the ministry of God’s judgment is helped.

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

The authority of the Church was thrown over by the authority of the state. Twenty years only have passed, and the authority of the state is already thrown over by the authority of conscience. ... I fear for those yet unborn, that they are already betrayed. Robbed of the truth we can inherit, they will know their sins as only misery, and their forgiveness they will not know at all because they do not know God. Then at last men will be free of God. Then they will be slaves indeed.

~ Lucy Beckett

Repentance is a result of God's kindness, not a prerequisite to it.

~ D.r. Silva

I can never endorse sin any more than when I tell people it's their nature to do it.

~ D.r. Silva

With so much effort being poured into church growth, so much press being given to the benefits of faith, and so much flexing of religious muscle in the public square, the poor in spirit have no one but Jesus to call them blessed anymore.

~ Barbara Brown Taylor

We need to let ourselves be evangelized by the poor. They have much to teach us.

~ Pope Francis

Confession is a difficult discipline for us, because we all too often view the believing community as a fellowship of saints before we see it as a fellowship of sinners. We feel that everyone else has advanced so far into holiness that we are isolated and alone in our sin.

~ Richard J. Foster

Unless we learn how to humbly tell each other our giving stories, our churches will not learn to give.

~ Randy Alcorn

Just say it: I'm angry and no one will like me. God: No, I will not say that. But don't you think we ached for you to find a love you could share your whole life with? I used your teachers to encourage you creatively when the church could not... I worked with whatever I got my hands on. Can you see that?

~ Susan E. Isaacs

The emphasis of the churches were not in how much work or home keeping is done in the four walls of the church itself, they rather told the Protestants to go prove their love to God at their work places through the quality of their works

~ Sunday Adelaja

Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man.

~ Clarence Darrow

Over the years of being stuck in this shit hole called life, I had debated religion and church, souls and freewill, heaven and hell. I had come to a few conclusions. Mankind was too self-serving to understand what He had wanted from them. It wasn’t a million dollar church, it wasn’t perfection, it wasn’t about how many times you prayed or apologized or that one day a month where you fed the homeless. And you weren’t banished to hell for that one time you told someone to fuck off. You didn’t end up in hell for that time you were a bitch to your fellow man. It took a lot to end up there, and man worked at it with crazed enthusiasm. They worked harder at chiseling their way into hell, than any other action.

~ L.a. Kennedy

Churches were never meant to be mental hospitals. They were supposed to be military outposts under orders to storm the gates of hell. Every believer is on active duty and called to serve a higher purpose with the rank of their blessings and talents.

~ Shannon L. Alder

High heels are a short (theist) woman's (subconscious) way of telling God to go to hell … in public.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

My job as a Christian is not to get people to heaven when they die, it's to get heaven to people while they're alive

~ D.r. Silva

Furthermore, unlike so many of his evangelical contemporaries he did not hold the view that the various inter-denominational youth movements represented the most hopeful field of labour; indeed his doctrine of the church left him with little sympathy for that attitude.

~ Iain H. Murray

Church is not about learning how to be a moral person (though that is what the dominant narrative they hear tells them), it is a place where immoral individuals go in order to receive the grace of God.

~ Jonathan P. Hill

Sometimes all you need is one person with a guilty conscience to come forward and do the right thing. Often, the miracle you need resides inside of yourself, when you humbly ask for forgiveness.

~ Shannon L. Alder

Why we do what do matters. When we lose our why, we lose our way. We inevitably get lost when we don't know why we are doing what we are doing.

~ Michael White

He had been the pastor of Tate's church since Tate's boys were in high school--probably over ten years now. Tate thought he was a fair man with a good heart. It helped that his sermons were interesting and not fire and brimstone like the guy they'd had before him. Tate understood too well the repercussions of his sin. He went to church to hear about hope, to be encouraged. That was a thing Mitch seemed naturally born to--encouraging others.

~ Vannetta Chapman

Some people only go to church for the social life. They like having all the friends in church or getting the praises of men by doing certain things, but they don’t go there to actually worship God. They go there so others can worship THEM instead.

~ Lisa Bedrick

Most of the church landscape in my lifetime has been heavily invested in trying to do something for Jerry or Sherri or some other icon of unchurchness. The problem is that they have been only about themselves from the moment they could wail for their mothers, and the decision to give them at church what they can find in any self-help book appears now as a choice to abandon the One in whose honor the church gathers. What they need is to be set free from themselves with finality and to be lost in the awesome wonder of the manifest presence of God. It was never God’s desire that He would sit on the sideline and watch us frantically devise impressive ways to reach people or simply hold the line on orthodoxy as though faithfulness can exist in a vacuum apart from fruitfulness. God is the Matter of first importance! Can you say that about your current weekly encounter with church?

~ James Macdonald

I'm a spiritual person, she said. I believe in Allah, you know, though I don't always call It 'Allah' and I pray the way I want to pray. Sometimes I just look out at the stars and this love-fear thing comes over me, you know? And sometimes I might sit in a Christian church listening to them talk about Isa with a book of Hafiz in my hands instead of the hymnal. And you know what, Yusef? Sometimes, every once in a while, I get out my old rug and I pray like Muhammad prayed. I never learned the shit in Arabic and my knees are uncovered, but if Allah has a problem with that then what kind of Allah do we believe in?

~ Michael Muhammad Knight

Church was never meant to be a place for gods to gather, but for devils wanting to shed their horns for halos.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

We’re here to execute a murderer,” Zil said, pointing at Hunter. “We are bringing justice in the name of all normals.”“There’s no justice without a trial,” Astrid said.Zil grinned. He spread his hands. “We had a trial, Astrid. And this chud scum was found guilty of murdering a normal.“The penalty,” he added, “is death.”Astrid turned to face the mob. “If you do this, you’ll never forgive yourselves.”“We’re hungry,” a voice cried, and was immediately echoed by others.“You’re going to murder a boy in a church?” Astrid demanded, pointing toward the church. “A church? In God’s house?”Zil could see that those words had an effect. There were some nervous looks.“You will never wash the stain of this off your hands,” Astrid cried. “If you do this, you will never be able to forget it. What do you think your parents would say?”“There are no parents in the FAYZ. No God, either,” Zil said. “There’s just humans trying to stay alive, and freaks taking everything for themselves.

~ Michael Grant

[I]t seemed to me now that a Catholic church was the right companion for all these horrors. Didn't Catholicism deal with blood and resurrected flesh on a daily basis? Wasn't it expert in superstition? I somehow doubted that the hospitable plain Protestant chapels that dotted the university could be much help, they didn't look qualified to wrestle with the undead. I felt sure those big square Puritan churches on the town green would be helpless in the face of a European vampire. A little witch burning was more in their line--something limited to the neighbors.

~ Elizabeth Kostova