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Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.
Dietrich BonhoefferWith an abstract idea it is possible to enter into a relation of formal knowledge, to become enthusiastic about it, and perhaps even to put it into practice; but it can never be followed in personal obedience. Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.
Dietrich BonhoefferI love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ; I therefore hatethe corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial, and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.
Frederick DouglassChristianity is not a patent medicine. Christianity claims to give an account of facts - to tell you what the real universe is like. Its account of the universe may be true, or it may not, and once the question is really before you, then your natural inquisitiveness must make you want to know the answer. If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.
C. S. LewisThere is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning.
John PiperChristians have always tended to transform the Christian Revelation into a Christian religion. Christianity is said to be a religion like any other or, conversely, some Christians try to show that it is a better religion than the others. People attempt to take possession of God. Theology claims to explain everything, including the being of God. People tend to transform Christianity into a religion because the Christian faith obviously places people in an extremely uncomfortable position ยญ that of freedom guided only by love and all in the context of God's radical demand that we be holy.
Jacques EllulThe processes of secularization that followed in the wake of the Reformation continue to work themselves out in complicated ways, not only in Europe but also in North America. To make a very long and complex story short, the success of the Reformation combined with the persistence and renewal of Roman Catholicism in the 16th and 17th centuries made Christianity into an enduring, disruptive problem in new ways, layered on top of problems that already affected late medieval Christianity.
Brad Stephan GregoryScience is only truly consistent with an atheistic worldview with regards to the claimed miracles of the gods of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Moreover, the true believers in each of these faiths are atheists regarding the specific sacred tenets of all other faiths. Christianity rejects the proposition that the Quran contains the infallible words of the creator of the universe. Muslims and Jews reject the divinity of Jesus.
Lawrence M. KraussThe vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos ... The pre-Christian God Mithras ... had his birthday celebrated on December 25 ... Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans ... Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagans' veneration of the day of the sun ... To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god's weekly tribute- Sunday.
Dan BrownAll religions worthy of the name are now making great efforts to purify their doctrines and return to their original standpoint, all except Christianity! You surely know that the nineteenth century Christianity is not the religion taught by Christ. Christ's religion has been changed and corrupted.
Virchand GandhiThere is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.
Mark TwainIt's just that for so many people that I know, Christianity's this matter of... it has everything to do with morals. Christianity is a religion about morals. And they will even talk about Jesus. And they will say kids need to know about Jesus so they won't smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls that do, and all that kind of thing. And I kinda go, 'That's not why people need to know about Jesus. The only reason - The only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because we need a Savior.'
Rich MullinsIf one takes full account of the persecution of heretics, the frequency and savagery of the religious wars which Christianity had endangered, the harm caused, especially to children, by the pernicious doctrine of original sin, a case could be made for saying that the world would have been better off without Christianity.
A.J. AyerIf you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.
J. I. PackerI see with greater and greater clearness that consistent Christianity is the easiest Christianity to defend
John Gresham MachenA key difference between Christianity and Islam is that Muslims believe that the Koran contains verbatim the word of God; it is written in the imperative. This precludes a comparison with Christianity.
Geert WildersThe emerging church movement has come to believe that the ultimate context of the spiritual aspirations of a follower of Jesus Christ is not Christianity but rather the kingdom of God. ... to believe that God is limited to it would be an attempt to manage God. If one holds that Christ is confined to Christianity, one has chosen a god that is not sovereign. Soren Kierkegaard argued that the moment one decides to become a Christian, one is liable to idolatry.
Samir SelmanovicI guess it happens. What - Marco actually gave me cover, because he actually said the same thing, and he said it during the debate, that he was lying. So, I just said you can't say things which are lies and claim Christianity. You just can't do it. I just don't think it's good. I'm not questioning his Christianity. I just think it's inappropriate to hold up the Bible and lie.
Donald TrumpInstead of a 'Western Christianity,' we now witness a post-Christian West (in Europe) and a post-Western Christianity (in the global South). America is somewhere in between.
Harvey CoxInstead of making Christianity a vehicle of truth, you make truth only a horse for Christianity.
Ralph Waldo EmersonIf Christianity is only one more bit of good advice, then Christianity is of no importance.
C. S. LewisChristianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions. It sanctified, quite like Mohammedism, extermination and tyranny. All this would have been impossible if, like Buddhism, it had looked only for peace and the liberation of souls. It looked beyond; it dreamt of infinite blisses and crowns it should be crowned with before an electrified universe and an applauding God... Buddhism had tried to quiet a sick world with anesthetics; Christianity sought to purge it with fire.
George SantayanaIt was not Christianity which freed the slave: Christianity accepted slavery; Christian ministers defended it; Christian merchants trafficked in human flesh and blood, and drew their profits from the unspeakable horrors of the middle passage. Christian slaveholders treated their slaves as they did the cattle in their fields: they worked them, scourged them, mated them , parted them, and sold them at will. Abolition came with the decline in religious belief, and largely through the efforts of those who were denounced as heretics.
Hypatia Bradlaugh BonnerIt was Christianity which first painted the devil on the worlds walls; It was Christianity which first brought sin into the world. Belief in the cure which it offered has now been shaken to it's deepest roots; but belief in the sickness which it taught and propagated continues to exists.
Friedrich NietzscheJudaism is not complete without Christianity and without Judaism, Christianity would not exist.
Benjamin DisraeliPopular Christianity has for its emblem a gibbet, for its chief sensation a sanginary execution after torture, for its central mystery is an insane vengeance bought off by a trumpery expiation. But there is a nobler and profounder Christianity which affirms the sacred mystery of equality and forbids the glaring futility and folly of vengeance.
George Bernard ShawThe idea that Christianity is basically a religion of moral improvement... has its roots in the liberal Protestantism of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century... It is this stereotype which continues to have influence today... But then came the First World War... What had gone wrong was that the idea of sin had been abandoned by liberal Christianity as some kind of unnecessary hangover from an earlier and less enlightened period in Christian history.
Alister E. McGrathOne area of the Book of Mormon that does bother some is what they see as anachronistic doctrine; that the Book of Mormon has Christian doctrine prior to the coming of Christ; that it has seemingly New Testament doctrines appearing centuries before Jesus arrives, and it seems to be representing a form of Christianity existing in the New World where there doesn't seem to be much evidence of that archaeologically. Christianity is invisible in the New World prior to the coming of Columbus, and so those things seem like clear anachronisms to people looking at it in that way.
Daniel C. PetersonThe general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.
John AdamsI want to see Christianity enhance our humanity instead of rescue us from some fall. I don't want us to be depending on this supernatural God up in the sky; I want us to recognize that God is part of who we are and that we have to live out the meaning of God with other people. That means we must live in mutual respect and interdependence; it means we have to limit our own desires in order for the body politic to survive.
John Shelby SpongChristianity sees plants and flowers as created by God to show forth and share with humans the divine goodness, beauty and truth - the purpose of all Creation. In this flowers may be enjoyed simply and directly in themselves as showing forth God's goodness and beauty, or, more fully, as archetypes, signatures, symbols, and bearers of legends, mirroring the revealed articles of Christian faith - thereby serving as means for their teaching, recollection, contemplation and celebration.
John StokesAs a Jew reading about Jesus, I thought, 'He's a pretty good guy.' It's the same conclusion Monty Python drew in 'Life of Brian' - if people actually live what he did, it would be a pretty good world. But Jesus and Christianity have a tenuous relationship at best.
David JaverbaumAlthough when Christianity appeared the total population of the planet was only a fraction of that of the twentieth century, most of the earth's surface was quite outside the Mediterranean world, Persia, India, and China.
Kenneth Scott LatouretteI talk about a Christianity that is enlightened enough to separate spirituality from the rest of life. Not just church and state, but knowledge and church.
Ayaan Hirsi AliTo me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.
Aleister CrowleyI am utterly struck how, 300 years after his execution, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Peter JenningsThe careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it.
Matilda Joslyn GageBe assured that Christianity is something more than forms and creeds and ceremonies: there is life, and power, and reality, in our holy faith.
George MullerAnd as I stumbled onto Eastern philosophy and Buddhism, it was the first time I had ever read any sort of philosophy that really made a tremendous amount of sense. What I liked that was missing from my experience of Christianity growing up was a sort of acceptance, a sort of being OK with being imperfect and not focusing on the sin.
Alan BallChristianity has such a contemptible opinion of human nature that it does not believe a man can tell the truth unless frightened by a belief in god. No lower opinion of the human race has ever been expressed.
Robert Green IngersollAs my personal explorations continued, I experienced this quality of inner reality more and more and could no longer doubt that the meaning of God lay in this direction. At the same time, these undeniable experiences lit up and were in turn illuminated by all the philosophical and historical knowledge I had by then amassed and I began to understand in an entirely new way the teachings of both Judaism and Christianity as well as the teachings of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam.
Jacob NeedlemanI consider Christianity to be one of the great disasters of the human race... It would be impossible to imagine anything more un - Christianlike than theology.
Alfred North WhiteheadThe battle against good and evil is raging now! Look at your television programming and movie advertisements presenting the occultโฆthe demonicโฆthe satanicโฆthe practice of witchcraft and sorcery in popular booksโฆthe open hostility toward Christianity and the revival of anti-Semitism. The fight is on for the hearts and minds of our children in ours homes, our schools, our universities, and our society.
John HageeFundamentalist Christianity is not just a threat to lesbians and gays, but to all Americans who cherish democracy and the rights and protections guaranteed us by the U.S. constitution.
Mel WhiteLet the professors of Christianity recommend their religion by deeds of benevolence - by Christian meekness - by lives of temperance and holiness.
Richard Mentor JohnsonNear beliefs are to blame for a new brand of Christianity that is epidemic in our homes and churches-a faith that has little flavor, little light and little influence. When near beliefs are our only source of motivation, tough stands are never taken, feathers are never ruffled, and absolutes are held very loosely.
Dennis Rainey