Quotes About Christianity

Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ.

The true gospel is radically exclusive. Jesus is not a way; He is the way, and all other ways are no way at all. If Christianity would only move one small step toward a more tolerant ecumenicalism and exchange the definite article the for the indefinite article a, the scandal would be over, and the world and Christianity could become friends. However, whenever this occurs, Christianity ceases to be Christianity, Christ is denied, and the world is without a Savior.

So herein lies the choice for those of us who are Christians. We can either stay within the Christianity we have mastered with the Jesus we have domesticated, or we can leave Christianity as a destination, embrace Christianity as a way of life, and then journey to reality, where God is present and living in every person, every human community, and all creation.

Millennials aren't looking for a hipper Christianity. We're looking for a truer Christianity, a more authentic Christianity. Like every generation before ours and every generation after, we're looking for Jesus-the same Jesus who can be found in the strange places he's always been found: in bread, in wine, in baptism, in the Word, in suffering, in community, and among the least of these.

Of course, there is nothing intrinsic linking any religion with any act of violence. The crusades don't prove that Christianity was violent. The Inquisition doesn't prove that Christianity tortures people. But that Christianity did torture people.

In the Christian world, as you remember, Christianity is in the 21st century, Islam is in the 15th century. I don't mean to say that Islam is backward; I mean to say that there are certain experiences that it hasn't gone through. Christianity had the great religious wars of the 17th century. Islam, fortunately for the Muslims, did not have that. Christianity worked out a system of toleration. Islam was always more tolerant of Christendom.

I delighted in the music of Africa, the earliest of the slave plantation songs, the transformation into Christianity and all that Christianity brought to the lives of the Africans who were forced to come to America.

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing and predatory as it is - in our country particularly, and in all other Christian countries in a somewhat modified degree - it is still a hundred times better than the Christianity of the Bible, with its prodigious crime- the invention of Hell.

Undefined Christianity is not a problem in our generation. It is defined Christianity that brings the rub.

In the last years, I've been reading the Eastern fathers, the older mystical writings, a rich, deep, and truly traditional Christianity which most Western Christians know almost nothing about. It is very mystical and prayer centered Christianity, with a strong social conscience.

Presenting both sides of Christianity gives the skeptic room to breathe - and to consider the possibility that there's room in Christianity for diversity in interpreting the Bible. And it gives the traditionalist pause to think again - and to consider the possibility that she might need to tweak her hermeneutic.

To be honest, one can only feel glad that so many modern iconoclasts consider Christianity to be full of exceptionally hypocritical, religious zealots - it's biblically accurate and a prophecy fulfilled. The old smoke screen is one of Satan's favorite tricks. He conceals the authentic. He has a persistent strategy of targeting those who remind him of Christianity because he fears those who remind him of Christ.

Christianity finds all its doctrines stated in the Bible, and Christianity denies no part, nor attempts to add anything to the Word of God.

The 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.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that Christianity has a vested interest in human misery. Christianity, perhaps more than any religion before or since, capitalized on human suffering; and it was enormously successful in insuring its own existence through the perpetuation of human suffering.

If you don't plan to live the Christian life totally committed to knowing your God and to walking in obedience to Him, then don't begin; for this is what Christianity is all about. It is a change of citizenship, a change of governments, a change of allegience. If you have no intention of letting Christ rule your life, then forget Christianity; it's not for you.

Ask me if Christianity (my version of it, yours, the Pope's, whoever's) is orthodox, meaning true, and here's my honest answer: a little, but not yet. Assuming by Christianity you mean the Christian understanding of the world and God, Christian opinions on soul, text, and culture I'd have to say that we probably have a couple of things right, but a lot of things wrong, and even more spreads before us unseen and unimagined. But at least our eyes are open! To be a Christian in a generously orthodox way is not to claim to have the truth captured, stuffed, and mounted on the wall.

The Court explained the problem with his writings (People v. Ruggles. 1811.): an attack on Jesus Christ was an attack on Christianity; and an attack on Christianity was an attack on the foundation of the country; therefore, an attack on Jesus Christ was equivalent to an attack on the country!

If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable.

The real evidence for Jesus and Christianity is in how Jesus and the Christianity based on him manifest themselves in the lives of practicing Christians.

It 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.

Judaism is not complete without Christianity and without Judaism, Christianity would not exist.

You can't go to church without praying ten or fifteen times for God to have mercy on you. You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. This self-denigration stuff - Jesus died for my sins - is nothing but a guilt message. That's the thing we've got to get out from under. That's not Christianity. That's sort of fourth-century Christianity that got turned into doctrines and dogmas that we've never been able to escape.

I was examining what religious identity meant in Africa. Along the edge of the Islamic world, what patterns were shaping identity? And the truth is, when I looked at the rise of violent forms of religion, no single identity was prevalent. It's central to note that in Nigeria, that tree is rooted primarily in Christianity. It's not just Islamic militants in the Middle Belt.

Christianity has always seemed to fight a losing battle against race.

The God of Evangelical Christianity is a Monster.

The great truth about Christianity is not that we love God - it's that God loves us.

Christianity is called a spiritual walk. It's not a run and it's not a jog. It's a walk you do from day to day and that makes you stable.

I hope to see the two great religions, Islam and Christianity, hand-in-hand, embracing each other. Then the Torah and the Bible and the Qur’an will become books supporting one another being read everywhere, and respected by every nation … [I am] looking forward to seeing Muslims read the Torah and the Bible.

It [the scientific revolution] outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes, mere internal displacements, within the system of medieval Christendom. . . . It looms so large as the real origin of the modern world and of the modern mentality that our customary periodization of European history has become an anachronism and an encumbrance.

For two thousand years Christianity has been telling us: life is death, death is life; it is high time to consult the dictionary.

Christianity is a lifestyle - a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established "religion" (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one's "personal Lord and Savior" . . . The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.

And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.

The whole foundation of Christianity is based on the idea that intellectualism is the work of the Devil. Remember the apple on the tree? Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. You eat this apple, you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that.

With reference to other religions, the Church sees a great difference between them and herself. The other religions are expressions of the human soul seeking God, with some beautiful spiritual insights, but also not without errors. Christianity is rather God seeking humanity.

Christianity in the suburb is cheerful. The church is a centre of social activity and those who go to church need never be lonely.

The marriage institution cannot exist among slaves, and one sixth of the population of democratic America is denied it's privileges by the law of the land. What is to be thought of a nation boasting of its liberty, boasting of it's humanity, boasting of its Christianity, boasting of its love of justice and purity, and yet having within its own borders three millions of persons denied by law the right of marriage?

Only a country that is based upon an extremely primitive religion, which is Christianity, I am a devoted enemy of monotheism in all of its forms, could have come with a categorizing of people as one thing or the other.

The free exercise clause of the constitution does not apply to any religion but Christianity. [because none of the other religions are legitimate religions.].

Every other religion is a salvation by self, Christianity is a salvation by Christ.

We may be sure that out of the ruins of our capitalist civilization a new religion will emerge, just as Christianity emerged from the ruins of the Roman civilization.

[On Christianity:] Its lip-service and its empty rites have made it the easiest of all tasks for the usurer to cloak his cruelties, the miser to hide his avarice, the lawyer to condone his lies, the sinner of all social sins to purchase the social immunity from them by outward deference to churches.

If following Jesus Christ doesn't cost you anything, it's because you've bought into 'American Christianity.'

Well, to be clear, I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament and fluency in Biblical Greek who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades who also happens to be Muslim.

Lack of world vision in any Christian produces a 'pea-sized Christianity'.

Yet Buddhism is four hundred years older than Christianity, and if it's not a universal religion I don't know what a universal religion is. There's also a strong focus on selectionism and the notion that religion plays a functional role in the evolutionary process. But religion is dysfunctional all the time, as well as functional. It's not so simple.

The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of 'the others,' the herd. We religious folks die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the assembly, of the same opinion as the congregation, and so on. But the Christianity of the New Testament is precisely related to the isolation of the spiritual man.

Anytime that knowledge and a version of the truth are considered to be absolute, fundamentalism is the result, whether the arena is Christianity, Islam, Judaism, or any other religious faith, as well as atheism, conservative or liberal political views, even evolution or intelligent design. Anytime our minds are closed and there is no room for dissent, we are on a slippery slope towards stagnation.