Quotes About Christianity

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.

Christianity was created by some decadent and degenerated Romans as a tool of oppression, in the late Roman era, and it should be treated accordingly. It is like handcuffs to the mind and spirit and is nothing but destructive to mankind. In fact I don't really see Christianity as a religion. It is more like a spiritual plague, a mass psychosis, and it should first and foremost be treated as a problem to be solved by the medical science. Christianity is a diagnosis. It's like Islam and the other Asian religions, a HIV/AIDS of the spirit and mind.

Whoever thou art, whatever in other respects thy life may be, my friend, by ceasing to take part (if ordinarily thou doest) in the public worship of God, as it now is (with the claim that it is the Christianity of the New Testament), thou hast constantly one guilt the less, and that a great one: thou dost not take part in treating God as a fool by calling that the Christianity of the New Testament which is not the Christianity of the New Testament.

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 am devoting my lecture in this seminar to a discussion of the possibility that we are now entering a Jewish century, a time when the spirit of the community, the non-ideological blend of the emotional and rational and the resistance to categories and forms will emerge through the forces of anti-nationalism to provide us with a new kind of society. I call this process the Judaization of Christianity because Christianity will be the vehicle through which this society becomes Jewish.

Christianity is not about not swearing. It’s not about not having impure thoughts. Really, it’s not about not at all. Christianity is about Jesus.

For many people, the reluctance to embrace Christianity is as practical as it is intellectual. They want to know what the benefits of Christianity are, or what's in it for them.

Christianity has not conquered nationalism; the opposite has been the case nationalism has made Christianity its footstool.

All 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.

We do injury to a child if we bring it up in a narrow Christianity, which prevents it from ever becoming capable of perceiving that there are treasures of purest gold to be found in non-Christian civilizations. Laical education does an even greater injury to children. It covers up those treasures, and those of Christianity as well.

If the Christian religion, as I understand it, or as you understand it, should maintain its ground, as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagoric, Hindoo, and cabalistical Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires.

I see with greater and greater clearness that consistent Christianity is the easiest Christianity to defend

I 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.

My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

Christianity 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.

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.

We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.

There is a common, worldly kind of Christianity in this day, which many have, and think they have enough-a cheap Christianity which offends nobody, and requires no sacrifice-which costs nothing, and is worth nothing.

Think of Jonathan Edwards who thundered the terrors of God and what Hell was like until men grasped their seats and hung on to them, fearing they were falling into Hell itself. Men were moved by fear to escape damnation. That was believed to be Christianity. Why any coward wanted to keep out of Hell. He might not have had one idea in his soul of what was the real true earmark of Christianity.

There is no ground whatever for the claim, so often made by religious apologists, that these ideals are specifically Christian and originated with Jesus. What were specifically Christian were some of the less enlightened teachings, which have done untold harm. Christians claim that organised Christianity has been a great force for good, but this view can be maintained on one assumption only: that everything good in the Christian era is a result of Christianity and everything bad happened in spite of it.

Let us remember that every worldview-not just Christianity's-must give an explanation or an answer for evil and suffering...this is not just a problem distinctive to Christianity. It will not do for the challenger just to raise the question. This problem of evil is one to which we all must offer an answer, regardless of the belief system to which we subscribe.

Every civil government is based upon some religion or philosophy of life. Education in a nation will propagate the religion of that nation. In America, the foundational religion was Christianity. And it was sown in the hearts of Americans through the home and private and public schools for centuries. Our liberty, growth, and prosperity was the result of a Biblical philosophy of life. Our continued freedom and success is dependent on our educating the youth of America in the principles of Christianity.

Christianity is an adventure of the spirit or it is not Christianity.

The 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.

But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence. Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering.

I fear that much of the Christianity that surrounds us assumes our task is to save appearances by protecting God from Job-like anguish. But if God is the God of Jesus Christ, then God does not need our protection. What God demands is not protection, but truth.

Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid or produces only atheists or fanatics. As an engine of power, it serves the purpose of despotism, and as a means of wealth, the avarice of priests, but so far as respects the good of man in general it leads to nothing here or hereafter.

Word it as softly as you please, the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of the dog and wolf. The moment there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line or a hamper of fish or some other squalid matter, see patriotism rise, and hear him split the universe with is war-whoop. The spirit of patriotism being in its nature jealous and selfish, is just in man's line, it comes natural to him - he can live up to all its requirements to the letter; but the spirit of Christianity is not in its entirety possible to him.

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?

Christianity provides a unified answer for the whole of life.

If Christians continue to rely on emotion and ignore evidence, they will continue to lose their children to secularism. As Ravi Zacharias points out, a tepid Christianity cannot withstand a rabid secularism. And make no mistake-secularism is rabid. The world isn't neutral out there. Today's culture is becoming increasingly anti-Christian.

Historical theology has too often failed to interpret repentance as a positive creative force. ... Essentially, if Christianity is to succeed in the next millennium, it must cease to be a negative religion and must become positive.

Be assured that Christianity is something more than forms and creeds and ceremonies: there is life, and power, and reality, in our holy faith.

The duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.

what about Christianity? Are we right in the face of so long a record of its poverty in international achievement, to keep invoking it as a standard, almost synonymous with civilization?

I'd signed up not just for Christianity but the established Church of England. That has a particular history and I think we rather lost it in the 19th Century, we became so much part of empire and colonialism, the language of the Church Of England still reflects that Victorian time. As the 20th Century developed, not surprisingly people left the church and I can see the church's role in losing people.

You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself. (Quoted by C.S.Lewis in Mere Christianity)

Our adversaries, numerous and formidable, will say, and will have the right to say, that our Principe CrÇateur is identical with the Principe GÇnÇrateur of the Indians and Egyptians, and may fitly be symbolized as it was symbolized anciently, by the linage...To accept this in lieu of a personal God is to abandon Christianity and worship of Jehovah and return to wallow in the styles of Paganism.

She would have colored gracefully with embarrassment had she not possessed the complexion of one of those “heathen Italians,” as her mother said, who never colored, gracefully or otherwise. (Convincing her mother that Christianity had, to all intents and purposes, originated with the Italians, thus making them the exact opposite of heathen, was a waste of time and breath.)

If you want a religion that makes sense, then I suggest something other than Christianity. But if you want a religion that makes life, then, I think this is the one.

Preaching Christianity to skeptics without first setting out the praeambula fidei [preambles of faith], and then complaining when they don’t accept it, is like yelling in English at someone who only speaks Chinese, and then dismissing him as a fool when he doesn’t understand you. In both cases, while there is certainly a fool in the picture, it isn’t the listener.

If your Christianity depends upon a pastor's preaching, then you're a long way from being where you should be.

All this anti-Christian rhetoric that you see coming from the government, all this anti-Christian push, is not really an attack on Christianity. It's an effort to make you realize that God is your government. Your government is God.

Among the many reasons assignable for the sad decay of true Christianity, perhaps the neglecting to assemble ourselves together, in religious societies, may not be one of the least.

To be frank, I suspect that today there is little respect for Christianity as source of moral teaching about goodness.

Men's moral principles are weak enough without their being made subordinate to selfishness; and their selfishness is quite active enough, without any such effort as Christianity makes to constitute it the mainspring of all their conduct.

We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed.... This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.

When we are clear enough about our own point of view, we can find help in the methods of Eastern Christianity or in the ways of the Far East, perhaps by consulting the I Ching or through mandala contemplation; we may even find help in the ways of shamanism or Islam. If we are clear about where we stand and the direction we must take, such methods may be useful in order to follow our own way to the end.