Popular quotes about Christianity! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 98
Socialism" is no more an evil word than "Christianity." Socialism no more prescribed Joseph Stalin and his secret police and shuttered churches than Christianity prescribed the Spanish Inquisition. Christianity and socialism alike, in fact, prescribe a society dedicated to the proposition that all men, women, and children are created equal and shall not starve.
Kurt VonnegutSo 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.
Samir SelmanovicMillennials 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.
Rachel Held EvansChristianity 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.
Varg VikernesThe way in which I know Christianity is true is first and foremost is the basis of the witness of the Holy Spirit in my heart. And this gives me self-authenticating means of knowing Christianity is true wholly apart from the evidence. And therefore, even if in some historically contingent circumstances the evidence that I have available to me should turn against Christianity, I do not think that controverts the witness of the Holy Spirit.
William Lane CraigHe who begins by loving Christianity more than Truth, will proceed by loving his sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.
Samuel Taylor ColeridgeChristianity is not about not swearing. Itโs not about not having impure thoughts. Really, itโs not about not at all. Christianity is about Jesus.
Judah SmithIn Destroyer of the gods I focus on several major features of early Christianity that made it distinctive, even odd or bizarre .We don't today realize just how different early Christianity was in that context.
Larry HurtadoI have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day.
Wilkie CollinsTherefore, when I look for a church, I look for the music that best fits me and the programs that best cater to me and my family. When I make plans for my life and career, it is about what works best for me and my family. When I consider the house I will live in, the car I will drive, the clothes I will wear, the way I will live, I will choose according to what is best for me. This is the version of Christianity that largely prevails in our culture. But it is not biblical Christianity.
David PlattChristianity is not about learning how to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring.
Mike YaconelliChristianity is not "Jesus is our example." Christianity is "Jesus is our substitute."
Tullian TchividjianThere were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.
Georg C. LichtenbergIt is often asserted that woman owes all the advantages of the position she occupies to-day to Christianity, but the facts of history show that the Christian Church has done nothing specifically for woman's elevation. In the general march of civilization, she has necessarily reaped the advantage of man's higher development, but we must not claim for Christianity all that has been achieved by science, discovery and invention.
Elizabeth Cady StantonThere is no reason to not trust your process, no reason to get frustrated, no reason to criticize, or judge others, nothing wrong with getting old, or not being able to get pregnant, or being handicapped, or being short or tall or gay, or injured, or divorced or married to an idiot, or with Christianity or Judaism or Islam, or indigenous beliefs, or pollution, crime, war, Bush, etc. When this understanding grows, we realize where we're at now is just as perfect as wherever we could possibly get to.
Bryan KestChristianity 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 StokesWestern civilization, Christianity, decency are struggling for their very lives. In this worldwide civil war, race prejudice is our most dangerous enemy, for it is a disease at the very root of our democratic life.
MordecaiI learned more about Christianity from my mother than from all the theologians in England.
John WesleyWord 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.
Mark TwainThe establishment of Christianity . . . arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years.
Andrew Dickson WhiteJesus told parables. When he wanted to say something really profound about God, he went into parable. I don't find it surprising then that when earliest Christianity wanted to say something profound about Jesus, they went into parable too. That doesn't mean everything is a parable. When it says Jesus was in Nazareth I don't think that's a parable, I think Jesus was in Nazareth. When it talks about Jesus walking on the water, I don't think that's the point at all, I think the point is that the church without Jesus sinks.
John Dominic CrossanI was born Jewish and so I remain, even if that's unacceptable for many. For me, the vocation of Israel is bringing light to the goyim. That's my hope and I believe that Christianity is the means for achieving it.
Jean-Marie Lustiger... in Northern Ireland, if you don't have basic Christianity, rather than merely religion, all you get out of the experience of living is bitterness.
Bernadette DevlinBecause Christianity is a religion of death, it could be treated with the utmost realism, and it could have its orgies, just likethe old religion of nature and life.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich SchlegelChristianity in the suburb is cheerful. The church is a centre of social activity and those who go to church need never be lonely.
Stevie SmithI've heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. "You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God." But that's answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can't avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it.
Timothy KellerThere's this morbid side to the way many represent Christianity today, where you don't smile, because it's too serious, and you can't expect to see God - that kind of stuff. If there is God, we must see Him, and I don't believe in the idea you find in most churches, where they say, "No, you're not going to see Him. He's way up above you. Just believe what we tell you and shut up."
George HarrisonWe 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.
Herbert ReadAfter I set out to refute Christianity intellectually and couldn't, I came to the conclusion the Bible was true and Jesus Christ was God's Son.
Josh McDowellThe Christian missionary may preach the gospel to the poor naked heathen, but the spiritual heathen who populate Europe have as yet heard nothing of Christianity.
Carl JungI could, of course, have done no more if no less than affiliated myself in one way or another with a particular church, could have simply read books about Christianity, talked to Christian people, set out to discover something about what a Christian life is supposed to involve and then tried as best I could to live one. But, on the one hand, that didn't seem enough to me, and on the other, it seemed to much.
Frederick BuechnerThe Indian is making an amazing discovery, namely that Christianity and Jesus are not the same - that they may have Jesus without the system that has been built up around Him in the West.
E. Stanley JonesI don't understand the whole Christian conservativism doesn't make sense to me because I was raised very Christian and its kind of an odd thing but my parents, my family is also very conservative in their own way but I understand the bible and I studied Christianity very well and I don't see where the hatred of gays comes from because it really defeats Christ's purpose.
Margaret ChoMany there are who, while they bear the name of Christians, are totally unacquainted with the power of their divine religion. But for their crimes the Gospel is in no wise answerable. Christianity is with them a geographical, not a descriptive, appellation.
Frederick William FaberCatholicism is the big house of Christianity. It's got many, many rooms in it. And I've always been attracted to the rooms which are to do with prayer. The mystical strain is the strain whereby the whole day can be given over to prayer through what we call lectio divina, prayerful reading of Scripture, through practice of meditation of when one uses the imagination and the intellect with respect to images, and then finally, and most difficult of all, contemplation, where one empties the mind of all images and all ideas, all concepts, in order to be completely attentive to God.
Kevin HartThat's the big difference between Christianity and other religions. The difference between Works and Grace or Do and Done.
Rick WarrenThere are hard texts in each tradition which we must confront and ask ourselves, 'Can we reinterpret those texts to allow us to live peaceably, and respectfully, with people of other faiths?' That is a job only Jews can do for Judaism, only Christians can do for Christianity, and only Muslims can do for Islam. But sometimes the sight of someone in one faith wrestling with that faith can empower you to wrestle with another faith.
Jonathan Sacks