quotations about church
Behind this Church, made out of the blood and bricks you see before you, there is another Church, infinite and invisible, whose flags are raised towards heaven. This Church lives in the hearts of the millions of the faithful who love Christ and his message. It will be reborn from its ashes and fill the world.
JUAN GOMEZ-JURADO
God's Spy
The Church must be intelligible to the simple as well as to the shrewd.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
A City Set on a Hill
The Church had the words reason and liberty on her lips when the inalienable rights of the human race were threatened with shipwreck.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Letters to Young Men
The church always arrives on the scene a little breathless and a little late.
BERNARD LONERGAN
attributed, Quotes for the Journey
This church is the pillar and stable foundation of truth, because in it soundeth the voice of the Son of God.
JOHN PHILPOT
The Examinations and Writings of John Philpot
Church members are either pillars or caterpillars. The pillars hold up the church, and the caterpillars just crawl in and out.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Damn the Church. Damn it for imposing impossible celibacy on its people. Damn it for hypocrisy--Christendom was littered with priests wallowing in varieties of sin. How many of them were condemned? And damn it for its hatred of women--an abuse of half the world's inhabitants, so that those who refused to be penned into its sheepfold were condemned as harlots and heretics and witches.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
The Serpent's Tale
See, that why I ain't go to church. Figger I got me a church wherever I be. Want'a talk to God, well I say, "howdy-howdy, God," and we jaw fer a bit.
DAVID BALDACCI
Wish You Well
Reader! To whatever visible church, synagogue, or mosque you may belong! See if you do not find more true religion among the host of the excommunicated than among the far greater host who excommunicated them.
MOSES MENDELSSOHN
Jerusalem; or
What has made the Church of Christ what it is to-day? Our struggles? Did we face the persecutions of Nero? Did we flee from the persecuting hordes in the Waldensian valleys? Did we fight the battles with the Duke of Alva on the plains of Netherlands? Did we struggle with hierarchical despotism at Worcester and at Naseby? Did we face the cold and the suffering of New England? Others have struggled for us, and we have taken the fruit of their struggles; and if our posterity are to have a nation worthy of their possession, it will be because in us there is also some hand-to-hand wrestling, some self-denial, some struggle with the forces of corruption and evil in our own time. This is the great general law which Paul has expressed in the declaration, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now." Vicarious sacrifice is not an episode. It is the universal law of life. Life comes only from life. This is the first proposition. Life-giving costs the life-giver something. That is the second proposition. Pain is travail-pain, birth-pain; and it is a part of the divine order -- that is, of the order of nature -- that the birth of a higher life should always be through the pain of another.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
The operation of the Church is entirely set up for the sinner; which creates much misunderstanding among the smug.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
letter to "A.", Aug. 9, 1955
For this hath ever been reckoned a most certain ground and principle in religion, that that Church, which maintaineth, without error, the faith of Christ; which holdeth the true doctrine of the Gospel in matters necessary to salvation, and preacheth the same; which retaineth the lawful use of those Sacraments only which Christ, hath appointed, and which appointeth vice to be punished and virtue to be maintained; notwithstanding, in some other respects and in some points, it have many blemishes, imperfections, nay, divers and sundry errors, is yet to be acknowledged for the Mother of the faithful, the house of God, the ark of Noah, the pillar of Truth, and the spouse of Christ. From which Church whosoever doth separate himself, he is to be reckoned a schismatic or an heretic.
RICHARD BANCROFT
sermon preached at Paul's Cross, February 9, 1589
The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only begotten Son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church.
ST. AUGUSTINE
De Unitate Ecclesiae
You left my heart as empty
As a Monday morning church
It used to be so full of faith and now it only hurts
And I can hear the devil whisper
"Things are only getting worse"
You left my heart as empty
As a Mondy morning church
ALAN JACKSON
"Monday Morning Church"
If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for.
ERNST BLOCH
Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom
People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
MIKHAIL BAKUNIN
Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy
See the Gospel Church secure,
And founded on a Rock!
All her promises are sure;
Her bulwarks who can shock?
Count her every precious shrine;
Tell, to after-ages tell,
Fortified by power divine,
The Church can never fail.
CHARLES WESLEY
Scriptural
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
FERDINAND MAGELLAN
attributed, The Quotable Atheist
The more rabidly mad the church the more pews will be filled. So fundy evangelists have the biggest, and most profitable, congregations. More moderate churches with some respect for humans as intelligent human beings are losing numbers. I think a big revival would happen in the churches if child sacrifice was reintroduced. The old symbolic body and blood just doesn't cut it anymore.
PETER KELLY
attributed, The Quotable Atheist
Take me to church
I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life
HOZIER
"Take Me to Church"