quotations about Christianity
CHRISTIAN, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor. One who follows the teachings of Christ in so far as they are not inconsistent with a life of sin.
AMBROSE BIERCE
The Devil's Dictionary
Christians should be like a flower store: the odor of sanctity should betray them wherever they are.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
With infinite depths of truth, and an incessant spring of spiritual life, Christianity cannot be limited to any time, or petrified in any shape. It is fluent and eternal. The reconciling element of the world, it goes forth into every age, and responds to the deepest tone of want in every posture of humanity.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Christianity is simply the ideal form of manhood represented to us by Jesus Christ.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
It took time for the church to come to terms with the ignominy of the cross. Church fathers forbade its depiction in art until the reign of the Roman emperor Constantine.... Now, though, the symbol is everywhere: artists beat gold into the shape of the Roman execution device, baseball players cross themselves before batting, and cancy confectioners even make chocolate crosses for the faithful to eat during Holy Week. Strange as it may seem, Christianity has become a religion of the cross--the gallows, the electric chair, the gas chamber, in modern terms.
PHILIP YANCEY
The Jesus I Never Knew
Christianity isn't looking for a rainbow. If it were ... we'd pass out opium at services. We're trying to serve God, not be God.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit, Run
Some folks think that Christianity means a kind of insurance policy, and that it has little to do with this life, but that it is a very good thing when a man dies.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
All sincere partakers of Christian virtue are essentially one. In the spirit which pervades them dwells a uniting power found in no other tie. Though separated by oceans, they have sympathies strong and indissoluble.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Christians are like vases, they must pass through the fire ere they can shine. The graces which are to be their everlasting beauty and glory must be burned in.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Christianity is revealed to us in the form that walked the streets of Jerusalem and the shores of the Galilean lake; that bent over the sick couch and the bier; mingled in the festival of Cana, and reclined at the Last Supper; and bore a cross up the way of sorrow; and hung and prayed upon the accursed wood, and came forth radiant from the sleep of death and the broken chambers of the sepulchre.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
My experience is, that Christianity dispels more mystery than it involves. With Christianity, it is twilight in the world; without it, night. Christianity does not finish the statue--that is heaven's work; but it "rough-hews" all things--truth, the mind, the soul.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.
SAMUEL JOHNSON
letter, Aug. 13, 1766
If you think that Christianity is the most direct and undefiled expression of love and compassion the world has ever seen, you do not know much about the world's other religions. Take the religion of Jainism as one example. The Jains preach a doctrine of utter non-violence. While the Jains believe many improbable things about the universe, they do not believe the sorts of things that lit the fires of the Inquisition. You probably think the Inquisition was a perversion of the "true" spirit of Christianity. Perhaps it was. The problem, however, is that the teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. You are, of course, free to interpret the Bible differently--though isn't it amazing that you have succeeded in discerning the true teachings of Christianity, while the most influential thinkers in the history of your faith failed?
SAM HARRIS
Letter to a Christian Nation
Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue with that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first -- rock and roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.
JOHN LENNON
Evening Standard, Mar. 4, 1966
Christianity offers reasons for not fearing death or the universe, and in so doing it fails to teach adequately the virtue of courage.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Education and the Social Order
Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity ... it produces only atheists and fanatics.
THOMAS PAINE
The Age of Reason
When I think what Christianity has become in the hands of politicians and priests; how it has been shaped into a weapon of power; how it has crushed the human soul for ages; how it has struck the intellect with palsy, and haunted the imagination with superstitious phantoms; how it has broken whole nations to the yoke, and frowned on every free thought;--when I think how, under almost every form of this religion, its ministers have taken it into their own keeping, have hewn and compressed it into the shape of rigid creeds, and have then pursued by menaces of everlasting woe whosoever should question the divinity of these works of their hands; when I consider, in a word, how, under such influences, Christianity has been, and still is, exhibited in forms which shock alike the reason, conscience, and heart--I feel deeply, painfully, what a different system it is from that which Jesus taught, and I dare not apply to unbelief the terms of condemnation which belonged to the infidelity of the primitive age.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Though the ancients were ignorant of the principles of Christianity there were in them the germs of its spirit.
HERMAN MELVILLE
The Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces
Ask yourselves this question: "How is a person truly free until they can think and act for themselves?" God gave us free will so that we could choose His love. You see, He wanted us to understand our commitment. To be grown up about it. If you ask me, "Am I Christian?", I say to you, "If you strive to do good, then you're a Christian. If you don't seek to hurt or betray others, you're a Christian. If you're true to yourself and treat others as you'd have them treat you, you're a Christian." The more a person parades their Christianity for the benefit of others, the less I'm inclined to trust the Christianity they claim to bring. God tells us, "True faith is the freedom to choose truth." Now, how you express that, the way, the manner, the means at your disposal, these things are of no consequence--be you Christian or Atheist--unless in your heart you are true.
ROBERT MARSHALL
Driving Lessons
Oh, you do not know yet what Christianity is! You have seen it in poverty, in want, in weakness and woe. A despised wayfaring man, struggling with His hard fate, kicked, buffeted, and despised, even as such an one has Christianity been in the world--a candle in a dark room, a light in a dark place, a sweet song among discords, a heavenly toned voice drowned in Babel sounds; but its day is coming. The heavenly toned voice will rise above and still the Babel sounds; the sweet song will penetrate and harmonize the discords; the light will illumine the dark place until the darkness flies.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful