CHURCH QUOTES II

quotations about church

The directions which are given in Holy Writ for the formation of the church in the time of the Apostles, are to be applied to the same society in all ages.

WILLIAM HEY

Tracts and Essays


Let us pray for the Catholic Church;
for the Churches throughout
the whole world;
that is, for their truth, unity, and stability;
that in all charity may flourish,
and truth may live.
For our own Church,
that what is lacking in it may be supplied;
what is unsound, corrected;
that all Heresies, Schisms, Scandals,
as well public as private,
may be removed.
Correct the wandering,
convert the unbelieving,
increase the faith of the Church,
destroy Heresies,
discover the crafty enemies,
crush the violent.

LANCELOT ANDREWES

The Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes


I’m such an alcoholic that I go to church just for communion.

JAROD KINTZ

$3.33


There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea--that idea which the church has never ceased to embody--I AM!

HENRY ADAMS

Esther


We believe that there is one church of God, catholic and universal, and dispersed throughout the whole world; this church is the kingdom, the body, the spouse of Christ; Christ alone is Prince of this kingdom, the head of this body, the Bridegroom of this spouse.

BISHOP J. JEWELL

attributed, Day's Collacon


Now to get back to our given Church: it lives almost entirely for modesty and moneyed piety. It zealously inveighs against the harm done to Joseph and the sheep, but it has made its arrangements with the upper classes and serves as their spiritual defender. It bristles at see-through blouses, but not at slums in which half-naked children starve, and not, above all, at the conditions that keep three quarters of mankind in misery. It condemns desperate girls who abort a fetus, but it consecrates war, which aborts millions. It has nationalized its God, nationalized him into ecclesiastic organization, and has inherited the Roman empire under the mask of the Crucified. It preserves misery and injustice, having first tolerated and then approved the class power that causes them; it prevents any seriousness about deliverance by postponing it to St. Never-Ever's Day or shifting it to the beyond.

ERNST BLOCH

Man on His Own


Ninety-nine percent of everything that goes on in most Christian churches has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual religion. Intelligent people all notice this sooner or later, and they conclude that the entire one hundred percent is bullshit, which is why atheism is connected with being intelligent in people's minds.

NEAL STEPHENSON

Snow Crash


When a church is faithless to its duties, the real church is outside its walls, in the community.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Life Thoughts


The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.

JOHN STEINBECK

East of Eden


Temples and churches have become social centers. They have lost their original purpose because the minds of the people are more attracted to worldly things than to prayer. The lips repeat the prayer mechanically like a phonograph record, but the mind wanders to other places.

SRI S. SATCHIDANANDA

The Yoga Sutras


I think most people come to the Church by means the Church does not allow, else there would be no need their getting to her at all.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

letter to "A.", Aug. 9, 1955


The nearer the church, the further from God.

BISHOP ANDREWS

sermon on the Nativity before James I, 1622


Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.

EMILE ZOLA

attributed, What Great Men Think of Religion


We're gonna make it to the church on time
Need to hear the preacher
Give me a sign
We're gonna make it to the church on time

BEN HARPER

"Church on Time"


The church is God's vineyard.

H. BULLINGER

attributed, Day's Collacon


Yeah, what I need
Is a neon church with a jukebox choir
Full of honky tonk angels
With their wings on fire
Straight pourin' out that Johnnie Walker healin'
I got a feelin'
I need a neon church

TIM MCGRAW

"Neon Church"


The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. "They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner." "What are you complaining about?" said God. "They won't let Me in either."

BRENNAN MANNING

The Ragamuffin Gospel


I'm more spiritual than I am religious. I don't go to church; I go to the beach.

PAULA DEEN

Good Housekeeping, Nov. 2009


Every one went to church -- every one with the exception of two or three families whom I looked upon with a kind of mysterious awe, as I might have looked upon a family without visible means of support and popularly suspected of earning a livelihood by counterfeiting or some similar lawless practice. The church itself was an old-fashioned brick Puritan meeting-house, equally free from architectural ornament without and from decoration within. The pews had been painted white; for some reason the paint had not dried, and the congregation, to protect their garments, had spread down upon the seats and backs of the pews newspapers, generally religious. When the paint at length dried the newspapers were pulled off, leaving the impression of their type reversed, and I used to interest myself during the long sermon in trying to decipher the hieroglyphic impressions. There was neither Sunday-School room nor prayer-meeting room. The Sunday-School was held in the church, and the parson at prayer-meeting took a seat in a pew about the center of the building, put a board across the back of the pews to hold his Bible and his lamp, and sat, except when speaking, with his back to the congregation. A great wood stove at the rear, with a smoke-pipe extending the whole length of the room to the flue in front, furnished the heat -- none too much of it on cold winter days. Plain and even homely as was this meeting-house, associations have given to it a sacredness in my eyes which neither Gothic arch nor pictured window could have given to it. My grandfather was largely instrumental in constructing it. In its pulpit each of his five sons preached on occasions. One of them acted as its pastor for a year or more. A grandson and a great-grandson of his were here baptized. My earliest recollections of public worship and of Sunday-School teaching are associated with it. We four brothers have each at times played the organ in connection with its service of sacred song. My brother Edward and myself were both ordained to the Gospel ministry within its walls, and in its pulpit preached some of our first sermons. The church still exists, a flourishing organization, but the meeting-house was destroyed by fire in 1886, and its place has been taken by a more modern structure.

LYMAN ABBOTT

Reminiscences


A church can wither as surely under the ministry of soulless Bible exposition as it can where no Bible is given. To be effective the preacher's message must be alive; it must alarm, arouse, challenge; it must be God's present voice to a particular people. Then, and not till then, is it the prophetic word and the man himself a prophet.

A. W. TOZER

The Life of A. W. Tozer: In Pursuit of God