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Church Quotes

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Church Quotes

“The business of the church is to tell and embody a story”

Author:Lesslie Newbigin

“I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case.”

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

“I have been advised that you have decided to move forward with your story without my interview. This, despite the fact confirmed more than three weeks ago that I would make myself available on a date certain (6 July), after you spoke to other relevant Church personnel and toured Church facilities, and that I would provide information annihilating the credibility of your sources including the fundamental crimes against the Scientology religion that were the reasons for their removal from post.”

“The fact is that there is a profound spiritual hunger in the western world which, for a variety of reasons, its church is no longer able to assuage. So a book which suggests that there is a spiritual significance to the Christian story but that this has been suppressed by the church undoubtedly appeals to those who are anxious to square this circle.”

“Towards orthodox religion, father's own attitude remained one of tolerance. He looked upon the New Testament as the noble story of a human being which, because of ignorance and the lack of printing presses, had become exaggerated. He maintained that religions served their purpose; some people depended on them all their lives to make them honest. Others did not need to be so held in line. But subjection to any church was a reflection on strength and character. You should be able to get from yourself what you had to go go church for.”

Source: The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger

“To accept the story of the Arab destruction of the library of Alexandria, one must explain how it is that so dramatic an event was unmentioned and unnoticed not only in the rich historical literature of medieval Islam, but even in the literatures of the Coptic and other Christian churches, of the Byzantines, of the Jews, or anyone else who might have thought the destruction of a great library worthy of comment. That the story still survives, and is repeated, despite all these objections, is testimony to the enduring power of a myth.”

“What I notice, as a historian reading stories about so-called nature miracles, the walking on the water, or the miraculous catch of fishes, they're done especially for the insiders, for the disciples. Usually healings and exorcisms are done for people along the road, as it were. Jesus doesn't come on the water to save the fishing fleet from Capernaum, he comes on the water to save the disciples. It's a parable, dummy, it's a parable, don't you get it? If the leadership of the church takes off in a boat without Jesus, it will sink, it will get nowhere.”

People Ifs Done Stories Reading Jesus Water Church Healing Walking Miracle Fishes Boat Fishing Historian Disciple Miraculous Parables Insiders Dummy Exorcism Reading Stories

Author:John Dominic Crossan

“Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874, on Campden Hill, Kensington; and baptised according to the formularies of the Church of England in the little church of St. George opposite the large Waterworks Tower that dominated that ridge.”

“I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the Cross, the Cross--God's hammer, God's fire.”

“The attitude of the Church was not as dogmatic as is often assumed. Interpretations of Bible passages had been revised in the light of scientific research before. Everyone regarded the earth as spherical and as freely floating in space though the Bible tells a different story.”

Different Stories Light Earth Church Space Attitude Research Interpretation Passages Floating Scientific Research Dogmatic Floating In Space

Author:Paul Feyerabend

“My experience is that lots of people go to church, sing the songs, tell the story, etc but have profound ambivalence about God.”

People Stories Song Church Profound Etc Ambivalence

Author:Rob Bell

“Every story of change there is always someone who didn't have the resources or the network they needed and did something anyway.”

Stories Christian Leadership Church Needed Resources

Author:Andy Stanley

“I was raised in the church by my grandmother who made sure we went to Sunday School, read the Bible and went to church every Sunday. Every night we read Bible stories before we went to bed.”

Made Stories School Night Church Bed Raised Grandmother Sunday Every Night My Grandmother Sunday School Bible Stories

Author:Torii Hunter

“Important thing about myth is that it's not just something that you believe, a myth is essentially a program for action. And unless you translate a mythical story, or a doctrine out of the church, into practical action, it just remains incomprehensible. Rather like the rules of a board game which seem very sort of dull and complicated and incomprehensible until you pick up the dice and start to play, when everything falls into place.”

“Everything we see in a Catholic church is there for a single purpose: to tell a love story.”

Stories Purpose Church Catholic Love Story Catholic Church

Book:The Church: Unlocking the Secrets to the Places Catholics Call Home

Source: The Church: Unlocking the Secrets to the Places Catholics Call Home

“Coming from the South and growing up in L.A. where it was so segregated - worse than the South in many ways - all the people in my neighborhood were from the South. So you had that Southern cultured environment. The church was very important. And there were these folk ways that were there. I was always fascinated by these Southern stories, people would share these mystified experiences of the South. I wanted to talk about folklore.”

People Way Important Stories Wanted Church Growing Up Environment Growing Share South Folks Neighborhood Southern Fascinated Folklore Story People

Author:Charles Burnett