Quotes About Church

Christianity contains within itself a germ hostile to the Church (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

separation of church and state does not result in the church continuing to apply itself to its own task; it is no guarantee against secularization. Nowhere is the church more secularized than where it is separated in principle as it is here. This very separation can create an opposition, so that the church engages much more strongly in political and secular things.

So what stands in place of the Christian message? An ethical and social idealism borne by a faith in progress that - who knows how - claims the right to call itself "Christian." And in the place of the church as the congregation of believers in Christ there stands the church as a social corporation." ~Bonhoeffer

But in a few years, as part of their effort to push Jews out of German public life, the Nazis would attempt to puah them out of the German church too. That these "non-Aryans" had publicly converted to the Christian faith meant nothing, since the lens through which the Nazis saw the world was purely racial. One's genetic makeup and ancestral bloodline were all that mattered; one's most deeply held beliefs counted for nothing.

Se estaba dirigiendo sobre todo a su propia gente, que entendía que expulsar a los judíos de la iglesia no era correcto. Entonces apeló a Romanos 14 y a la idea del «hermano más débil» en la iglesia, que requería gracia adicional y mejor lugar

The entire education of the younger generation of theologians belongs today in church cloister-like schools, in which pure doctrine, the Sermon on the Mount and worship are taken seriously—as they never are (and in present circumstances couldn't be) at the university. It

The church has only one altar, the altar of the Almighty . . . before which all creatures must kneel. . . . Whoever seeks something other than this must keep away; he cannot join us in the house of God. . . . The church has only one pulpit, and from that pulpit, faith in God will be preached, and no other faith, and no other will than the will of God, however well-intentioned.

Simply suffering—that is what will be needed then—not parries, blows or thrusts such as may still be possible or admissible in the preliminary fight; the real struggle that perhaps lies ahead must simply be to suffer faithfully. . . . [F]or sometime [the church struggle] hasn't even been about what it appears to be about; the lines have been drawn somewhere else entirely.

A church that does not keep step with modern scientific knowledge is doomed.

Whether the church in America is really "free," I doubt.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I wonder if I shall hear a sermon?

he now began to think of the church as called by God to "stand with those who suffer.

The restoration of the church must surely depend on a new kind of monasticism, which has nothing in common with the old but a life of uncompromising discipleship, following Christ according to the Sermon on the Mount. I believe the time has come to gather people together to do this. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

freedom must be won under the compulsion of a necessity. Freedom for the church comes from the necessity of the Word of God.

Luther was trying to call the church back to its true roots, to a biblical idea of a merciful God who did not demand that we obey but who first loved us and first made us righteous before he expected us to live righteously.

The worlds of folklore and religion were so mingled in early twentieth venture German culture that even families who didn't go to church were often deeply Christian.

Hitler was moving ahead with his own plans for the church. He knew quite well how to deal with these Protestant pastors. "You can do anything you want with them," he once remarked. "They will submit . . . they are insignificant little people, submissive as dogs, and they sweat with embarrassment when you talk to them.

But for reasons history will never understand, Cajetan and the church could not perceive the situation along these lines at all. They were oddly stubborn, and for this reason the Reformation, which might well have been averted, went forward.

evidently sown while the bishops slept (Mt 13:25).

A simple layman armed with Scripture is to be believed above a pope or a council without it. —Martin Luther

Freedom as a possession is a doubtful thing for a church; freedom must be won under the compulsion of a necessity. Freedom for the church comes from the necessity of the Word of God. Otherwise it becomes arbitrariness and ends in a great many new ties. Whether

is far too easy for us to base our claims to God on our own Christian religiosity and our church commitment, and in so doing utterly to misunderstand and distort the Christian idea.

What he had to say was really rather elementary: basic Christianity such as was professed in the Bible and in the doctrines of the Church of England, and to which almost everyone claimed to subscribe, was practically nonexistent in British society.

nowadays we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But this question, he said, is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.