Quotes About Faith

for your 'transactions,' as you call them, is derived from the

Uncertainty is the only certainty in this world.

can only conclude that the appearance of age and order in stratigraphic successions is an elaborate ruse, part of a great cosmic charade set up to trap the unfaithful. What sort of God would do that? One who can be petty and vengeful, who may love His creation but doesn't trust it. A God, in other words, much like ourselves. In his zeal to know the mind of God, the creationist finds only a mirror.

You will be graced by the necessary catastrophes.

The supreme being of the Deists could be apprehended by practical investigation and the use of reason to understand natural laws. Religious faith was not needed, nor were miracles, divine inspiration, or personal revelations of God's spirit.

Rice would carry that burden for saving lost souls for the rest of his life, and it was driven by genuinely heartfelt compassion based on a powerful rationale: if sinners were going to burn in the literal flames of a materially real eternal fire unless they accepted the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, then any sensible, empathetic, and responsible person would devote all of his life to saving non-Christians from their God-ordained fate.

I ended up as much a Maoist failure as I had been a Christian failure. Souls were still unsaved, and the imperialist bourgeoisie was still in power. Before I graduated from high school, I had lost my faith in the fundamentalist God I had been trained to worship and serve.

In the minds of many Texans, the principle attraction of the Klan was its defense of Christian morality. The Klan presented itself as a contender for the historic Christian faith, a defender of Christian civilization, and an advocate for the good Christian people of the South and the country.

Fellow Englishman Charles Spurgeon was a fierce opponent of social injustice, especially slavery, and joined other evangelicals in crusades to eliminate poverty, hunger, and homelessness, especially for children.

The very ground on which the structure of 20th-century fundamentalist theology and politics was built has crumbled into sand. The reason for which modern fundamentalism was created—in opposition to modernism and liberal theology—has been swept away in the avalanche of new ideas, in new dialogue between different faith traditions.

Although Rice's earthly racial and political ideas drove him away from the struggle for justice in the South, the heavenly core of his faith was just enough to also drive him away from the Klan and his father Will Rice's racial politics, and to leave him open to the claims of black people for justice on earth. His opposition to integration was oddly conditional.

A fundamentalist was set apart from "the world." We were definitely going to Heaven when we died, and those with different views on Heaven, Hell, God and Satan, sin and salvation were definitely going to Hell, which was more than a shame because Hell involved eternal torment, literal flames, and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

A principal leader of the revival movement in east Tennessee was Samuel Doak, the Presbyterian minister who had delivered his famous "Sword of the Lord" sermon in 1780 sending the Tennessee militia off to defeat the British. As the fires of revival flared up in the 1800s, Doak converted to abolitionism, freed all his slaves, and then traveled the countryside preaching that any true Christian would condemn and work to end the institution of slavery.

The logic of evangelical Protestants in the 18th century led to an inescapable conclusion: If God was indeed no respecter of persons, and if all were equal in the sight of God—men and women, young and old, rich and poor, white and colored—then Christians had no business owning slaves or benefitting from their labor and suffering, and slavery itself was a crime against God.

It was the work of all true Christians, Wesley urged, to act as instruments of God for the suppression of slavery.

One is perhaps too inclined to think only of him alive at some future time when we shall meet him again; but it is really so much more helpful to think of him as just separated from us for the present.

You know, when people who were once religious no longer believe in God, they never really change; they just go on, hunting for the ecstatic food, trying to satisfy that hunger.

They were the most romantic creatures in the city in that room. If their days were spent in banks and office buildings, no matter: Their true lives began when they walked through this door—and were baptized into a deeper faith, as if brought to life by miraculous immersion. They lived only for the night.

you'll have to forgive me, darling, I am old-fashioned, I believe in General Motors and the clarity of the gods . . .

This is my favorite sin: despair.

The amount of surprise you feel when something goes wrong is directly proportional to the amount of trust and faith you have in the code being run.

As the writings of Walton and others suggest, many evangelicals view the requirements of U.S. national security in the here-and-now and the final accomplishment of Christ's saving mission at the end of time as closely related if not indistinguishable.

Fear not, the people may be deluded for a moment, but cannot be corrupted.

And then my husband works every second weekend, sermons on Sunday, baptising on Saturdays, weddings.