Quotes About Christianity

During the Crusades, when Christians were in the mood to slaughter infidels, they were very cognizant of God's sanctioning faith-based mass murder in parts of the Bible. During the Cold War, when the United States was part of an international multifaith alliance that included Muslim and Buddhist nations, this motif was played down; whole generations of American Christians were weaned on a misleadingly sunny selection of Bible stories.

When Christians faced oppression at the hands of Roman imperialists, they did what Jews had done when they faced oppression at the hands of Babylonian imperialists: dreamed of vengeance and enshrined the dream in theology.

cuestión de tiempo y audacia, pero cuando se den cuenta que el espíritu se les hunde en la letrina de esta civilización, antes de ahogarse van a torcer el camino. Lo que hay es que el hombre no ha reparado que está enfermo de cobardía y de cristianismo.

He asked whether Quincy knew what church his mother belonged to. He asked whether he himself had any religious preferences. Quincy said his mother belonged to the Christian Church of Fallen Angels. Or no, maybe it had another name. He couldn't remember. You're right, said Mr. Lawrence, it does have a different name, it's the Christian Church of Angels Redeemed. That's the one, said Quincy.

The chief danger of the twentieth century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and Heaven without Hell. —William Booth

The Pentecostal experience that exploded at 312 Azusa Street creat ed a paradigm shift that infused new energy and passion into a lifeless, liturgical Christianity. Pentecostals owe a great deal to those pioneers who have gone before. To them we dedicate our renewed energy to continue what they started. ENDNOTES

Part of her had hoped he would say something like, "I want you, Katie. You belong to me now. I'll take care of you." He didn't say that. But his answer was the best one, really. "You belong to Christ, Katie.

Their (the Greeks)encounters with foreign were not coloured by the belief that such people's religion was false and inferior, the belief that thinges Christians, Muslims, Hindus or atheist nowadays

THE IMAGE OF Christ crucified is so ubiquitous in Christian art that it seems impossible that it was not there from the first. Yet, art historians have been unable to identify an unambiguously Christian crucifix before the fourth or early fifth century, and only a few examples before the sixth century. Though crosses and episodes from the events of Christ's Passion began to appear on Christian artifacts by the mid-fourth century, none ever depicted Christ on the cross.

Rather, these early believers favored devices like doves, anchors, or fish, which presumably alluded to the cross without actually depicting it. For example, in an introduction to living as a Christian, Clement of Alexandria enumerated the figures that believers might appropriately inscribe on their signet rings. While he approved of doves, fish, ships, lyres, and anchors, his instructions specifically omitted a cross.72

The peddling of fear in any form as incentive to faith remains the most egregious sin that can be committed in the name of Jesus. It feels very good to name the enemy and thank God that you are not like "those people." But if Christianity is to survive, someone needs to stand up in the middle of one of these hapless sermons and quote the comic-strip character Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us.

When I was a kid growing up, the message "Jesus is the Answer" was ubiquitous— painted on barns, outcroppings of rock, or as the final installment of a Burma Shave sign. The message, however, is distinctly unbiblical. The message should be "Jesus is the Assignment.

If there are rules against taking advantage of resident aliens, then why are so many Christians the first to call for deportation of migrants? It's as if we expect these strangers to provide us with cheap manual labor, roofing our houses, landscaping our yards, pouring concrete, and caring for our children, but then we want them to disappear after sundown.

Contemporary Christians have declared war on individual immorality but seem remarkably silent about the evil of systems, especially corporate greed and malfeasance. (p. 176)

As long as Christianity is the dominant belief system in America, we cannot afford to be biblically or theologically illiterate, regardless of our personal beliefs. (p. 8)

It is a "terrible trivialization," Crossan writes, "to imagine that all Jesus' followers lost their faith on Good Friday and had it restored by apparitions on Easter Sunday.

Jesus did not come to die, rendering his life and teaching secondary. He died because of his life and teachings.

What is the proper object of our worship, and what would it take to make Christianity compelling, even irresistible, again?" How can our faith become biblically responsible, intellectually honest, emotionally satisfying, and socially significant?

Christianity as a belief system requires nothing but acquiescence. Christianity as a way of life, as a path to follow, requires a second birth, the conquest of ego, and new eyes with which to see the world. It is no wonder that we have preferred to be saved.

Fundamentalists are to Christianity what paint-by-numbers is to art.

The lesson God engraved on my heart that day was while I didn't necessarily need the money, she needed to give it. The exchange itself—both the giving and the receiving—illustrates a key characteristic of Christian community. To open-handedly bless others from the riches God has so generously given us and to open-handedly receive blessings from others binds believers together in an interdependent, Jesus-and-others-oriented web of grace.

As writer Elisabeth Elliot phrased it, "The fact that I am a woman does not make me a different kind of Christian, but the fact that I am a Christian does make me a different kind of woman."1

Today, many adults are finding it necessary to move to the margins of traditional Christian orthodoxy in order to rediscover a genuine faith—one that is much more than words and beliefs, one that can never be adequately expressed in words, one that is the positive response of the whole person to life, that involves the emotions and the will just as much as the mind.

Christians use logical or natural explanations to explain the rise of other traditions, such as the foundation of Mormonism on the visions of Joseph Smith, these explanations must be applied to the Judeo-Christian tradition as well.