Quotes About Christianity

Does one approach the Scriptures (or any other influential document or collection of documents in the history of world civilization) with a hermeneutics of consent or a hermeneutics of suspicion? Christians have not done well in trying to read literature from other religions empathetically, and atheists and adherents of other world religions today increasingly approach the Bible with preexisting hostility.

Some conservative evangelicals write or speak as if the only legitimate form of Christianity is inerrantism. Only a tiny minority throughout church history has held this conviction, and it often proves counterproductive.

Christian scholarship will be a poor and paltry thing, worth little attention, until the Christian scholar, under the control of his authentic commitment, devises theories that lead to promising, interesting, fruitful, challenging lines of research.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Como un cristiano ateo que lucha, tengo mis preguntas y dudas sobre Dios, pero estoy agradecido de que como el hombre ciego que fue sanado, no me hace falta entenderlo todo para creer.

We know for certain that we are not made right with God by our good works. We are saved only by grace through faith. And while we're not saved by good works, we are saved for good works.

When I ask God to change my actions, that honesty about my own inconsistent behaviors forces me not to be so hard on other believers. Humble acknowledgment of the plank in my own eye gives me more patience with the specks in everyone else's (see Matthew 7:1-5). Instead of pointing the finger at others, let's allow God to examine us.

Los cristianos ateos podemos buscar la lógica de todo tipo de excusas posibles con tal de no perdonar. Sin embargo, los cristianos pueden encontrar en Dios la fuerza que les hace falta para luchar contra los sentimientos de ira, odio y amargura, y abrirse paso así de regreso a la cruz.

La preocupación es el resultado de tratar de llevar una carga que jamás tenía como destino nuestra espalda. Si los cristianos ateos tratamos de hacer tal cosa, estamos admitiendo que en realidad no confiamos en Dios.

the early church fathers provide abundant evidence that gifts such as prophecy and miracles continued in their own time, even if not as abundantly as in the first century. Christians in the medieval and modern periods continued to embrace these activities of the Spirit. It is, in fact, cessationism that is not well documented in earlier history; it seems no coincidence that it arose only in a culture dominated by anti-supernaturalism.

As Peter Berger has noted, the strategy of apologizing for Christian faith by trying to demonstrate its social utility is always eventually self-liquidating. Sooner of later people realize that a great many of the supposedly practical and secular benefits of the Christian religion can be had more easily without religion...The logic of practical atheism may well be more deeply ingrained in the evangelical tradition than conservatives perhaps have realized.

If the early Christian accounts of dramatic signs make these works seem foreign and foreboding to segments of modern Western academia,[85] they are nevertheless welcome in many of the dynamic churches of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, which believe that they share their experiences.

Millions of Bible-reading Christians who today call themselves charismatics do not believe in health and wealth teachings.

All Christian churches in China practice some form of healing, including Three-Self churches. In fact, according to some surveys, 90% of new believers cite healing as a reason for their conversion. This is especially true in the countryside where medical facilities are often inadequate or non-existent. —Edmond Tang

I still believe in God; the teachings of Jesus even, but the rest of Christianity... its Bible, its churches, its dogma-- only sets up boundaries between people and cultures. It denies the beauty of being HUMAN, and it ignores all these GAPS that need to be filled in by the individual.

En el nombre del Padre, y del Hijo, y del Espíritu Santo. Am

How often today might Christians think they stand for "true" Christianity when what they stand for is a secular tradition-what cultural critic Raymond Williams would call a "selective tradition" (chapter five)-that has little to do with the kingdom of God?

Christians are called to love the whole world, which includes the cultures in which we are embedded. For only by loving culture can we become effective communicators within it.

In the "grain of wheat" metaphor, Jesus insists if we wish to hold on to the throughline to eternity, we have to follow that line through death. We have to imagine death enough to see it not as some utterly aversive event we go away from or around, but instead as something recognizable enough to go through. When we thoughtfully stock our minds with images of death, we give the Spirit of Jesus the raw material to draw mental throughlines from death to resurrection.

I happen to like Philippians 4:6, but I also don't like how it is used as a "clobber verse" to make anxious people feel like they're doing something wrong or, even worse, that there is something wrong about them. As with most clobber verses, in this situation it is being used out of context.

Those of us who were brought up as Christians and have lost our faith have retained the sense of sin without the saving belief in redemption. This poisons our thought and so paralyses us in action.

Because I'm a Christian.' She had been pushed beyond the limit of her endurance and the words had burst out without thinking . . . but of course it was true. That really was the answer; for if you were a Christian you had to forgive people who showed contrition, no matter what they had done. She had no idea what 'Uncle Randal' had done, but he was sorry and wanted to end the feud. If you did not forgive other people you could not expect forgiveness from God . . .

Liberal Christianity, of course, has enemies, but they are everyone's enemies - sexism, racism, homophobia. But liberal versions of Christianity, which can be both theologically and politically conservative, assume that what it means to be Christian qua Christian is to have no enemies peculiar to being Christian.

I was a Christian. I didn't want to have sex before marriage, I was a bit uptight and not very self-confident. I was a virgin until I was 26.