quotations about church
When a church is faithless to its duties, the real church is outside its walls, in the community.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The nearer the church, the further from God.
BISHOP ANDREWS
sermon on the Nativity before James I, 1622
Temples and churches have become social centers. They have lost their original purpose because the minds of the people are more attracted to worldly things than to prayer. The lips repeat the prayer mechanically like a phonograph record, but the mind wanders to other places.
SRI S. SATCHIDANANDA
The Yoga Sutras
Church was never meant to be a place for gods to gather, but for devils wanting to shed their horns for halos.
RICHELLE E. GOODRICH
Being Bold
There are ten church-members by inheritance for one by conviction.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
You left my heart as empty
As a Monday morning church
It used to be so full of faith and now it only hurts
And I can hear the devil whisper
"Things are only getting worse"
You left my heart as empty
As a Mondy morning church
ALAN JACKSON
"Monday Morning Church"
The Head and the body are Christ wholly and entirely. The Head is the only begotten Son of God, the body is His Church; the bridegroom and the bride, two in one flesh. All who dissent from the Scriptures concerning Christ, although they may be found in all places in which the Church is found, are not in the Church; and again all those who agree with the Scriptures concerning the Head, and do not communicate in the unity of the Church, are not in the Church.
ST. AUGUSTINE
De Unitate Ecclesiae
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
FERDINAND MAGELLAN
attributed, The Quotable Atheist
The day we find the perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it.
CHARLES H. SPURGEON
attributed, Deciduous Belief
The church always arrives on the scene a little breathless and a little late.
BERNARD LONERGAN
attributed, Quotes for the Journey
That which is destroying the Church is not the outward groping of those within it nor the inward groping of those without, but the professionals who control it and who have removed the bells from its steeples.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Light in August
Behind this Church, made out of the blood and bricks you see before you, there is another Church, infinite and invisible, whose flags are raised towards heaven. This Church lives in the hearts of the millions of the faithful who love Christ and his message. It will be reborn from its ashes and fill the world.
JUAN GOMEZ-JURADO
God's Spy
The Church had the words reason and liberty on her lips when the inalienable rights of the human race were threatened with shipwreck.
HENRI-DOMINIQUE LACORDAIRE
Letters to Young Men
Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.
EMILE ZOLA
attributed, What Great Men Think of Religion
Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?
CHARLES DE LINT
The Little Country
Take me to church
I'll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I'll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life
HOZIER
"Take Me to Church"
When a man unites with the church, he should not come saying, "I am so holy that I think I must go in among the saints," but, "O brethren, I find I am so weak and wicked that I cannot stand alone; so, if you can help me, open the door and let me enter."
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
The church is God's vineyard.
H. BULLINGER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Surely as a man may say of a rock--nothing more quiet, because it is never stirred; and yet nothing more unquiet, because it is ever assaulted--so we may say of the church--nothing more peaceable, because it is established upon a rock; and yet nothing more unpeaceable, because that rock is in the midst of seas, winds, enemies, and persecutions.
EDWARD REYNOLDS
Explication of the Hundred and Tenth Psalm
What has made the Church of Christ what it is to-day? Our struggles? Did we face the persecutions of Nero? Did we flee from the persecuting hordes in the Waldensian valleys? Did we fight the battles with the Duke of Alva on the plains of Netherlands? Did we struggle with hierarchical despotism at Worcester and at Naseby? Did we face the cold and the suffering of New England? Others have struggled for us, and we have taken the fruit of their struggles; and if our posterity are to have a nation worthy of their possession, it will be because in us there is also some hand-to-hand wrestling, some self-denial, some struggle with the forces of corruption and evil in our own time. This is the great general law which Paul has expressed in the declaration, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain until now." Vicarious sacrifice is not an episode. It is the universal law of life. Life comes only from life. This is the first proposition. Life-giving costs the life-giver something. That is the second proposition. Pain is travail-pain, birth-pain; and it is a part of the divine order -- that is, of the order of nature -- that the birth of a higher life should always be through the pain of another.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist