christianity quotes

A. W. Tozer: 

Peace of heart that is won by refusing to bear the common yoke of human sympathy is a peace unworthy of a Christian. To seek tranquility by stopping our ears to the cries of human pain is to make ourselves not Christian but a kind of degenerate stoic having no relation either to stoicism or Christianity.

Abraham Lincoln: 

That I am not a member of any Christian Church, is true; but I have never denied the truth of the Scriptures; and I have never spoken with intentional disrespect of religion in general, or of any denomination of Christians in particular.

Aggie Pate: 

I didn't know Onward Christian Soldiers was a Christian song. 
at a non-denominational mayor's breakfast, Fort Worth, Texas


Alexis deTocqueville: 

Christianity is the companion of liberty in all its conflicts - the cradle of its infancy, and the divine source of its claims.

Ambrose Bierce: 

Christian: One who thinks the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

Benjamin Franklin: 

The moral and religious system which Jesus Christ transmitted to us is the best the world has ever seen, or can see.

C. I. Scofield: 

The church has failed to follow her appointed pathway of separation, holiness, heavenliness and testimony to an absent but coming Christ; she has turned aside from that purpose to the work of civilizing the world, building magnificent temples, and acquiring earthly power and wealth, and, in this way, has ceased to follow in the footsteps of Him who had not where to lay His head.

C. S. Lewis: 

If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

C. S. Lewis: 

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

C. S. Lewis: 

One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans.

C.S. Lewis: 

Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need forgiveness.

Dan Quayle: 

... I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior, for whose Kingdom it stands, one Savior, crucified, risen, and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.

Darkmist42: 

Throughout most of the history of the Christian religion books were quite scarce -- prohibitively expensive and time consuming to make.... When one considers this, it seems absurd that the Christian religion somehow is founded on the idea that Bibles were to function as some kind of instruction manual to be kept, studied, and followed to the letter by all true believers. 
AOL Member 


David Barton: 

Whatever is Christian is legal; whatever is not is illegal. 
president of Wallbuilders, Inc. quoting William Penn's 1681 PA constitution 


Dean Stanley: 

The true call of a Christian is not to do extraordinary things, but to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: 

Politics are not the task of a Christian.

Edward R. Murrow: 

If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.

Francois Arouet: 

What a terrible time this is to be a Christian. The churches have failed and betrayed us, and the ministry preaches hate and murder. If there is a sane and reasoning voice in the Christian church today it is sadly silent. 
Kauai Times editorial


Frederick Douglass: 

The church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors.... For my part, I would say, welcome infidelity! Welcome atheism! Welcome anything! in preference to the gospel, as preached by these Divines! They convert the very name of religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty, and serve to confirm more infidels, in this age, than all the infidel writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire, and Bolingbroke put together have done!

Friedrich Nietzsche: 

A certain sense of cruelty towards oneself and others is Christian; hatred of those who think differently; the will to persecute. Hatred of mind, of pride, courage, freedom, libertinage of mind, is Christian; hatred of the sense, of the joy of the senses, of joy in general is Christian.

G. K. Chesterton: 

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Gary Wills: 

Jesus as a person does not exist outside the gospels. The only Jesus we have is the Jesus of faith.

Harry Emerson Fosdick (attributed): 

Someone has said, "If we could get religion like a Baptist, experience it like a Methodist, be positive about it like a Disciple, be proud of it like an Episcopalian, pay for it like a Presbyterian, propagate it like an Adventist, and enjoy it like an Afro-American -- that would be some religion!"

Henry Fielding: 

Nor is religion manifold, because there are various sects and heresies in the world. When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion, and not only the Protestant religion but the Church of England. 

Isaac Asimov: 

If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul.

James Madison: 

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects? 
Memorial and Remonstrance


James Russell Lowell: 

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

Joan B. Campbell: 

[Jesus'] ministry was clearly defined, and the alternatives to the illusion and temptations of the desert were spelled out. A choice was made -- life abundant, full, and free for all. Make no mistake about it, the day that choice was made, Jesus became suspect. That day in the temple he sealed the fate already prepared for him. How was the world to understand one who rejected an offer of power and control? 
Sojourners, August-September, 1991


John Calvin: 

God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.

John Calvin: 

Is it faith to understand nothing, and merely submit your convictions implicitly to the Church?

John Wesley: 

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.

Kathleen Norris: 

Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others.

Leo Tolstoy: 

Christianity, with its doctrine of humility, of forgiveness, of love, is incompatible with the State, with its haughtiness, its violence, its punishment, its wars.

Ma Ferguson: 

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me! 
Governor of Texas (circa 1920) 


Madeleine L'Engle: 

Conversion for me was not a Damascus Road experience. I slowly moved into an intellectual acceptance of what my intuition had always known.

Marian Wright Edelman: 

When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, "Let all children come unto me."

Minna Canth: 

Christianity has been buried inside the walls of churches and secured with the shackles of dogmatism. Let it be liberated to come into the midst of us and teach us freedom, equality and love.

Oliver Wendell Holmes: 

Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.

Otto von Bismarck: 

No civilization other than that which is Christian, is worth seeking or possessing.

Pearl S. Buck: 

We send missionaries to China so the Chinese can get to heaven, but we won't let them into our country.

Randall Terry: 

I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good ... if a Christian voted for Clinton, he sinned against God. It's that simple. Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country... former leader of Operation Rescue

Salman Rushdie: 

Fundamentalism isn't about religion. It's about power.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 

Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 

He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.

Tonia Jauch: 

In our work of challenging them, we need to keep several factors in mind. First of all, we must not lump all Christians in with the RRR. The majority of main-line Christians are as appalled at their tactics as we are. Nor, as we have seen, dare we stick all Evangelicals into one category either. And among the self-identified RRR themselves, there is not theological agreement, so we need to avoid guilt-by-association. 
  Secondly, we need to be vigilant not to project our own shadow side onto them and demonize them, seeing them as the enemy. We must avoid being condescending or patronizing. I see them as extremely fearful people, desperately searching for security in a rapidly-changing world, who need our love and compassion, while we, at the same time, effectively interrupt their tactics. 
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Southern California Unit Board 


Unknown: 

"Top Ten List: Why Elvis Will Replace Jesus" 
(a classic Net humor piece)