#church

He didn't like religion, hadn't liked it for years, but he adored churches, loved them like old scientific instruments whose time is long past but are nevertheless fascinating and strange. ↗

— Bruce Robinson

#architecture #atheism #buildings #churches #religion

In practice it undermines the transformation of faith. When Christians concentrate their time and energy on their own separate spheres and their own institutions-whether all-absorbing megachurches, Christian yellow-page businesses, or womb-to-tomb Christian cultural ghettoes-they lose the outward thrusting, transforming power that is at the heart of the gospel. Instead of being 'salt' and 'light' -images of a permeating and penetrating action-Christians and Christian institutions become soft and vulnerable to corruption from within. ↗

— Os Guinness

#institutions #megchurch #transformation #business

There’s no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who’ll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home! ↗

— Sinclair Lewis

#politics #status-quo #home

Human beings seem to have a perpetual tendency to have somebody else talk to God for them. We are content to have the message second-hand. One of Israel's fatal mistakes was their insistence on having a human king rather than resting on the theocratic rule of God over them. We can detect a note of sadness in the word of the Lord, 'they have rejected me from being king over them' (1 Sam. 8:7). The history of religion is the story of an almost desperate scramble to have a king, a mediator, a priest, a pastor, a go-between. In this way we do not need to go to God ourselves. Such an approach saves us from the need to change, for to be in the presence of God is to change. ↗

— Richard J. Foster

#god #old-testament #pastor #priest #spiritual-mediation

The Church became both more accessible and less imposing. It threw itself open to risk. ↗

— Lance Morrow

#became #both #church #imposing #itself

Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and carried it across centuries from the 13th to the 20th. ↗

— Lance Morrow

#carried #catholic #catholic church #centuries #church

It is better to go skiing and think of God, than go to church and think of sport. ↗

— Fridtjof Nansen

#church #go #god #skiing #than

If a church offers no truth that is not available in the general culture - in, for instance, the editorials of the New York Times or, for that matter, of National Review - there is not much reason to pay it attention. ↗

— Richard John Neuhaus

#available #church #culture #editorials #general

My eyes are wide open to the conflicts within the Church, but I don't think you can call it schism. ↗

— Richard John Neuhaus

#church #conflicts #eyes #i #open

My hope that the Church will emerge as a strong leader in society is just that a hope. What I described in The Catholic Moment is not a prophecy but the outline of a possibility. There are no guarantees that my hopes expressed in The Catholic Moment will ever be realised. ↗

— Richard John Neuhaus

#church #described #emerge #ever #expressed