#church

Before I had crossed the threshold of my church I was made to realize that I was shepherd of a divided flock. ↗

— Anna Howard Shaw

#church #crossed #divided #flock #had

The outcome can truly determine whether our homes will be destroyed, whether our children will be torn from their mothers, trained as conspirators and turned against their parents, their home and their church. ↗

— George Smathers

#children #church #conspirators #destroyed #determine

In order to the existence of such a ministry in the Church, there is requisite an authority received from God, and consequently power and knowledge imparted from God for the exercise of such ministry; and where a man possesses these, although the bis. ↗

— John Wycliffe

#authority #church #consequently #exercise #existence

Love is like wearing all red to a funeral, out of respect for the fact that the recently deceased got stabbed 17 times by a cherry Kool-Aid flavored icicle. I'd also recommend bringing your own boom box blasting out "Ice Ice Baby" as you dance down the aisle of the church.
 ↗

— Dark Jar Tin Zoo

#dancing #death #fact #funeral #funny

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

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: “You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted. ↗

— Oscar A. Romero

#church #conversion #courage #sin #society

Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty ↗

— Albert Einstein

#holocaust #courage

One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway… We do not think ourselves into new ways of living, we live ourselves into new ways of thinking… The most courageous thing we will ever do is to bear humbly the mystery of our own reality. ↗

— Richard Rohr

#culture #theology #courage

In 1231, Pope Gregory ordered the Dominicans to take charge of papal courts and decisions and so prevent mob rule and guarantee that the accused received a fair trial and the right of defence. This was the foundation of the Inquisition, and it was a move to organize, control, and limit violence, disruption, and division. Of course, it often failed and even achieved the opposite of its stated and original purpose, but it's surprising how often in an age of casual and brutal violence a relative moderation and legality was achieved. Civil law was far harsher than canon law, demanding confiscation of a heretic's property and usually death, something the Church had tried to prevent for generations. ↗

— Michael Coren

#inquisition #law #age