#churches

Institutions - government, churches, industries, and the like - have properly no other function than to contribute to human freedom; and in so far as they fail, on the whole, to perform this function, they are wrong and need reconstruction. ↗

— Charles Horton Cooley

#contribute #fail #far #freedom #function

It's no secret that in New York during the last 30 years there has been a tragic exodus from the churches into materialism, secularism and humanism. ↗

— Billy Graham

#churches #during #exodus #humanism #into

The Church, during the apostolic age, did not consist of isolated, independent congregations, but was one body, of which the separate churches were constituent members, each subject to all the rest, or to an authority which extended over all. ↗

— Charles Hodge

#apostolic #authority #body #church #churches

We do hereby command the Leaders of the Hebrew, Catholic and Protestant Churches to sanctify and have us crowned Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. ↗

— Joshua A. Norton

#churches #command #crowned #emperor #hebrew

If I have so far argued that Foucault is a kind of closet liberal and thus deeply modern, I need to be equally critical of evangelical (and especially American) Christianity's modernity and its appropriation of Enlightenment notions of the autonomous self. Indeed, many otherwise orthodox Christians, who recoil at the notion of theological liberalism, have unwittingly adopted notions of freedom and autonomy that are liberal to the core. Averse to hierarchies and control, contemporary evangelicalism thrives on autonomy: the autonomy of the nondenominational church, at a macrocosmic level, and the autonomy of the individual Christian, at the microcosmic level. And it does not seem to me that the emerging church has changed much on this score; indeed, some elements of emergent spirituality are intensifications of this affirmation of autonomy and a laissez-faire attitude with respect to institutions. ↗

— James K.A. Smith

#churches #doctrine #emergent-church #foucault #institutions

Plantie is a very strong Protestant, that is to say, he's against all churches, especially the Protestant: and he thinks a lot of Buddha, Karma and Confucius. He is also a bit of an anarchist and three or four years ago he took up Einstein and vitamins. ↗

— Joyce Cary

#anarchists #buddha #church #churches #confucius

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. (23-24) ↗

— Swami Satchidananda

#prayer #purpose-of-prayer #temples #yoga

The seminaries must be like the churches' poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity. ↗

— Abraham Kuyper

#churches #existence #like #must #poor

Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the churches when he said, 'The church is not meant to be the master of the state.' We don't sort of take power and grab the levers of government and impose our agenda down people's throats. ↗

— Jim Wallis

#church #churches #down #government #grab

Offers for me to play dances, society parties, even churches, were now coming in regularly. For most dates I was paid the sum of one dollar per hour, and they always tipped me at the end of the night. ↗

— Mary Lou Williams

#churches #coming #dances #dates #dollar