quotations about church
We're gonna make it to the church on time
Need to hear the preacher
Give me a sign
We're gonna make it to the church on time
BEN HARPER
"Church on Time"
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
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
See, that why I ain't go to church. Figger I got me a church wherever I be. Want'a talk to God, well I say, "howdy-howdy, God," and we jaw fer a bit.
DAVID BALDACCI
Wish You Well
The more rabidly mad the church the more pews will be filled. So fundy evangelists have the biggest, and most profitable, congregations. More moderate churches with some respect for humans as intelligent human beings are losing numbers. I think a big revival would happen in the churches if child sacrifice was reintroduced. The old symbolic body and blood just doesn't cut it anymore.
PETER KELLY
attributed, The Quotable Atheist
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
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
Let us pray for the Catholic Church;
for the Churches throughout
the whole world;
that is, for their truth, unity, and stability;
that in all charity may flourish,
and truth may live.
For our own Church,
that what is lacking in it may be supplied;
what is unsound, corrected;
that all Heresies, Schisms, Scandals,
as well public as private,
may be removed.
Correct the wandering,
convert the unbelieving,
increase the faith of the Church,
destroy Heresies,
discover the crafty enemies,
crush the violent.
LANCELOT ANDREWES
The Private Devotions of Lancelot Andrewes
The church is God's vineyard.
H. BULLINGER
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
I'm more spiritual than I am religious. I don't go to church; I go to the beach.
PAULA DEEN
Good Housekeeping, Nov. 2009
The Church must be intelligible to the simple as well as to the shrewd.
ROBERT HUGH BENSON
A City Set on a Hill
There are ten church-members by inheritance for one by conviction.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
It wasn't that she had anything against the faith of the New Testament; left alone, it would be a tender and compassionate religion.... No, what Adelia objected to was the Church's interpretation of God as a petty, stupid, moneygrubbing, retrograde, antediluvian tyrant who, having created a stupendously varied world, had forbidden any inquiry into its complexity, leaving His people flailing in ignorance.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
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"
Gimme dat, church mother in they church hat, clap
Man that Shug Avery Color Purple coming back, clap uhh
When that whole week beat you up and stress ya
But you hear that organ playing it remind ya of ya blessings
And on another note, she just hit another note
Chills down my spine, got me crying, make me over Lord
You don't know about us though, old school church hymms
Deacons get to humming now the drummer finna burst in
(Lordy, Lordy, Lord!) Can you hear me now
Church clothes sweaty, you don't care you just get it now
Testify, how we made martyrs outta these fathers
And rose up all of his daughters to glorify Him with honor
Man I swear I saw Miss Jones with her hair did
Now its flying everywhere she don't care what her head did
She an heir, yea
Caught up in the air, yea
Probably why she clapping like Jesus just hear her prayer, yeah
KB
"Church Clap"
The church always arrives on the scene a little breathless and a little late.
BERNARD LONERGAN
attributed, Quotes for the Journey
Every one went to church -- every one with the exception of two or three families whom I looked upon with a kind of mysterious awe, as I might have looked upon a family without visible means of support and popularly suspected of earning a livelihood by counterfeiting or some similar lawless practice. The church itself was an old-fashioned brick Puritan meeting-house, equally free from architectural ornament without and from decoration within. The pews had been painted white; for some reason the paint had not dried, and the congregation, to protect their garments, had spread down upon the seats and backs of the pews newspapers, generally religious. When the paint at length dried the newspapers were pulled off, leaving the impression of their type reversed, and I used to interest myself during the long sermon in trying to decipher the hieroglyphic impressions. There was neither Sunday-School room nor prayer-meeting room. The Sunday-School was held in the church, and the parson at prayer-meeting took a seat in a pew about the center of the building, put a board across the back of the pews to hold his Bible and his lamp, and sat, except when speaking, with his back to the congregation. A great wood stove at the rear, with a smoke-pipe extending the whole length of the room to the flue in front, furnished the heat -- none too much of it on cold winter days. Plain and even homely as was this meeting-house, associations have given to it a sacredness in my eyes which neither Gothic arch nor pictured window could have given to it. My grandfather was largely instrumental in constructing it. In its pulpit each of his five sons preached on occasions. One of them acted as its pastor for a year or more. A grandson and a great-grandson of his were here baptized. My earliest recollections of public worship and of Sunday-School teaching are associated with it. We four brothers have each at times played the organ in connection with its service of sacred song. My brother Edward and myself were both ordained to the Gospel ministry within its walls, and in its pulpit preached some of our first sermons. The church still exists, a flourishing organization, but the meeting-house was destroyed by fire in 1886, and its place has been taken by a more modern structure.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Reminiscences
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
See the Gospel Church secure,
And founded on a Rock!
All her promises are sure;
Her bulwarks who can shock?
Count her every precious shrine;
Tell, to after-ages tell,
Fortified by power divine,
The Church can never fail.
CHARLES WESLEY
Scriptural