...we, as human beings, do not "enable" God to do anything. We are subject to His divine will---it is not the other way around. He is our Creator, and we are subject to Him.
...a deep and even paranoid suspicion continues to disparage higher criticism of the Bible, as if someone could publish a paper that would unravel God. (p. 151)
Contemporary Christians have declared war on individual immorality but seem remarkably silent about the evil of systems, especially corporate greed and malfeasance. (p. 176)
As long as Christianity is the dominant belief system in America, we cannot afford to be biblically or theologically illiterate, regardless of our personal beliefs. (p. 8)
Condemnation feels good and it is now a staple of religion, politics, and the media (both left and right), but it changes nothing. Compassion, on the other hand, changes everything. (p. 121)
One of the most significant lessons Jesus taught his disciples was to stop looking for God's life in the regimen of rituals and rules. He came not to refurbish religion, but to offer them a relationship.
Good attitudes are contagious; they inspire and encourage others. Bad attitudes are also contagious; they create a negative and hostile work environment and make others feel uncomfortable - like they have to walk on eggshells all the time.
I don't go to church any more, but I think that Catholicism is rather like the brand they use on cattle: I feel so formed in that Catholic mould that I don't think I could adopt any other form of spirituality. I still get feelings of consolation abou...
I was raised Catholic and I went to church until I was 16. I went through a phase when I was 15 of being quite fanatically Catholic. I was going to church a lot, receiving communion, saying the Rosary, praying, all that stuff. But when I started scru...
My family, frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn't raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus ...
I am an Episcopalian who takes the faith of my fathers seriously, and I would, I think, be disheartened if my own young children were to turn away from the church when they grow up. I am also a critic of Christianity, if by critic one means an observ...
There's a little bit of gospel in everything I do. But I don't know if I will ever do a gospel album. There's a big universe out here, and I don't want to just sing to the church. I want to sing to the world and bring them a message of love. I love g...
If you love god, burn a church.
The stratosphere is my church.
1883. ...The teaching of the Church has elaborated the principle of subsidiarity, according to which "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but ...
If we think the main mission of the church is to improve life in Adam and add a little moral strength to this fading evil age, we have not yet understood the radical condition for which Christ is such a radical solution.
the Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all Churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any ad...
Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them.
I used to go to church. I even went through a rather intense religious period when I was sixteen. But the idea of an everlasting life -- a never-ending banquet, as a stupid visiting minister to our church once appallingly described it -- filled me wi...
Anxious systems also fail to get a clear view of things. Embedded in their dread, they lose a sense of proportion. They have little awareness of what is happening and how it is being mutually maintained. Emotionally cramps the broader view.
The priest's work, the priest's service, was understoon as an act of worship. Theis was God"s desire at Sinai - thst everybody would understand their roles as priests. Thst everybody would worship God by serving each other.
