A church is an incubator, a nursery, a grade school. You start where people are and move them to where they need to be.
What people pray for will tell you more than anything else whether they are locked into the vision and priorities of the church.
Before I had crossed the threshold of my church I was made to realize that I was shepherd of a divided flock.
'Hallelujah' is going to be a standard that our grandkids, our great-great grandkids will learn to sing in church. It's one of those really, really special songs.
Jesus Christ never preached there should be celibate priests. The only reason the church has this is because it's a mechanism of power and control. You can control priests who are celibate.
Without vision, a church devolves into a lukewarm, aimless organization characterized by infighting, budget grabbing and a dead heart for the lost.
Somewhere along the line, "Church" became a weekly event rather than a gathering of people who did life together.
Television has greater power over the lives of most Americans than any educational system, government, or church.
I never joined, but I used to go to church now and then. I liked it, because they always passed out plates of money at the end.
Really I feel less keen about the Army every day. I think the Church would suit me better.
I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.
You may invite the entire 35th Division to your wedding if you want to. I guess it's going to be yours as well as mine. We might as well have the church full while we are at it.
There were theoretical elements in the subjection of women and it is not possible to avoid the conclusion that a large contribution was made to them by the Church. In part this was a matter of its hostile stance towards sexuality.
We have to work harder to develop a profound theology of women within the church. The feminine genius is needed wherever we make important decisions.
People take sides on political things, such as the Vietnam War. War is immoral and war is wrong, but I don't think the clergy ought to bring it before the Church.
Over the years of being stuck in this shit hole called life, I had debated religion and church, souls and freewill, heaven and hell. I had come to a few conclusions. Mankind was too self-serving to understand what He had wanted from them. It wasn’t...
Finding a new ethics or esthetics, as Dr. Douglass asks, will not put us in a state of grace. Existence is not given meaning by importing it into a revelation from the outside. The meaning is —there, in more closely contacting the actual situation,...
If I were you," he said with a wink and a smile as his eyes swept over those who's started the discussion, "I would waste far less time ragging on religion and find out just how much Jesus wants to be your friend without any strings attached. He will...
Gideon conquers, the church conquers, we conquer, because faith conquers. But the victory belongs not to Gideon, the church, or ourselves, but to God. And God's victory means our defeat, our humiliation; it means God's derision and wrath at all human...
Roman Catholicism is a broken and utterly desperate thing, capable only of malignant mischief in our awakening world.
The Catholic wisdom of the people... provides reasons for joy and humor even in the midst of a very hard life.
