Church Quotations | Page 5

The act of bell ringing is symbolic of all proselytizing religions. It implies the pointless interference with the quiet of other people.

If I start going back to church, I'd have to stop the smoking and drinking, and I wouldn't be able to curse any more.

If my duty does involve heralding His law in every arena, then the Church in America is failing radically today.

Nobody sees the obvious, nobody observes the ordinary. There are more miracles in a square yard of earth than in all the fables of the Church.

Money, not morality, is the principle commerce of civilized nations.

Kinsey thought that Freud in his own way was as dangerous as the Catholic Church.

Although I myself don't go to church or synagogue, I do, whether it's superstition or whatever, pray every time I get on a plane. I just automatically do it. I say the same thing every time.

Women don't need to have our own little corner of the church where we can feel precious or, alternatively, cranky. In every essential thing, as far as life in Christ is concerned, the differences between men and women are irrelevant.

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.

You can look at anything as a cult. Churches are cults in their own way.

The ordinary ministry is that which receives all of its direction from the will of God revealed in the Scriptures and from those means which God has appointed in the church for its continual edification.

If a school makes an effort to provide kids the right foods and help them to be more active, this benefits the student and the family's health. If you embark on a program to improve your health with a church or community group, you are more likely to stick with it over time.

There has always been a certain proportion of people who leave the Church on issues of authority and sex. That hasn't changed since we started doing research on it back in the early 1960s.

Most people already know what they're doing wrong. When I get them to church I want to tell them that you can change.

From the beginning of church history, music, writing, literature, and the greatest works of art all came from the church. To change the culture and make it a force for good, you have to be in it and be a part of it.

Yesterday I had a Shaker visitor, and today a Catholic; and the more I see and hear, the less do I care about church doctrines.

I believe in the separation of church and state, but I do not believe in the separation of politics from religion.

If Satan wasn't around, churches would go out of business.

Pope Paul III was the greatest thief in the history of the church.

Anyone who is to find Christ must first find the church. How could anyone know where Christ is and what faith is in him unless he knew where his believers are?

So from this time of peak every people or every organization that goes against the Unification Church will gradually come down or drastically come down and die. Many people will die - those who go against our movement.

For years, I just did not like this idea of God, church.

I am the Democratic Party's candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.

There are no small churches, just small people.

Adoption should be an empowering option for young women in crisis, knowing that the people around them - family, friends, church - will respect their choice.

Defend the church. Defend the family. Defend the non-profit community. Defend them against a government that wants to weaken them.

I actually grew up playing the piano in the church and was deeply involved in music ministry.

I solemnly declare that this spiritual kingdom of faith will move forward with or without each of us individually. No unhallowed hand can stay the growth of the Church nor prevent fulfillment of its mission. Any of us can be left behind, drawn away by the seductive voices of secularism and materialism.

The Catholic Church is one of the oldest, largest and richest institutions on earth, with a following 1.2 billion strong, and change does not come naturally.

Depressions may bring people closer to the church but so do funerals.

My father's a deacon, my mother's a choir director, so I grew up in the church and singing in the choir, begging my mom if I could have a solo.

Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.

When a church is spending more of its budget on media than shepherding, something is out of whack. We have gotten things twisted around.

I was raised in the Baptist church... but I didn't really have a real committed experience with Christ until my father died.

I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.

I think that a church should be setting the pace for social justice.

While attendance at traditional churches has been declining for decades... the evangelical movement is growing, and it is changing the way America worships.

The parson knows enough who knows a Duke.

I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church, morals or anything we hold dear.

Compassion in evangelical churches is out of balance. When I talk about it, I get a lot of glazed expressions.

Those outside the church expect followers of Christ to live differently, yet today many in church are chasing after the world - not to win them, but to be like them.

In the Church, and in the journey of faith, women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord.

I went to church and couldn't swallow it. The music was nice but I don't belong there.

Our society is divided by the culture wars into the Left and Right, and the United Methodist Church has always stood historically in the center and has been willing to listen to and to bring together those things that often are found in opposite camps.

I don't go to Mass every day. But I go to church every day. Just sitting there, thinking - it's a great way to start the morning, you know? You feel so good coming out, and your approach to everything is suddenly really clear.

The evangelical movement has become just a bit victimized by a success-oriented culture, wanting the church - like the corporation - to be successful.

When Pat Robertson says there is no constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state, I say he is wrong.

My grandmother, she's been the positive portion of my life the entire time. She raised us Baptist, and when I got old enough to say I didn't want to go to church, she didn't force me. She was cool.

We must never forget what government is not. Government is not a philanthropic organization. Government is not the family. And government certainly is not the church.

We need to avoid the spiritual sickness of a church that is wrapped up in its own world: when a church becomes like this, it grows sick.

If I don't go to mass, necessarily, every day, but I definitely go to the church every day. That's how I start my day. I like to get in there for about 15 to 20 minutes and say my prayers.

Sailors ought never to go to church. They ought to go to hell, where it is much more comfortable.

The black groups that boycott certain films would do better to get the money together to make the films they want to see, or stay in church and leave us to our work.

It's a great responsibility before God, the judge who guides us, who draws us to truth and good, and in this sense the church must unmask evil, rendering present the goodness of God, rendering present his truth, the truly infinite for which we are thirsty.

Worldly influences would hinder use of our agency afforded through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But we are agents who can act, and that affects everything in terms of how we live the gospel in our daily lives. It affects how we pray, how we study the scriptures, how we worship at church.

In September 1968, Rush played for around 20 people at a small hall in a church basement. We played songs like 'Spoonful,' 'Fire' and 'Born Under a Bad Sign,' and got paid $10. Then we went to a nearby deli and ordered Cokes and French fries and started planning our future.

I had five brothers and sisters. Four of them older, and some of them played instruments, and we would get together and have family recitals and raise money for the church. I belonged to a wonderful church community that encouraged me to sing.

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.

God Almighty never intended that the devil should triumph over the Church. He never intended that the saloons should walk rough-shod over Christianity.

She thoroughly understands what no other Church has ever understood, how to deal with enthusiasts.

It would be far better to be of no church than to be bitter of any.

I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.

My grandparents went through a bad experience themselves; they invested money in a church and got burned - the pastor had his own agenda - and my grandfather lost interest in the church after that. That was when I had the option to not go. 'Grandpa ain't going; I'm gonna stay with Grandpa.'

'We really shouldn't look like a church.' I've heard that so much I want to vomit. 'Why?' I ask. 'Do you want your bank to look like a bank? Do you want your doctor's office to look like a doctor's office, or would you prefer your doctor to dress like a clown?'

Christ and The Church: If he were to apply for a divorce on the grounds of cruelty, adultery and desertion, he would probably get one.

I read the Bible, I speak through issues, I see what I think is hypocrisy in the church and things that are wrong, and I speak to these things. But I could be wrong.

Hearing Mass is the ceremony I most favor during my travels. Church is the only place where someone speaks to me and I do not have to answer back.

While I was raised around churches and had gotten to know a few preachers fairly well, the thought never entered my head that I would one day stand and deliver. Not only was I not interested, I lived with a major struggle: I stuttered.

The role of the church and the government are fundamentally different. The church must always show compassion - always.

It is labor that keeps the strong man strong. And spiritual labor, toil and burden-bearing, is what will give strength to the church of Christ.

I used to always go to church on holidays, but I don't go much any more.

I was brought up as a Catholic and went to church every week and took the sacraments. It never really touched the core of my being.

But I don't necessarily define my faith by going to church every Sunday.

The thing about the Islamic situation is we don't have a church. We don't have an ordained priesthood, which makes it a little complicated. But we do have a tradition of scholarship, and rules of scholarship. It's very much like any field of knowledge.

Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.

When my dad founded our church, he used either a globe or a map of the world behind him. It was symbolic of what Christ said: to go forth and preach hope to the world. We believe in the cross, but we just continued with the globe.

What's really neat about the Orthodox church is that it's like walking back in time 2,000 years to the time of the Apostles, when they created these services. You walk into that and it's really like... living it. They have maintained the truth ever since the beginning.

Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration?

I grew up in a family where, through my teenage years, I was expected to go to church on Sunday. It wasn't terribly painful.

As we consider the causes of depression, those of us in the church must face the ways we might be responsible for creating it.

People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

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 Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.

I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.

I was raised Presbyterian, but I'm not really going to church. I think the experience in meditation is pretty much where it's at for me.

The most consistent musical experience I had growing up was church music.

I sang in church growing up. Memphis is the blues capital of the world, we like to say.

When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I'm teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing.

The first time I got onstage was when I was about 5 years old. It was at a church social, and I had a poem to recite.

There is but one Church in which men find salvation, just as outside the ark of Noah it was not possible for anyone to be saved.

History shows that when the church accommodates culture, it weakens it.

We were brought up Protestant, and I went to church three times a day on a Sunday. My parents weren't Bible-bashers, but we all have a strong belief in God and a strong faith. We had a huge garden; our house was a bit like a scene from 'The Good Life.' I think Mam and Dad had it really hard, bringing up a big family on very little.

God tries you in certain, certain ways. Some people are rich, and they believe in God. They lose the money, things get hard, they get weak and quit going to church. Quit serving God like they did.

Negroes' problem is that they do not have their egos. That's why our churches end up having a white service, because our preacher is not arrogant enough to take God's word, so he have to go and get some white fellow's agenda and put it in his church.

I was raised as a Catholic, but I didn't like the Catholic Church at all. I thought the nuns were mean.

Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.

Inconsistency on the part of pastors and the faithful between what they say and what they do, between word and manner of life, is undermining the Church's credibility.

I was called to start a mission, not a church. There is a difference.

Instead of being just a church that welcomes and receives by keeping the doors open, let us try also to be a church that finds new roads, that is able to step outside itself and go to those who do not attend Mass, to those who have quit or are indifferent.

The transcendent gift of the Holy Ghost, along with membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is bestowed by confirmation, by the laying on of hands by those having priesthood authority.

I certainly respect other people's opinions, but I would not vote for a woman to be the pastor of a church.