76 Church Quotes

While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions.

I'm not denouncing the church, and I'm not interested in people who want me to denounce the church. It's not a church worthy of denouncing.

The legendary missionary journey of St. Paul, which led to the foundation of the British church, presupposes the existence of a Jewish community - always the initial object of his propaganda - even before the capture of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70.

Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!

How the early priests came into possession of these secrets does not appear, and if there were ever any records of this kind the Church would hardly allow them to become public.

There are dons who care for the intellect and the imagination, and there are priests who care for the spirit; but broadly speaking the function of universities and churches alike is to trim and tame enthusiasm, to suppress curiosity, and, in short, to whittle immortal souls into serviceable props of the established order.

About Jesus Christ and the Church, I simply know they're just one thing, and we shouldn't complicate the matter.

In contrast, traditional Catholic churches serve vast numbers of people who have little or nothing in common, and they are often impersonal supermarkets for the sacraments.

At stake are two different visions of faith, the Church of Caesar, powerful and rich; and the Church of Christ - loving, poor and spiritually rich.

There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking.

I hope you will be benefitted by your churchgoing. Where the habit does not Christianize, it generally civilizes. That is reason enough for supporting churches, if there were no higher.

It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.

The bells they sound on Bredon And still the steeples hum. 'Come all to church, good people,' - Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come.

It would have been more to the point, more honest and more Christian, in past decades not to support those who intentionally destroyed healthy life than to rebel against those who have no other wish than to avoid disease. Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole. : If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them.

I believe in one Gnostic and Catholic Church of Light, Life, Love and Liberty, the Word of whose Law is THELEMA.

All civil states with their officers of justice in their respective constitutions and administrations are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual or Christian state and worship.

The fact that the Vatican is concluding a treaty with the new Germany means the acknowledgement of the National Socialist state by the Catholic Church. This treaty shows the whole world clearly and unequivocally that the assertion that National Socialism [Nazism] is hostile to religion is a lie.

It took the Church until 1832 to remove Galileo's work from its list of books which Catholics were forbidden to read at the risk of dire punishment of their immortal souls.

'I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.' I should like to have that written over the portals of every church, every school, and every courthouse, and, may I say, of every legislative body in the United States. I should like to have every court begin, 'I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, I think we may be mistaken.'

There is a species of person called a 'Modern Churchman' who draws the full salary of a beneficed clergyman and need not commit himself to any religious belief

We thought that the clergy of our realm had been our subjects wholly, but now we have well perceived that they be but half our subjects, yea, and scarce our subjects; for all the prelates at their consecration make an oath to the Pope, clean contrary to the oath that they make to us, so that they seem to be his subjects, and not ours.

The German Church and the People are practically the same body. Therefore there could be no issue between Church and State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church. The election of November 12th would be an expression of church constituency, but not as a Church. ** answering C. F. Macfarland's The New Church and the New Germany

We are indeed perhaps better able than other generations to realize the full meaning of those pious words 'What a change by the grace of God'. Amongst the accusations which are directed against Germany in the so called democracies is the charge that the National Socialist State is hostile to religion. In answer to that charge I should like to make before the German people the following solemn declaration: 1. No one in Germany has in the past been persecuted because of his religious views (Einstellung), nor will anyone in the future be so persecuted. : The Churches are the greatest landed proprietors after the State. : Further, the Church in the National Socialist State is in many ways favoured in regard to taxation, and for gifts, legacies, &c., it enjoys immunity from taxation. It is therefore, to put mildly-effrontery when especially foreign politicians make bold to speak of hostility to religion in the Third Reich. : I would allow myself only one question: what contributions during the same period have France, England, or the United States made through the State from the public funds? 3. The National Socialist State has not closed a church, nor has it prevented the holding of a religious service, nor has it ever exercised any influence upon the form of a religious service. It has not exercised any pressure upon the doctrine nor on the profession of faith of any of the Confessions. In the National Socialist State anyone is free to seek his blessedness after his own fashion. : There are ten thousands and ten thousands of priests of all the Christian Confessions who perform their ecclesiastical duties just as well as or probably better than the political agitators without ever coming into conflict with the laws of the State. : This State has only once intervened in the internal regulation of the Churches, that is when I myself in 1933 endeavoured to unite the weak and divided Protestant Churches of the different States into one great and powerful Evangelical Church of the Reich. That attempt failed through the opposition of the bishops of some States; it was therefore abandoned. For it is in the last resort not our task to defend or even to strengthen the Evangelical Church through violence against its own representatives.... But on one point it is well that there should be no uncertainty: the German priest as servant of God we shall protect, the priest as political enemy of the German State we shall destroy.

Some of you might be familiar with some of my more famous tips from the past. How to get rid of counterfeit money? Put it in the collection plate at church!

National Socialism has always affirmed that it is determined to take the Christian Churches under the protection of the State. : The decisive factor which can justify the existence alike of Church and State is the maintenance of men's spiritual and bodily health, for it that health were destroyed it would mean the end of the State and also the end of the Church. : It is my sincere hope that thereby for Germany, too, through free agreement there has been produced a final clarification of spheres in the functions of the State and of one Church.

Among the congregations of the Protestant confessions there has arisen in the 'German Christians' a movement that is filled with the determination to do justice to the great tasks of the day and has aimed at a union of the Protestant state churches and confessions. If this question is not really on the way towards a solution, in the judgement of history no false or stupid objections will be able to dispute the fact that this service was rendered by the volkisch movement at a time when, unfortunately, just as in the Roman Church, many pastors and superintendents without reason have opposed the national uprising in the most violent, indeed, often fanatical, way.

Ne pouvant supprimer l'amour, l'Eglise a voulu au moins le desinfecter, et elle a fait le mariage.

J'ai toujours ete etonne qu'on laissat les femmes entrer dans les eglises. Quelle conversation peuvent-elles avoir avec Dieu?

Church bells and now I'm awake And I guess it must be some kind of holiday I can't seen to join in the celebration But I'll go to the service And I'll go to pray And I'll sing the praises of my maker's name Like I was as good as she made me...

The Church is now more like the Scribes and Pharisees than like Christ... What are now called the 'essential doctrines' of the Christian religion he does not even mention.

From the birth of the Church, out of the womb of Fear and the fatherhood of Ignorance, it has taught the inferiority of woman. In one form or another through the various mythical legends of the various mythical creeds, runs the undercurrent of the behef in the fall of man through the persuasion of woman, her subjective condition as punishment, her natural vileness, total depravity, etc.; and from the days of Adam until now the Christian Church, with which we live specially to deal, has made Woman the excuse, the scapegoat for the evil deeds of man.

This, then, is the tyranny of the State; it denies, to both woman and man, the right to earn a living, and grants it as a privilege to a favored few who for that favor must pay ninety per cent toll to the granters of it. These two things, the mind domination of the Church, and the body domination of the State are the causes of sex slavery.

There will necessarily be a tension between the church and tradition on one hand and human rights on the other.

We drove about, looking for churches, my father and I. My father, as you probably know, was a clergyman - he knew all the Uppland churches like the back of his hand. We went to morning services in variouis places and were deeply impressed by the spiritual poverty of these churches, by the lack of any congregation and the miserable spiritual status of the clergy, the poverty of their sermons, and the nonchalance and indifference of the ritual. In one church, I remember - and I think it has a great deal to do with the end of the film - Father and I were sitting together. My father had already been retired for many years, and was old and frail.... Just before the bell begins to toll, we hear a car outside, a shining Volvo: the clergyman climbs out hurriedly, and there is a faint buzz from the vestry, and then the clergyman appears before he ought to - when the bell stops, that is - and says he feels very poorly and that he's talked to the rector and the rector has said he can use an abbrviated form of the service and drop the part at the altar. So there would be just one psalm and a sermon and another psalm. And goes out. Whereon my father, furious, began hammering on the pew, got to his feet and marched out into the vestry, where a long mumbled conversation ensued; after which the churchwarden also went in, then someone ran up the organ gallery to fetch the organist, after which the churchwarden came out and announced that there would be a complete service after all. My father took the service at the altar, but at the beginning and the end. In some way I feel the end of the play was influenced by my father's intervention - that at all costs one must do what it is one's duty to do, particularly in spiritual contexts. Even if it can seem meaningless.

'Tis true, those glorious first ministeriall gifts are ceased, and that's or should be the lamentation of all Saints... Yet I humbly conceive that without those gifts, it is no ground of imitation, and of going forth to Teach and Baptise the Nations, for, the Apostles themselves did not attempt that mighty enterprise, but waited at Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit descended on them, and inabled them for that mighty work

There warn't anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two, for there warn't any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor in summer-time because it's cool. If you notice, most folks don't go to church only when they've got to; but a hog is different.

We hereby, in these documents, publish, announce, pronounce, sentence, and declare thee the aforesaid Brother Giordano Bruno to be an impenitent and pertinacious heretic, and therefore to have incurred all the ecclesiastical censures and pains of the Holy Canon, the laws and the constitutions, both general and particular, imposed on such confessed impenitent pertinacious and obstinate heretics... We ordain and command that thou must be delivered to the Secular Court... that thou mayest be punished with the punishment deserved... Furthermore, we condemn, we reprobate, and we prohibit all thine aforesaid and thy other books and writings as heretical and erroneous, containing many heresies and errors, and we ordain that all of them which have come or may in future come into the hands of the Holy Office shall be publicly destroyed and burned in the square of St. Peter before the steps and that they shall be placed upon the Index of Forbidden Books, and as we have commanded, so shall it be done..

She wears a artful bonnet, feathers stuck upon it, Coverin' a fringe all curled; She's just about the sweetest, prettiest and neatest Doner in the wide, wide world! And she'll be Missis 'Awkins, Missis 'En'ry 'Awkins, Got 'er for to name the day; Settled it last Monday, so to church on Sunday, Off we trots the donkey shay!

When we refer to the Church we should define the word a little. We mean the whole Church, the Church as an ecumenical body spread around the world, and not just its particular form in a parish in a local community. The Church we are talking about is a tremendously powerful institution in our society, and in the world. That Church is one form of the Presence of God on Earth, and so naturally it is powerful. It is powerful by definition. It is a powerful moral and spiritual force which cannot be ignored by any movement.

For millions of men and women, the church has been the hospital for the soul, the school for the mind and the safe depository for moral ideas.

In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church.

The Church recruited people who had been starched and ironed before they were washed.

'Instead we tell the church to shut its mouth and even condemn it when at times it chooses to illuminate issues on a spiritual and moral basis, when it points to the need for tolerance, repentance, forgiving and sharing - the same principles it professed in the early days that chartered the course of modern day.'

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

It is claimed that God wrote a book called the Bible, and it is generally admitted that this book is somewhat difficult to understand. As long as the church had all the copies of this book, and the people were not allowed to read it, there was comparatively little heresy in the world; but when it was printed and read, people began honestly to differ as to its meaning. A few were independent and brave enough to give the world their real thoughts, and for the extermination of these men the church used all her power. Protestants and Catholics vied with each other in the work of enslaving the human mind. For ages they were rivals in the infamous effort to rid the earth of honest people.

Give any orthodox church the power, and to-day they would punish heresy with whip, and chain, and fire. As long as a church deems a certain belief essential to salvation, just so long it will kill and burn if it has the power.

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.

How has the church in every age, when in authority, defended itself? Always by a statute against blasphemy, against argument, against free speech. And there never was such a statute that did not stain the book that it was in and that did not certify to the savagery of the men who passed it.

From the aspersions of, the pulpit, from the slanders of the church, I seek to rescue the reputation of the Deity.

I know of no crime that has not been defended by the church, in one form or other. The church is not a pioneer; it accepts a new truth, last of all, and only when denial has become useless.

It is far more important to build a home than to erect a church. The holiest temple beneath the stars is a home that love has built.

Marriages are made by men and women; not by society; not by the state; not by the church; not by supernatural beings.

The real marriage is based on mutual affection - the ceremony is but the outward evidence of the inward flame. To this contract there are but two parties. The church is an impudent intruder.

The little White Chapel is ringing its bell With a ring-a-ding-dong, All day long