Quotes about Church

The entire education of the younger generation of theologians belongs today in church cloister-like schools, in which pure doctrine, the Sermon on the Mount and worship are taken seriously—as they never are (and in present circumstances couldn't be) at the university.

The church has only one altar, the altar of the Almighty... before which all creatures must kneel... Whoever seeks something other than this must keep away; he cannot join us in the house of God... The church has only one pulpit, and from that pulpit, faith in God will be preached, and no other faith, and no other will than the will of God, however well-intentioned.

Simply suffering—that is what will be needed then—not parries, blows or thrusts such as may still be possible or admissible in the preliminary fight; the real struggle that perhaps lies ahead must simply be to suffer faithfully... For sometime the church struggle hasn't even been about what it appears to be about; the lines have been drawn somewhere else entirely.

A church that does not keep step with modern scientific knowledge is doomed.

Whether the church in America is really "free," I doubt.

He now began to think of the church as called by God to "stand with those who suffer".

Luther was trying to call the church back to its true roots, to a biblical idea of a merciful God who did not demand that we obey but who first loved us and first made us righteous before he expected us to live righteously.

The worlds of folklore and religion were so mingled in early twentieth venture German culture that even families who didn't go to church were often deeply Christian.

Indeed, not just the problems but the loud cry "Reform!" had been heard here and there for centuries before Luther.

is far too easy for us to base our claims to God on our own Christian religiosity and our church commitment, and in so doing utterly to misunderstand and distort the Christian idea.

What he had to say was really rather elementary: basic Christianity such as was professed in the Bible and in the doctrines of the Church of England, and to which almost everyone claimed to subscribe, was practically nonexistent in British society.

Nowadays we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But this question, he said, is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.