Provocative Ideas

I was browsing through Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations and the more modern Peter’s Quotations, and felt moved to put together a few pithy observations I have collected over the years.

Concerning religion and the Church

“The Christian Church is filled with people who would be equally horrified at hearing Christianity doubted and seeing it practiced.” Fosdick

“What an incredible inversion of reality when one is restless at hearing the teachings of Jesus discussed and applied, and wishes the minister would preach the gospel.” William P. Merrill

“’Love your enemies’ is hardly a doctrine, for instance, that patriotic public sentiment would listen to, unless the skilled exegete could make it clear that we were to show our love for the enemy by shooting him for his soul’s good.” Bishop Francis McConnell

“In every age those who were chiefly interested in maintenance of things as they are, have seen Christianity not as restful and reassuring, but as dangerous and subversive.” Unknown (Both Communists and Conservatives share this point of view.)

“Sooner shall these mountains crumble to dust than Argentine and Chileans break the peace to which they have pledged themselves at the feet of Christ the Redeemer.” Inscription on the base of the statue of Christ of the Andes

“The Orientals don’t want Christianity, it’s too bloodthirsty a religion.” Unknown

“Theology is the oven in which the dough of religious experience is baked into form, but heated disputations burn the ‘Bread of Life’ into a tasteless mess.” Unknown

On Preachers

“Most sermons are sent but never delivered.” Dean Brown, Yale Divinity School, Lecture on Preaching

“We preachers are too often answering questions which nobody ever asks.” Halford Luccock

“The business of the minister is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Unknown

“The docile people, as a rule, are the failures and not the successes of the clergy.” Unknown

On Conservatives and Liberals

“A radical is a progressive who believes in what he advocates.” Sen. Burton K. Wheeler

“The will for peace is futile without the courage to disarm.” H.G. Wells

“Every conservative worships at the shrine of a dead radical, but he always waits until he is dead.” Unknown (Jesus’ comment was sharper, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets’. Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.” (Matthew 25: 29-31)

“War will never die out in a nation where a competitive system exists.” Walter Scott Athearn, former President , Butler University

On Personal Character

“Every disordered spirit is its own punishment.” St. Augustine

“An intellectual shipwreck always finds comfort in running into the harbor of infallible authority.” Thomas A. Williams

“The man who does not set his heart on moral perfection sinks step by step to lower ideals.” St. Augustine

“Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things. I said then and I say now, that where there is a lower class, I am in it; where there is a criminal element I am of it; and while there is one soul in prison I am not free.” Eugene V. Debs (A modern variation of the parable of the lost sheep (Luke 15:3-6))