So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code. - Mark Twain 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. - Mark Twain We did not oversleep at St. Nicholas. The church-bell began to ring at four-thirty in the morning, and from the length of time it continued to ring I judged that it takes the Swiss sinner a good while to get the invitation through his head. - Mark Twain The weather-cock on the church spire, though made of iron, would soon be broken by the storm-wind i...

We have this idea in our minds that there's this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. - Stephen Colbert I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. - George Carlin This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like this: Our Father who art in heaven, and to the republic for which it stands, thy kingdom come, one nation indivisible as in heaven, give us this day as we forgive those who so proudly we hail. Crown thy good into temptation but deliver us from the twilight's last gleaming. Amen and Awomen. - George Carlin I have never met a happy atheist. I believe in separation of church and state, but I think we have gone so far over in the other direction of separating church an...

I need to learn not to bend over backwards to be nice to faith-heads. Give these people an inch and they take a league. I think, as I did when I wrote The God Delusion, that the Roman Catholic Church is a disgusting institution, the second most evil religion in the world. - Richard Dawkins The death of Pope John Paul II led many of different faiths and of no faith to acknowledge their debt to the Roman Catholic Church for holding on to absolutes that the rest of us can measure ourselves against. - Suzanne Fields The right-to-life movement and the Roman Catholic Church are saying that it is better to destroy these embryos, or preferably have them adopted - which is not going to happen - than to use them for research. - Mort Kondracke The Roman Catholic church... carries the immense power of very directly affecting women's lives everywhere by its stand against birth control and abortion. - Robin Morgan Vatican II was a force that seized the mind of the Roman Catholic Church and ...

In the Orthodox Church, we don't go for partial immersion; no sprinkling, no forehead dabbing for us. In order to be reborn, you have to be buried first, so under the water I went. - Jeffrey Eugenides Until 1905, it remained an offence for anyone in the Orthodox Church to convert from it to another faith or to publish attacks on it. All books on religion and philosophy had to pass through the Church's censors. There was, moreover, whole range of moral and social issues where the Church's influence remained dominant and sometimes even took precedence over the secular authorities - Orlando Figes When I walk into an Orthodox Church... one is immediately aware that one has stepped into the presence of what St. Paul would call the whole family in heaven and earth. You have stepped into the precincts of heaven! - Thomas Howard The train resembles the Soviet type and is quite comfortable, but all socialist structures I have ever encountered have toilets stemming from a single ...

A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday. - Russell Baker I grew up going to church three times a week in my family. It's been a center of my life. - Debby Boone You didn't just automatically become a Christian, did you? You weren't made a Christian by just going to church. Just like you are not made a car by sitting in a garage all day! You have to make a decision. - Corallie Buchanan I walked away from going to church when I was 8. I didn't set foot in another church until I was 28. - Billy Corgan But I don't necessarily define my faith by going to church every Sunday. - Miley Cyrus My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going. - Charles Dickens Some keep the Sabbath going to church, I keep it staying at home, with a bobolink for a chorister, and an orchard for a dome. -...

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. - Mark Twain Father Angelo makes me uncomfortable. For starters, he's way too good-looking for a priest, his dark bedroom eyes and athletic build arousing exactly the kind of impure thoughts you're supposed to go to church to get rid of. - Marc Acito I consider myself spiritual and I'm married to a man who is both an atheist and a humanist, and my kids have been raised with the traditions of different religions, but they do not go to church or temple. My feeling is that everyone should be able to believe what they want or need to believe. - Jodi Picoult Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure. - Fred Allen ...

I had always owned them to be the Word of God... the careful reading of the Acts afforded me a practical picture of the early church; which made me feel deeply the contrast with its actual present state; though still, as ever beloved by God. - John Nelson Darby The early church was strikingly different from the culture around it in this way - the pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body and they gave practically everybody their money. - Timothy Keller Never was the victory of patience more complete than in the early church. The anvil broke the hammer by bearing all the blows that the hammer could place upon it. The patience of the saints was stronger than the cruelty of tyrants. - Charles Spurgeon In early church polemics, Jews are deemed no longer worthy of their own Scriptures because they have failed to acce...

So many people come to church with a genuine desire to hear what we have to say, yet they are always going back home with the uncomfortable feeling that we are making it too difficult for them to come to Jesus. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer I found myself earnestly explaining to the young minister that I did not believe in God, 'but I've discovered that I can't live as though I didn't believe in him. As long as I don't need to say any more than that I try to live as though I believe in God, I would very much like to come to church--if you'll let me. - Madeleine L Engle People don't come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God. - Kurt Vonnegut The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last observing her they whispered to each other. She knew what their whispers were about, grew sick at heart, and felt that she could come to church no more. - Thomas Hardy Clearly a big challenge for Christiani...

I was sent to a nice Church of England girls' school and at that time, after university, a woman was expected to become a teacher, a nurse or a missionary - prior to marriage. - Kate Adie But, actually, so many of the clerics that I've met, particularly the Church of England clerics, are people of such extraordinary smugness and arrogance and conceitedness who are extraordinarily presumptuous about the significance of their position in society. - Rowan Atkinson My heart is in the Church of England but not my mind. - Alister Hardy The Church in England is the Church of England. - Joseph Barber Lightfoot The Church of England is the only church in the world that interferes neither with your politics nor your religion - Anthony Trollope You have the Roman Catholic Church, the Church of England, the Presbyterians, the Wesleyans, represented in each school, and they are each to take alternate days. - Charles Tupper I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in wit...

When Alex left for Alaska," Franz remembers, "I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex. - Jon Krakauer Christianity means a lot more than church membership. - Billy Sunday

The first time I sang in the church choir; two hundred people changed their religion. - Fred Allen I sang in church choir all my life, through elementary school, junior high and high school. - Kevin Richardson It is my belief that everything you need to know about the world can be learned in a church choir. - Connie Willis The entire range of human experience is present in a church choir, including, but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust and existential despair. - Connie Willis I was never interested in singing in the church choir or in school. I was more interested in becoming a musician. - Cassandra Wilson

Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive, ecstatic announcement of the gospel. So are your goodness, your rightness, your church attendance, and all of the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken. - Rob Bell Church attendance is as vital to a disciple as a transfusion of rich, healthy blood to a sick man. - Dwight L Moody

We have this idea in our minds that there's this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. - Stephen Colbert Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. - Thomas Jefferson I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death. - George Carlin This is a lttle prayer dedicated to the separation of church and state. I guess if they are going to force those kids to pray in schools they might as well have a nice prayer like th...

Many trees have died so that the Catholic Church can preach against homosexuality. - Jodi Picoult Remarkable is the greater openness of the Catholic Church towards people of other religious traditions and persuasions. The development has not been without problems, since some people have resisted it and others have pushed openness beyond the desirable point. - Francis Arinze The roof of the big top was dark blue, spangled with silver stars, and it reminded him of something but he couldn't think what, and then he realized it was the roof - the vault of heaven - in a side chapel at the Catholic church where his mother dragged them three times a day on Sunday when they were very small, until she ran out of energy and let the devil have them. (One Good Turn) - Kate Atkinson Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the cou...

The Baptist Church rejects man with wooden leg: It appears the Baptist preacher refused to baptize a veteran of the late war in the holy water- saying they only baptize flesh and blood, not wood. Lizzie After the War- www.nancybbrewer.com)amazon/kindle/nook - Nancy B Brewer I sang with Anita Bryant in the Southern Baptist churches. - Kathie Lee Gifford I didn't really think Jesus cared what I wore to Cedar Grove Baptist Church, or to see the governor for that matter, considering the fact that in every picture I ever saw of the King of Kings, He was wearing sandals and bundled up in nothing more than a big, baggy robe. - Susan Gregg Gilmore All the Baptist churches she's ever visited smelled of the same sweat and boredom. - Sheri Holman Where do you come from?...This is the number one most-asked question in all of South Carolina. We want to know if you are one of us, if your cousin knows our cousin, if your little sister went to school with our big brother, if you go to the...

Tom counted the pages of the sermon; after church he always knew how many pages there had been, but he seldom knew anything else about the discourse. - Mark Twain Where did you meet?" he pressed on. I shrugged and considered a little rephrasing. "I was out for a run." "From who?" I leaned back to take a long, very long, slow sip of that beer. Knox leaned forward. "I think we're both bullsh*tting here, you ever play that card game?" "With my grandma, every Sunday after church. - Dannika Dark I think that after Church got his Ph.D. he studied in Europe, maybe in the Netherlands, for a year or two. - Stephen Cole Kleene