Christendom Quotes

“I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.”
― Montesquieu, Persian Letters

“Whether [new Protestant church movements] place their emphasis on new worship styles, expressions of the Holy Spirit’s power, evangelism to seekers, or Bible teaching, these so-called new movements still operate out of the fallacious assumption that the church belongs firmly in the town square, that is, at the heart of Western culture. And if they begin with this mistaken belief about their position in Western society, all their church planting, all their reproduction will simply mirror this misapprehension.”
― Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church

“There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don’t much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world—or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world—I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“We live in a culture of reductionism. Or better, we are living in the aftermath of a culture of reductionism, and I believe we have reduced the complexity and diversity of the Scriptures to systematic theologies that insist on ideological conformity, even when such conformity flattens the diversity of the Scriptural witness. We have reduced our conception of gospel to four simple steps that short-circuit biblical narratives and notions of the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven in favor of a simplified means of entrance to heaven. Our preaching is often wed to our materialistic, consumerist cultural assumptions, and sermons are subsequently reduced to delivering messages that reinforce the worst of what American culture produces: self-centered end users who believe that God is a resource that helps an individual secure what amounts to an anemic and culturally bound understanding of the 'abundant life.”
― Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos

“. . . I realized with a growing and startling sense of clarity that the seminary was educating and training me for a world that no longer existed. Moreover, the posture of this particular brand of Christianity toward the surrounding culture was one of enormous suspicion and at times hostility. It seemed that part of this evolving designation involved a posture of entrenchment and argument toward culture. But I loved culture. I loved the freedom to engage with people for the purpose of friendship and dialogue, not simply evangelism.”
― Tim Keel, Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos

“Jacobinism, born amidst the revolutionary fervor of 1789, harbored but a singular aspiration: the complete and total eradication of Christendom. When we behold the world through such a prism in the present day, it becomes evident that we are in the midst of an exterminating conflict that bears the hallmarks of nothing less than a total war.”
― Isaiah Senones

“Al llegar para mí la hora de rendir la vida ante el Altísimo, no olvidéis que los enemigos de España y de la civilización cristiana están alerta. Velad también vosotros, y para ello deponed, frente a los supremos intereses de la Patria y del pueblo español, toda mira personal.”
― Francisco Franco

“You may have lost hope in Christianity or Christendom or all the institutions, but you have not lost hope in the church. This is the church.” At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.”
― Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

“De eerste missionarissen in Oost-Afrika hadden hooguit vijf jaar te leven, dat wisten ze, en toch gingen ze.”
― Marga Kerklaan, Het einde van een tijdperk: 130 jaar belevenissen van Nederlandse missionarissen

“Of course, there were innumerable conversions during these years, as Christianity became the religion of Western Europe and Christendom took its characteristic shape. Many of these were undramatic – serfs responding to the importunity of their lords – or group events, as in the conversion of Clovis’s troops. But for many others there was no longer need of conversion. The contours of Christian experience had shifted. Whereas up to the time of Augustine there had been four stages of initiation and incorporation into the church, there were no typically two. The first stage was brief and obligatory – baptism in the days or months after birth. The second stage would happen later and would take longer – if it took place at all – when confirmation happened and when parents instructed their children and godparents instructed their godchildren in the beliefs and behavior of the Christian church. Indeed, at this time of the rapid spread of Christianity into new territories, it was vitally necessary that the baptizands be taught well. The heroic and valorous values of the folk, the glorious narratives of warriors, the adulation of wealth and strength – all of these were as firmly in place in seventh-century Gaul as the pagan values and narratives had been in third-century Rome. If Christianity were to be a religion of revelation that could challenge the commonplaces of Gallic society, if new habits were to be taught and new role models were to be adopted, there would have to be some form of postbaptismal pastoral follow-up.”
― Alan Kreider, The Change of Conversion and the Origin of Christendom

“Where is hope if not in a land covenant with the God of Abraham? We have been trained to read the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, incorrectly. We have been taught to put ourselves in the place of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We read the Old Testament as if the United States it eh chosen people of Israel. But in the Old Testament narrative, Americans would be the citizens of the pagan nations. Hope for the United States does not emerge from being the promised and chosen people like the Jews, but instead, we take our hope from how God treats the other nations in the biblical narrative.
The hope for the United States comes from a God who was willing to negotiate with Abraham over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. The hope for the United States comes from a God who pulled Rahab out of the city before he destroyed Jericho. The hope for the United States comes from a God who said to Jonah, "Should I not be concerned" when he protested that God had sent him to prophesy to the pagan city of Nineveh. The hope for America does not come from a land covenant with God - it comes from the character of God. And the character of God is not accessed by our exceptionalism but through a humility that emerges from the spiritual practice of lament.”
― Soong-Chan Rah, Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery

“Ik beschouw de Islam als een achterlijke godsdienst, maar ik beschouw het Katholicisme ook als een achterlijke godsdienst.”
― Jean-Marie Dedecker

“Het oude geloof zal weer in ere worden hersteld, de geheime kennis van de natuur, van het demonische. We zullen het christelijke vernis afwassen en een religie naar voren brengen die eigen is aan ons ras.”
― Adolf Hitler

“The Revolution is the Christian nation renouncing its baptism, throwing off its historical and traditional faith and trying to rebuild itself outside the Gospel, on the foundations of pure reason that has become the only source of law and the only rule of duty. A society that no longer has any guide other than the natural insights of the intellect, cut off from revelation, and no purpose other than the welfare of man in this world, apart from his higher and divine destiny: that is the core of the doctrine of the Revolution. Its hatred of the supernatural is and remains its most characteristic feature.”
― Charles Emile Freppel

“Abortie kan niet omdat het tegen gods gebod zou zijn.
Ja, dat lieverdje die zuigelingen laat afslachten,
Eerstgeborenen met de dood slaat
En een hele mensheid verdrinkt.

Uit: "Gesels van een imaginaire god”
― A.J. Beirens

“Heeft god de man dan té volmaakt gemaakt
dat men er zo nodig een stuk moet van afsnijden?

Over 'besnijdenis' in "Gesels van een imaginaire god”
― A.J. Beirens

“Het moment echter dat deze vertelsels
werden samengebracht en neergepend
in zogeheten 'heilige boeken'
moet zonder enige twijfel gezien worden
als het meest rampzalige ogenblik
in de geschiedenis van de mensheid.

Uit "Gesels van een imaginaire god”
― A.J. Beirens

“De 'bullshitdetector' is de grootste vijand
van elke godsdienst."

Uit: "Gesels van een imaginaire god”
― A.J. Beirens

“Het is tijd om te eisen van de gelovigen dat ze hun persoonlijke keuzes, voorkeuren en geloof aan niet-rationele en soms gevaarlijke zaken strikt in de privésfeer houden. Iedereen is absoluut vrij om te geloven wat ze willen, op voorwaarde dat ze anderen niet lastig vallen (of dwingen, of doden).. Maar niemand heeft het recht om privilegies te eisen op grond van het feit dat ze aanhangers zijn van een of ander van 's werelds vele godsdiensten.”
― A.J. Beirens, Gesels van een imaginaire god

“Als liefde of de Geest van God een mens raakt, wordt hij getransformeerd, hij klemt zichzelf niet langer vast aan zijn afzonderlijke individualiteit”
― Leanne Payne, The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul Through Union with Christ

“We ontkenden de fouten van de ander niet. We wonnen hen terug door gebed. We vroegen Christus om met Zijn liefde in ons te komen en door ons heen naar die andere persoon toe te gaan, herinneringen te genezen en alles wat goed en mooi was aan die ander naar boven te laten komen”
― Leanne Payne, The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul Through Union with Christ

“España se ha construido contra el Islam, en Reconquista, y por lo tanto la cosmovisión islámica del mundo es lo contrario de la cosmovisión cristiana del mundo, del mundo judeocristiano, occidental, del que España ha sido parte importantísima.”
― Santiago Abascal Conde

“As Christendom suffers attack upon attack, indignity upon indignity, defeat after defeat, a new religion moves in to take its place. This great and rising sect of our time, which is socialism, has three major objectives as outlined by Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. First, socialism wants to destroy capitalism (i.e., in terms of private property in the sense of business ownership); second, socialism wants to destroy the family; and third, socialism wants to destroy the nation state. As Bukovsky pointed out, the socialists failed to destroy the idea of private property, but they have partly succeeded against the family and the nation state. The breakdown of the family is all too real for anyone to deny, and this breakdown spells disaster for a society that is too weak to resist.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“Very few people are prepared to stand up and defend the Church against the interests and ideals of nonbelievers.”
― Robert Chad Canter, The Shadow Angel: Genesis

“Throughout the twenty-first century, many white Christian leaders in the US have frequently expressed the anxiety that the United States of America has lost its Christian values, even fearing that Christians in our country are facing persecution.  This embedded fear and anxiety often drives many Christians in the US to seek out comfort through partisan politics and to embrace the heresy of Christendom.”
― Soong-Chan Rah

“Het westen is een kerkhof, waarvan alleen de kerken nog overblijven als grafstenen van een beschaving die ooit tot aan de hemel reikte.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The Revolution wants the destruction of the social kingdom of Jesus Christ, it wants to erase every last trace of it. The Revolution, that is the totally de-Christianised society, that is Christ pushed away to the corner of the individual conscience. One wants to banish Christ from the public and social sphere; banished from the State, which refuses to seek in His authority any more the affirmation of its own; banished from the laws, of which His law is no longer the sovereign rule; banished from the family, which is excluded from His blessing; banished from the school, where His teaching no longer constitutes the soul of education; banished from science, where He obtains as His only honour only a kind of neutrality that is just as offensive as contradiction; banished from everywhere, except perhaps from that little corner of the soul where one still grants Him a remnant of rule.”
― Charles Emile Freppel

“Het is bijzonder moeilijk zich aan de gevolgen te onttrekken zolang men het beginsel blijft huldigen. Door God te vervangen door de mens als beginsel van het gezag heeft de Revolutie het atheïsme wettelijk geproclameerd. Vanaf dat moment werd dit wettelijk atheïsme er geheel natuurlijk toe gebracht zijn stempel te drukken op alle manifestaties van het openbaar leven. Wij zien dat ook vandaag nog met lede ogen aan. Wie daarover verbaasd is, heeft niet begrepen wat de kern is van de revolutionaire beweging van 1789. Want het ideologisch karakter van de Franse Revolutie zoeken we niet in de uitspattingen of de misdaden van 1793 : het is niet in 1793 maar in 1789 dat Frankrijk de diepe wonde heeft opgelopen waaraan ons land sindsdien lijdt, en die haar dood kan veroorzaken als een stevige en levenskrachtige reactie er niet in slaagt haar terug op het spoor van een volledige genezing te zetten. Het is in 1789 dat de vertegenwoordigers van de Revolutie afgestapt zijn van het begrip “ christelijk volk ” om het deïstisch of atheïstisch rationalisme op de sociale orde toe te passen ; zo hebben zij aan de wereld het triest spektakel van een nationale geloofsafval laten zien, waarvoor tot op dat ogenblik in de katholieke landen geen voorgaande was. Het is in 1789 dat er in de sociale orde een werkelijke Godsmoord heeft plaatsgehad, te vergelijken met wat het joodse volk zeventien eeuwen geleden met de Godmens gedaan had.”
― Charles Emile Freppel

“It was all about power,' Teabing continued. 'Christ as Messiah was critical to the functioning of Church and state. Many scholars claim that the early Church literally stole Jesus from His original followers, hijacking His human message, shrouding it in an impenetrable cloak of divinity, and using it to expand their own power. I've written several books on the topic.”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

“Geen Priester vergeeft u de misslagen uit kracht van ’t gezag eener kerk, die deze vergeving op ’t gruwlijkst misbruikt en verbeurd heeft. Hy zal u voor een hand vol gelds niet zeggen: al hadt gy de moeder gods verkracht of al doet gy het nog, ik ontsla u van schuld en open de poorten des hemels in des H. Petrus naam. Maar uw medechristen zal met u bidden tot Hem van wien alle vergeving komt, die voor uwe wandaden geleden heeft, die ’t berouw dat gy voelt in uw hart werkt, en ook u het onbedrieglijk woord heeft gegeven, dat Hy in het uur der benaauwdheid u hooren en redden zal.”
― Willem Bilderdijk, Een protestant aan zijne medeprotestanten ter gelegenheid van de afschetsing der voortreffelijkheid van den katholyken kerkler door J. G. le Sage ten Broek. 1816 [Leather Bound]