"One of the biggest blows to Christianity's vitality and legitimacy occurred on the day that Constantine made it the official religion of the Empire. Nobody in his or her right mind would want to be a member of a socially acceptable religion. It's very dangerous for the soul."

-- Phyllis Tickle

"When I was a delegate at the 1975 Assembly of the World Council of Churches I found over and over again that it was when we said what we really meant, expressing ourselves and our viewpoints most clearly, that real fellowship and trust came about — not when we hid the light of truth under a bushel of tolerance."

-- N.T. Wright

"Never in my 15 years at 'Charisma' have I known a time of such intense spiritual turbulence. ...recent religious scandals have so tarnished our credibility that we have become a curious freak show. Many unbelievers now associate ministers with wife-swapping, wife-beating, no-fault divorce, gay affairs and $10,000-a-night hotel rooms. We need a Holy Ghost housecleaning."

-- J. Lee Grady, editor of "Charisma" magazine.

"If you cannot convince them, confuse them."

-- Harry S. Truman (my first cousin, twice removed)

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."

--Flannery O'Connor

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

-- Julian of Norwich

"I was more convinced than ever that the preaching like an Apostle, without joining together those that are awakened and training them up in the ways of God, is only begetting children for the murderer. How much preaching has there been for these twenty years all over Pembrokeshire! But no regular societies, no discipline, no order or connection; and the consequence is, that nine in ten of the once-awakened are now faster asleep than ever."

-- John Wesley's (1703-1791) Journal

"Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution. So the Christian church, after the early period, often seemed more closely related in attitude to the Jewish synagogue and the Roman state than to the age of Christ and his apostles; its creed was often more like a system of philosophy than like the living gospel."

-- H. Richard Niebuhr (1894-1962), The Kingdom of God in America [1959]

"I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand. For this too I believe, that unless I first believe, I shall not understand."

-- Anselm of Canterbury, 1033-1109

"We can not have all things to please us,
no matter how we try.
Until we've all gone to Jesus,
we can only wonder why."

-- Gillian Welch

"I fear, wherever riches have increased, the essence of religion has decreased in the same proportion. Therefore I do not see how it is possible, in the nature of things, for any revival of religion to continue long. For religion must necessarily produce both industry and frugality, and these cannot but produce riches. But as riches increase, so will pride, anger, and love of the world in all its branches."

-- John Wesley

"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."

-- Bill Vaughn

"I love Wikipedia … any site that's got a longer entry on truthiness than on Lutherans has its priorities straight."

-- Stephen Colbert

"Let all our chapels be built plain and decent; but not more expensively than is absolutely unavoidable: otherwise the necessity of raising money will make rich men necessary to us. But if so, we must be dependent upon them, yea, and governed by them. And then farewell to the Methodist-discipline, if not doctrine too."

-- John Wesley, from his instructions to American Methodist churches.

"And certain tiny primates could theoretically become airborne, possibly self-propelled, and maneuver their escape from lower-back regions of one's physical body. (See The Wizard of Oz)"

-- Chip

“The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything - or nothing.”

-- Nancy Astor, British politician (1879 - 1964)

"Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in “Casablanca” says “Play it again, Sam”; Leo Durocher did not say “Nice guys finish last”; ... Patrick Henry almost certainly did not say “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; William Tecumseh Sherman never wrote the words “War is hell”; and there is no evidence that Horace Greeley said “Go west, young man.” Marie Antoinette did not say “Let them eat cake”; ... Gordon Gekko, the character played by Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” does not say “Greed is good”; James Cagney never says “You dirty rat” in any of his films; ..."

-- Louis Menard

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

-- Edward R. Murrow

"Humor is everywhere, in that there's irony in just about anything a human does."

-- Bill Nye

"One of the reasons the Reformation was such an urgent, bloody affair, was that those involved had to get things right with God before he came on his final tour of inspection in the Last Days."

-- Diarmaid MacCulloch