“Many of us associate the Christian faith as a list of do's and dont's, to be sure. But the Christian life is to be oriented in relationship, why is there so much talk of formula? Could it be that the reason we are more interested in forumla than relationship is that we would like to deal with our need for religion without dealing with the complications of relationship? That even though we have chosen the Christian faith instead of "poppycock religion," we ultimately want the same thing as the pagan? And what is that? Easy answers, comfortable sentiments, beliefs that make us feel good. So we go through the motions. We go to our churches, we read our self-help books, we watch our religious television, and we check each item off our to-do list as if we were doing work for pay. One thing I am sure of. This is not the kind of real-life faith I'm looking for.”

— Donald Miller

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

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Donald Miller 108

American writer 1971

Camillus Archibong Etokudoh (1949) Nigerian catholic priest

“A growing Church that participates in the nation's progress”: Nigerian Bishops comment (9 March 2009) Fides News Agecny http://www.fides.org/en/news/23120-AFRICA_NIGERIA_A_growing_Church_that_participates_in_the_nation_s_progress_Nigerian_Bishops_comment

“The most common reason that relationships fall apart is because of safety. On a subconscious level, even though our relationships grant us a sense of safety, if we perceive that something about a relationship makes us unsafe, we care more about our own safety than we care about the other person’s experience and we care more about our own safety than we care about the health of the relationship itself.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

“In talking of the Christian world, in English and, I suppose, in all the other languages of the Christian world we use two terms: Christianity and Christendom. Christianity means a religion, in the strict sense of that word, a system of belief and worship and some clerical or ecclesiastical organization to go with it. If we say Christendom, we mean the entire civilization that grew up under the aegis of that religion, but also contains many elements that are not part of that religion, many elements that are even hostile to that religion. Let me give one simple example. No one could seriously assert that Hitler and the Nazis came out of Christianity. No one could seriously dispute that they came out of Christendom. In talking of Islam, we use the same word in both senses, and this gives rise to considerable confusion and misunderstanding. There are many things that are described as part of Islam, which are indeed part of Islam, if we take the word as the equivalent of Christendom, but are very much not part of Islam are even alien or hostile to Islam if we take the word Islam as the equivalent of Christianity. I think this is a very important point, which one should bear in mind.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, Islam and the West: A Conversation with Bernard Lewis (2006)

“Unbelievers may think - all right, we do think - Christianity is only slightly less nutty than Islam; but Christianity is ours. We've got along with it for several centuries; and the relationship between Western unbelievers and Western Christians, if not always polite, is stable and comfortable. Can we fit Islam in like that?”

John Derbyshire (1945) writer

Source: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009)

“A central task of Christian theology is to interrogate the relationship between kerygma and culture, between what is reflectively normative for Christian faith and practice and what is prereflectively normative for one’s historical situation. We will identify those forms of Christian self-understanding that conflate these two norms as modes of constantinianism.”

Constantinianism Policies

David Congdon, The Mission of Demythologizing (2015), p. 532

“Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

Source: The Root of the Righteous (1955), p. 39.

“We believe that persecution is part of our Christian vocation and Christian life. We are not afraid, but we live it as a blessing from God. We know that where there is persecution, faith is strengthened, and today I am proud to say that faith in my people is strengthening.”

John Barwa (1955) Roman Catholic archbishop

The Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar, in Orissa: " Persecution exists, but the faith of Christians is growing" http://www.fides.org/en/news/29045-ASIA_INDIA_The_Archbishop_of_Cuttack_Bhubaneswar_in_Orissa_Persecution_exists_but_the_faith_of_Christians_is_growing (19 May 2011)

“Indeed, we believe that twenty-first century Christians are yearning to see the adventure put back into Christianity, into the relationship with the living God — where it rightly belongs.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 28

“Have we clothed our faith with the forms of our American culture to the point that our Christianity has morphed into something entirely different - a folk religion altogether consumerist in spirit and content?”

Skye Jethani

The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity (2009, Zondervan)

“Freemasonry… has no pretension to assume a place among the religions of the world as a sectarian "system of faith and worship," in the sense in which we distinguish Christianity from Judaism, or Judaism from Mohammedanism. In this meaning of the word we do not and can not speak of the Masonic religion, nor say of a man that he is not a Christian, but a Freemason. Here it is that the opponents of Freemasonry have assumed mistaken ground in confounding the idea of a religious Institution with that of the Christian religion as a peculiar form of worship, and in supposing, because Freemasonry teaches religious truth, that it is offered as a substitute for Christian truth and Christian obligation.”

Albert Mackey (1807–1881) U.S. writer on freemasonry

91912), p. 618.
An encyclopedia of freemasonry and its kindred sciences, (1912)

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