
Epilogue, p. 241
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)
Religion, Development and African Christian Identity, page 31.
Epilogue, p. 241
Out of My Life and Thought : An Autobiography (1933)
"The Truth of Orthodoxy" as translated in Vestnik of the Russian West European Patriarchal Exarchate (1952) http://www.kosovo.net/ortruth.html
Context: The Christian world doesn't know Orthodoxy too well. It only knows the external and for the most part, the negative features of the Orthodox Church and not the inner spiritual treasure. Orthodoxy was locked inside itself, it did not have the spirit of proselytism and did not reveal itself to the world. For the longest time, Orthodoxy did not have such world-wide significance as did Catholicism and Protestantism. It remained apart form passionate religious battles for hundreds of years, for centuries it lived under the protection of large empires (Byzantium and Russia), and preserved its eternal truth from the destructive processes of world history. It is characteristic of Orthodoxy's religious nature that it was not sufficiently actualized nor exposed externally, it was not militant, and precisely because of this the heavenly truth of Christian revelation was not distorted so much. Orthodoxy is that form of Christianity which suffered the least distortion in its substance as a result of human history. The Orthodox Church had its moments of historical sin, for the most part in connection with its external dependence on the State, but the Church's teaching, her inner spiritual path was not subject to distortion. The Orthodox Church is primarily the Church of tradition, in contrast to the Catholic Church, which is the Church of authority, and to the Protestant Churches which are essentially churches of individual faith. The Orthodox Church was never subject to a single externally authoritarian organization and it unshakenly was held together by the strength of internal tradition and not by any external authority. Out of all forms of Christianity it is the Orthodox Church which remained more closely tied to early Christianity.
Source: [Pope John Paul II, 2005, Memory and identity: conversations at the dawn of a millennium, Rizzoli]
You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, But You Can't Make Him Think (2009)
Chomsky on Religion (2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNDG7ErY-k4&feature=related.
Quotes 2010s, 2010
Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150
Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: Far be it from us not to recognize the importance of the second factor, moral teaching — especially that which is unconsciously transmitted in society and results from the whole of the ideas and comments emitted by each of us on facts and events of every-day life. But this force can only act on society under one condition, that of not being crossed by a mass of contradictory immoral teachings resulting from the practice of institutions.
In that case its influence is nil or baneful. Take Christian morality: what other teaching could have had more hold on minds than that spoken in the name of a crucified God, and could have acted with all its mystical force, all its poetry of martyrdom, its grandeur in forgiving executioners? And yet the institution was more powerful than the religion: soon Christianity — a revolt against imperial Rome — was conquered by that same Rome; it accepted its maxims, customs, and language. The Christian church accepted the Roman law as its own, and as such — allied to the State — it became in history the most furious enemy of all semi-communist institutions, to which Christianity appealed at Its origin.
Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 150