“I respect churches because of the sacredness that's been put on them over the years by people who do believe. But I think a lot of bad things have happened in the name of the church and in the name of Christ.”

— John Lennon

Source: The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 226
Context: I don't need to go to church. I respect churches because of the sacredness that's been put on them over the years by people who do believe. But I think a lot of bad things have happened in the name of the church and in the name of Christ. Therefore I shy away from church, and as Donovan once said, "I go to my own church in my own temple once a day." And I think people who need a church should go. And the others who know the church is in your own head should visit that temple because that's where the source is. We're all God. Christ said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." And the Indians say that and the Zen people say that. We're all God. I'm not a god or the God, but we're all God and we're all potentially divine — and potentially evil. We all have everything within us and the Kingdom of Heaven is nigh and within us, and if you look hard enough you'll see it.

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John Lennon 228

English singer and songwriter 1940–1980

Wendy Beckett (1930–2018) British Catholic nun and presenter of documentaries for the BBC on the history of art

Source: Sister Wendy Beckett, on same-sex marriage, from a Huffington Post interview titled 'Sister Wendy, My Semi-Spiritual Guide' dated 17 November 2007.

“How about we have been dead and what we must do after we die? Why we go to the churches when we are living because I think the divines and Christs are dead in the churches and provide the services, cares and merrys on our lived people. And we received the peaceful mind from them and held a better life than before.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"The Question Mark Inside" (2008)

“We do it all the time, we legislate taste. We do it with the tax code. Churches and children get a tax break, because it's assumed that we all agree that we want to encourage churches and children. I don't. I don't. That's my opinion. I don't want to encourage either churches or children, and it's a very bad idea to put them together.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

I'm Swiss (2005)

“Over and over I feel as if my characters know who they are, and what happens to them, and where they have been and where they will go, and what they are capable of doing, but they need me to write it down for them because their handwriting is so bad.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

“My whole life has been based on two principles: the love of the Church to which I am united, and the love of my country, which I adore. If I do not care whether I am sentenced to ten years imprisonment or to be shot, it is not because I am a fanatic… Since I joined the Catholic Church my sole object has been to reconcile my country to that Church which I believe to be the One True Church.”

Leonid Feodorov (1879–1935) Exarch of the Russian Catholic Church

Captain Francis McCullagh, "The Bolshevik Persecution of Christianity," page 238.
Addressing the court shortly before being sentenced to ten years in the GULAG.

“I do not say, and I do not believe, that Christians are as bad as their creeds. In spite of church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the human heart.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: I do not say, and I do not believe, that Christians are as bad as their creeds. In spite of church and dogma, there have been millions and millions of men and women true to the loftiest and most generous promptings of the human heart. They have been true to their convictions, and, with a self-denial and fortitude excelled by none, have labored and suffered for the salvation of men. Imbued with the spirit of self-sacrifice, believing that by personal effort they could rescue at least a few souls from the infinite shadow of hell, they have cheerfully endured every hardship and scorned every danger. And yet, notwithstanding all this, they believed that honest error was a crime. They knew that the Bible so declared, and they believed that all unbelievers would be eternally lost. They believed that religion was of God, and all heresy of the devil. They killed heretics in defence of their own souls and the souls of their children. They killed them because, according to their idea, they were the enemies of God, and because the Bible teaches that the blood of the unbeliever is a most acceptable sacrifice to heaven.

“Some Western Church leaders don't care about [persecuted believers]. The names of the martyrs are not on their prayer lists. While they were being tortured and sentenced, the Russian Baptist and Orthodox official leaders who had denounced and betrayed them were received with great honor at New Delhi, at Geneva, and at other conferences. There they assured everyone that in Russia there is full religious liberty. A leader of the World Council of Churches kissed the Bolshevik archbishop Nikodim when he gave this assurance. Then they banqueted together in the imposing name of the World Council of Churches, while the saints in prison ate cabbage with unwashed intestines, just as I had eaten in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Richard Wurmbrand (1909–2001) Romanian Christian minister of Jewish descent

Tortured For Christ: 30th Anniversary Edition, p. 74-75 (1998).

“I was so conflicted and disillusioned about organized religion that I couldn't write. … I think my writings will go on being the writings of a believer in Christ. I think I'll be less frustrated and freer to write about the full dimension of what that means. But I write metaphysical thrillers, and how this works out in fiction is always mysterious: characters confront dilemmas. The worldview of the novel is certainly optimistic and that of a believer. What character will say what, I don't know until I start writing. …. Because I had written Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, I had become a public Christian. I wanted my readers to know that I was stepping aside from organized religion and the names Christian and Christianity because I wanted to exonerate myself from the things organized religion was doing in the name of Jesus. Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love. They have become associated with hatred, persecution, attempting to abolish the separation of church and state, and trying to pressure people to vote certain ways in elections. I wanted to make it clear that I did not in any way remain complicit with those things.”

Anne Rice (1941) American writer

"Q & A: Anne Rice on Following Christ Without Christianity" interview by Sarah Pulliam Bailey in Christianity Today (17 Augutst 2010) http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/article_print.html?id=89167

“I became a firefighter because I wanted to save people. But I should have been more specific. I should have named names.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

“I think God put me in this position as a punter and in professional football because He wants something out of me to be able to share with other people, as a Christian, I think God has given me that platform to say, "Hey, I've allowed you to do a lot of things and I need you to speak My name."”

Dustin Colquitt (1982) American football punter

He always finds a way to put His people in situations where they can spread His Word and spread His name.
'I Want Them to See the Power of God': These 3 Christians Are up for NFL’s Walter Payton Man of the Year Award https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2019/february/i-want-them-to-see-the-power-of-god-these-3-christians-are-up-for-nfl-rsquo-s-walter-payton-man-of-the-year-award (May 19, 2019)

“I respect churches because of the sacredness that's been put on them over the years by people who do believe. But I think a lot of bad things have happened in the name of the church and in the name of Christ.”

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John Lennon 228

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