“It was through looking at churches that I came to believe in the reason churches were built.”
The Best of Betjeman, John Guest, Penguin Modern Classics, 1985. Written in 1948. (Blisland)
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John Betjeman 30
English poet, writer and broadcaster 1906–1984Related quotes
Source: Sister Wendy Beckett, on same-sex marriage, from a Huffington Post interview titled 'Sister Wendy, My Semi-Spiritual Guide' dated 17 November 2007.

Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: Every church pretends that it has a revelation from God, and that this revelation must be given to the people through the church; that the church acts through its priests, and that ordinary mortals must be content with a revelation — not from God — but from the church. Had the people submitted to this preposterous claim, of course there could have been but one church, and that church never could have advanced. It might have retrograded, because it is not necessary to think or investigate in order to forget. Without heresy there could have been no progress.

1890s, Speech at the Abolitionist Reunion in Boston (1890)
“All church leaders agreed that the fears of the church members were not unfounded.”
Bangladeshi Christians Skip Traditional Christmas Midnight Mass https://www.voanews.com/east-asia/bangladeshi-christians-skip-traditional-christmas-midnight-mass (December 24, 2015)

“I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute”
where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote — where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference — and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
1960, Speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association

Letter to his son, Webb Hayes (26 February 1875)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Chen Chien-jen (2019) cited in " Holy See values relations with Taiwan: Vice President Chen http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201910120004.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 12 October 2019.