Those are values that help guide not just my family's Christian faith, but that of Jewish Americans, and Muslim Americans; nonbelievers and Americans of all backgrounds. And no one better embodies that spirit of service than the men and women who wear our country's uniform and their families.
The Romans called the Christians atheists. Why? Well, the Christians had a god of sorts, but it wasn't a real god. They didn't believe in the divinity of apotheosized emperors or Olympian gods. They had a peculiar, different kind of god. So it was very easy to call people who believed in a different kind of god atheists. And that general sense that an atheist is anybody who doesn't believe exactly as I do prevails in our own time.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down. We know they have fallen before.
The true Christian hero will appear in the cause of Christ, not only when it is prevailing, but when it seems to be declining; (he) will be on the right side, though it be not the rising side.
If the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95 percent of what we do would go on and no one would know the difference. If the Holy Spirit had been withdrawn from the New Testament church, 95 percent of what they did would stop, and everybody would know the difference.
What good is all this free-thinking, modernity, and turncoat flexibility if at some gut level you are still a Christian, a Catholic, and even a priest!
For let us not underestimate the Christian: the Christian, false to the point of innocence, is far above the ape-regarding Christians, a well known theory of descent becomes a mere compliment.
So, it becomes the devil's business to keep the Christian's spirit imprisoned. He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins. From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, in our own grave clothes. He knows that if we continue in this kind of bondage...we are not much better off than when we were spiritually dead.
Well, my theory is this: war is such a terrible, such an atrocious, thing that no man, at least no Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of beginning it; but it belongs to government alone, when it becomes inevitable.
One of the great strengths of the United States is... we have a very large Christian population - we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
My favorite designer is Christian Lacroix, not just because his clothes are amazing and I love them, but because he's so nice. When I did his fashion show, he was the first one to arrive there and he helped everyone
Man is an essentially superstitious and fearful animal. Take away the herd's Christian gods and saints and they will without failing come to worship...something else.
Christian theology teaches the doctrine of prevenient grace, which briefly stated means this, that before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man.