51 Quotes About Church-and-state

Spiritual power and spiritual authority notoriously shade over into both politics and poetry.

The state is concerned with the promotion of outward righteousness arising from the individual being constrained to keep the law. The Gospel alters human nature, whereas the state merely restrains human greed and evil, having no positive power to alter human motivation.

In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God.

Since much of American taxes prior to 1763 went to support the local clergy, one humorist suggested the opportunity to vote on that. If the minister was turned out, he could open a tavern and preach to his customers if he served them liquor.

He saw the Constitution as the vehicle to keep ecumenical passions in check.

This is not an issue of geography. He IS of two worlds wherever he goes.

the country is almost ruined with pious white people: such pious politicians as we have just before elections, such pious goings on in all departments of church and state, that a fellow does not know who'll cheat him next.

Will you tell me, William, you who know so much about heretics that you seem one of them, where the truth lies?"Nowhere, at times," William said, sadly."You see? You yourself can no longer distinguish between one heretic and another. I at least have a rule. I know that heretics are those who endanger the order that sustains the people of God. And I defend the empire because it guarantees this order for me.

Jesus from the moment he first appears in Galilee is a sign of contradiction, fomenting revolution through telling the truth about the state of the world, the reality of evil, and the eye of God, who judges in a different vein altogether than courts of law, whether they be religious canons, the ecclesiastical courts, or government legal systems.