Bruce L. Shelley Quotes & Sayings

Church historians often ask, 'Is the church a movement or an institution?' . . . I think it is both. . . . I believe the people of God in history live in a tension between an ideal--the universal communion of saints--and the specific--the particular people in a definite time and place. The church's mission in time calls for institutions: special rules, special leaders, special places. But when institutions themselves obstruct the spread of the gospel rather than advancing it, then movements of renewal arise to return to the church's basic mission in the world. — Bruce L. Shelley

The schools, the courts, the media - all seem determined to erase Christian influence from public life and confine religion to the four walls of the church or home. — Bruce L. Shelley

What we have seen in recent years in the United States is the church's rights to express itself, and to conduct its own affairs, being insidiously eroded. — Bruce L. Shelley

Today's secular libertarians, who want to remove biblical religion from public life, have trouble making sense of the civil rights movement because it was so clearly a religiously inspired movement that entered the public arena and made a major difference in American life. — Bruce L. Shelley

Christianity is the only major religion to have at its central event the humiliation of its God. — Bruce L. Shelley

Reason, said Butler, provides no complete system of knowledge, and in ordinary life it can offer us only probabilities. — Bruce L. Shelley

Fortunately, Judge Richey's decision was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, but it is an example of how far the purge of Christian values has gone in America. — Bruce L. Shelley