Baptist Quotes & Sayings

John the Baptist was supposed to point the way to the Christ. He was just the voice, not the Messiah. So everybody's calling has dignity to it and God seems to know better than we do what is in us that needs to be called forth. — James Green Somerville

Fuck hope and all the tiny little towns, one-horse towns, the one-stoplight towns, three-bars country-music jukebox-magic parquet-towns, pressure-cooker pot-roast frozen-peas bad-coffee married-heterosexual towns, crying-kids-in-the-Oldsmobile-beat-your-kid-in the-Thriftway-aisles towns, one-bank one-service-station Greyhound-Bus-stop-at-the-Pepsi-Cafe towns, two-television towns, Miracle Mile towns, Viv's Double Wide Beauty Salon towns, schizophrenic-mother towns, buy-yourself-a-handgun towns, sister-suicide towns, only-Injun's-a-dead-Injun towns, Catholic-Protestant-Mormon-Baptist religious-right five-churches Republican-trickle-down-to-poverty family-values sexual-abuse pro-life creation-theory NRA towns, nervous-mother rodeo-clown-father those little-town-blues towns. — Tom Spanbauer

You may be Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist or Baptist or Muslim or Mormon or Jewish or Jain, or you have no religion at all. I'm not interested in your religious background. Because God did not create the universe for us to have religion. He came for us to have a relationship with him. — Rick Warren

My mother's family is Christian: her father was a Baptist lay preacher, and her brother, in a leap of Anglican upward mobility, became a vicar in the Church of Wales. But my mother converted to Islam on marrying my father. She was not obliged to; Muslim men are free to marry ahl al-kitab, or people of the Book - among them, Jews and Christians. — Shereen El Feki

The biological evolutionary perception of life and of human qualities is radically different from that of traditional religion, whether it's Southern Baptist or Islam or any religion that believes in a supernatural supervalance over humanity. — E. O. Wilson

My father's a Southern Baptist minister. I wasn't lighting cars on fire; I just wasn't. — Aaron Paul

Religion is best when it points beyond itself, like Isaiah or John the Baptist. It is worst when it gives you just enough of the forms to inoculate you against the substance, when it substitutes rituals for reality, the container for the contents, the wineskins for the ecstatic wine. — Richard Rohr

The temptation for a new generation, however, could be to see Baptist identity as a nuisance in the quest for converts. The effort to minimize an offensive "denominational brand name" will be counterproductive if we produce a generation of "anonymous Baptists," those whom we believe cannot handle the truth about Christ's design for His church. It will be tragic indeed if a future Broadman and Holman catalog includes a book titled, "Why I Am a Community Church (SBC) member."
But it will be equally tragic if the volume is titled, "Why I Want to Be a Presbyterian, but the Bible Won't Let Me. — Russell D. Moore

Pastor of the Warsaw Baptist Church, Dr. Peters was tall, gaunt, and pale, with a weak damp smile and cold damp palms: shaking his hand was like being forced to grasp the flaccid penis of a hypothermic zombie. — Tom Robbins

There are more Baptist preachers in Texas than Baptist missionaries in all the world. — Ray Thompson

I grew up Baptist and still go to church. I myself have explored other religions, because I want to know what it is that makes other people tick. I find we're all talking about the same thing, really - it's all God. — Dennis Quaid

He was a Baptist minister who prayed through his six-shooter which he claimed was the most efficacious form of prayer, especially in dealing with Yankees ... he would go into battle singing the songs of David. — John S. Mosby

This is going to be an old fashioned Baptist camp meeting with old fashioned singing, preaching and testifying. — Brandon Marshall

Psychologically, I'm a Roman Baptist. — Samuel Bowers

I have been most industriously talking up your extraordinary powers to all my wide acquaintance,' continued Mr Drawlight. 'I have been your John the Baptist, sir, preparing the way for you! — Susanna Clarke

The sign of a good conscience is for a man to be in support of basically everything that Westboro Baptist isn't. — Luke Myer

She would always feel this wild girl was the truest of any of the people she had already been: adored daughter, bourgeois priss, rebel, runaway, dope-fiend San Francisco hippie; or all the people she would later be: mother, nurse, religious fanatic, prematurely old woman. Vivienne was a human onion, and when I came home at twenty eight years old on the day the monster died, I was afraid that the Baptist freak she had peeled down to was her true, acrid, tear-inducing core. — Lauren Groff

The fierce ambitions of Carver Dana Andrews, son of a Baptist preacher, might well have been imagined by Horatio Alger, Jr.
or Samuel Goldwyn
but not the hidden costs behind those achievements. Carl Rollyson compassionately captures the man behind the movie star. — Marion Meade

In order to experience and understand what it means to be a Christian, it is always necessary to recognize a definite historical situation. — Johann Baptist Metz

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc. — Wes Craven

By the late twentieth century, Jefferson's windfall would be feeding much of the world. — Edward E. Baptist

I care to live only to entice people to look at Nature's loveliness. Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains. — John Muir

Many a modern preacher is far less concerned with preaching Christ and Him crucified than he is with his popularity with his congregation. A want of intellectual backbone makes him straddle the ox of truth and the ass of nonsense. Bending the knee to the mob rather than God would probably make them scruple at ever playing the role of John the Baptist before a modern Herod. The acids of modernity are eating away the fossils of orthodoxy. — Fulton J. Sheen

My dad doesn't like religion much, but I grew up very close to the Baptist tradition. God isn't this distant thing. God is right here with you all the time. He's your buddy, and you can talk about everything. — Lucy Alibar

Morality comes from religion? There are no Baptist babies or Catholic babies or Muslim babies. Religion is imposed on children by adults and society, and morality is an evolutionary adaptation. Period. — Kelli Jae Baeli

It is a great privilege to meet inspiring leaders from different parts of the church - Catholic, Baptist, Salvation Army, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Methodist, and so many more - and discover that what unites us is infinitely greater than what divides us. — Nicky Gumbel

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy. — Lyndon B. Johnson

The lonely old soul took to Bomar like a cannibal to a fat Baptist missionary.
Bomar — Kurt Vonnegut

It was customary for the town's three churches - Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian - to unite and listen to one visiting minister, but occasionally when the churches could not agree on a preacher or his salary, each congregation held its own revival with an open invitation to all; sometimes, therefore, the populace was assured of three weeks' spiritual reawakening. Revival time was a time of war: — Harper Lee

If one enslaved person heard a white man and a woman in the house "talking about money," everybody in the quarters understood that "money" meant "slaves," and that "slaves" were about to be turned into "money" ("Massa say: 'they's money to me'"). "They [black folks] knew that mean they [white folks] gonna sell some slaves to the next nigger trader that come round. — Edward E. Baptist

His Eminence Michael cardinal Logue, archbishop of
Armagh, primate of all Ireland, His Grace, the most reverend Dr William
Alexander, archbishop of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, the chief
rabbi, the presbyterian moderator, the heads of the baptist, anabaptist,
methodist and Moravian chapels and the honorary secretary of the society
of friends. — James Joyce

You need to get in the Baptist way of churching, son. Ours welcomes newcomers. You can take this place, and maybe some Sunday you can come with me n my wife.'
'Maybe so,' I agreed, reminding myself to be in a coma that Sunday. Possibly dead. — Stephen King

Certainly, the church is not primarily a moral institution, but the bearer of a hope. — Johann Baptist Metz

Are we Christians in this country really changing our hearts, or do we just believe in a change of heart ... ? — Johann Baptist Metz

As a devout Baptist, she believed it was a sin to pray for anything for yourself. You ought to pray only for strength to bear whatever the Lord saw fit to send you, she thought. I was never able to follow this advice, for although I would often feel a sense of uneasiness over the tone of my prayers, I was the kind of person who prayed frantically-Please, God, please, please, PLEASE let Ross MacVey like me better than Mavis. — Margaret Laurence

Early June, Providence, Rhode Island, the sun up for almost two hours already, lighting up the pale bay and the smokestacks of the Narragansett Electric factory, rising like the sun on the Brown University seal emblazoned on all the pennants and banners draped up over campus, a sun with a sagacious face, representing knowledge. But this sun
the one over Providence
was doing the metaphorical sun one better, because the founders of the university, in their Baptist pessimism, had chosen to depict the light of knowledge enshrouded by clouds, indicating that ignorance had not yet been dispelled from the human realm, whereas the actual sun was just now fighting its way through cloud cover, sending down splintered beams of light and giving hope to the squadrons of parents, who'd been soaked and frozen all weekend, that the unseasonable weather might not ruin the day's activities. — Jeffrey Eugenides

My father was a Baptist preacher, and he used to read the King James Bible to me every single morning. He made me memorize it and repeat verses at night before I went to sleep. — Jay Parini

At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts, altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth. The — Charles Dickens

Mormons can testify whether I am willing to lay down my life for a Mormon; If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing to die for a Mormon I am bold to declare before heaven that I am just as ready to die for a Presbyterian, a baptist or any other denomination. — Joseph Smith Jr.

We made four feature films with Sherwood Baptist. The wonderful thing was the church (members) volunteered. It was an awesome atmosphere of attitudes. The hard part was (that) all four of the first feature films we made take place in modern-day Albany, Georgia. We know that not all of our films going to be (set in) modern-day Albany, Georgia. — Alex Kendrick

My dad didn't want me to listen to Zeppelin, I think because it reminded him of his wilder days, and now he's a retired Southern Baptist minister. — Aaron Paul

Wait, go back to that Southern Baptist part," Julia said, interrupting, as she does.
"Are you a born-again?" articulating her question as if she were asking me if I were really a headhunter or a Martian.
"Yes," I said, "but I'm not an asshole. At least not theologically speaking. — Cathleen Falsani

And don't succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord's torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together, but on an entire forest.'
'Master!' I said, shocked.
'So it is, Adso. And there are ever richer treasuries. Some time ago, in the cathedral of Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve.'
'Really?' I exclaimed, amazed. Then, siezed by doubt, I added, 'But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!'
'The other skull must be in another treasury,' William said, with a grave face. I never understood when he was jesting. — Umberto Eco

Jesus is not a white, middle-class Republican. Jesus is not a Democrat, a Libertarian, a Marxist, or a Socialist. Jesus is not a Baptist, a Catholic, a Lutheran, or a Buddhist. Jesus isn't even a Christian. Jesus Christ is Lord. — Ronnie McBrayer

I grew up in a Southern Baptist-style church with a choir, a band, and music, but I've been asking myself my whole life, "Why is my own church, my own community, rejecting me because of my sexuality?". — Roger Ross Williams

But Jesus wanted the crowd to know, look, 'John's (the baptist) the one who got this whole thing started.' In verse ten He says, 'This is the one about whom it is written, 'I'll send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare Your way before You.' Jesus says, 'If it wasn't for John, I wouldn't even be here performing these miracles.' — Steven Furtick

The Sisters were Southern Baptist, and they went to church on Saturdays and Sundays, and most other days, too. — Kami Garcia

The outcome, the fourth in an issue of five boys born into a staunch Baptist home, meant that from the beginning I was taught to be respectful of others no less than myself, influencing ever since both my political and administrative attitudes. — James W. Black

Whether you're the wedding cake baker or the gay couple or the Baptist preacher, radical Islam would kill you all if they could. — Lindsey Graham

Because the bill in reserving a certain parcel of land in the United States for the use of said Baptist Church comprises a principle and a precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment." — James Madison

There was a man of the cloth - Reverend Shibata of the First Baptist Church - who left urging everyone to forgive and forget. There was a man in a shiny brown suit - fry cook Kanda of Yabu Noodle - who left urging Reverend Shibata to give it a rest. — Julie Otsuka

If I were to die today, she thought, and someone were to think over my life, they'd never know that moments like this, here on the Horseferry Road, between a Baptist chapel and a tobacconist's, were the truest things in it. — Sarah Waters

My parents wanted me to be a Baptist minister. I was a youth minister in my church when I was still in college. And I was in a lot of theater in high school, and at Northwestern. — Dick Gephardt

Dear church, John the baptist died for exposing the sins of others. Jesus died to actually pay for the sins of others.

John was great, but we should not follow his model. Our model is Christ. So lets stop telling the world how bad their sin is and lets start sharing how good the Father has always been. — Carlos A. Rodriguez

Education is the key to perpetuation of the [god] virus for the Taliban, Baptist or Catholic. If the virus cannot control public education, it will seek to divert resources from public coffers to fundamentalist school funding. From the madrassa schools of Pakistan to the Christian push for school vouchers in the United States and the religious home school movement, religions seek to control education or to control the resources for education. — Darrel Ray

Well, you could become a Southern Baptist. I mean, instead of having to obey the Pope, you could just obey your husband. — Arianna Huffington

John the Baptist never performed any miracles. Yet, he was greater than any of the Old Testament prophets. — Leonard Ravenhill

We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners. — John Shelton Reed

By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally
and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? — H.L. Mencken

The current Baptist view that God condemns "homosexual behavior" and same-sex marriages comes from the same kind of broad and anachronistic scriptural readings as prior support for segregation. — Anonymous

He's a Catholic, a Hindy, an atheist, a Chein, a Buddhist, a Baptist and a Jew, and he knows, he shouldn't kill. — Buffy Sainte-Marie

I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster. — E. O. Wilson

Three more saves and he ties John the Baptist. — Hank Greenwald

I would not send my child to a vacation Bible school in 99.9% of the Baptist churches in America. Have some teacher that doesn't even understand anything about the gospel of Jesus Christ, ask those little children, 'How many of you want to go to Heaven?' and damn most of them! Harden their heart to the gospel with some silly profession of faith because it was a silly proclamation of the gospel! It brought no genuine repentance, it brought no faith; it's no different than the Roman church that baptizes every infant that is born. — Paul Washer

Every great movement needs an agitator. Every leader of spiritual ideals need a John the Baptist. — William Allen White

To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself — James Madison

The angels heralded the birth of the Savior, John the Baptist heralded the coming of the Savior, and we herald the gospel of the Savior. — Katy Kauffman

I still have deep respect for the evangelical tradition and feel, in many ways, close to the Baptist roots of my childhood, although I've been an Episcopalian throughout my adult life and a regular churchgoer. — Jay Parini

Jefferson's views on religious liberty, however, appealed to many more moderate voters. New Jersey Republicans charged that Jefferson's enemies used religion as a means of assault "because he is not a fanatic, nor willing that the Quaker, the Baptist, the Methodist, or any other denominations of Christians, should pay the pastors of other sects; because he does not think that a Catholic should be banished for believing in transubstantiation, or a Jew, for believing in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."14 Still, — Jon Meacham

Loving the Second Amendment while opposing the NRA is every bit as natural as loving Jesus while opposing Westboro Baptist Church. — John Fugelsang

At this moment the President is beginning to speak in New Orleans and the Vice-President is mounting the platform at NASA a few miles away. Both are making a plea for unity. The President, who is an integrationist Mormon married to a liberated Catholic, will appeal to Leftists to respect law and order. The Vice-President, a Southern Baptist Knothead married to a conservative Unitarian, is asking Knotheads for tolerance and understanding, etcetera. The poor U.S.A.! Even — Walker Percy

It is not the business of religion in these days to isolate herself from the world like John the Baptist. She must go down into the world like Jesus Christ. — Hugh Reginald Haweis

Sometimes I feel like a Buddhist and I need to chant; sometimes a Baptist and I need to holler and shout; and sometimes I need to be a Catholic and need to purge my sins and confess. It just depends on where I am. — Jill Scott

The Baptist found him far too deep; The Deist sighed with saving sorrow; And the lean Levite went to sleep, And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow. — Winthrop Mackworth Praed

I grew up in the Methodist church. My wife grew up in the Baptist church. And wives get everything they want. So we got married in the Baptist church. — Rick Scott

Westboro Baptist Church: STOP. Stop protesting the funerals of our soldiers who died in action because you are anti-gay. When one of you dies, I'm going to show up with a couple of gay veterans and we're going to do a musical at your funeral. — Billy Crystal

I'm a born-again Christian. I was raised Episcopalian - I've always been of a Christian faith, but I became much more active in it when I married my first husband, Marvin. I changed from Episcopalian to Baptist. — Natalie Cole

I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, "You deserve to be in the pit." The Catholic said, "You need to suffer while you're in the pit." The Baptist said, "If you'd been saved, you wouldn't have fallen into the pit." The charismatic said, "Just confess I'm not in the pit." The mathematician said, "Let me calculate how you fell into the pit." The IRS agent said, "Have you paid taxes on that pit?" The optimist said, "Things could be worse." The pessimist said, "Things will get worse. — Joel Osteen

In fact she's a Baptist, which is almost like being Christian, only louder. — Orson Scott Card

St. Chrysostom, suffering under the Empress Eudoxia, tells his friend Cyriacus how he armed himself beforehand...."I thought, will she banish me? 'The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof.' Take away my goods? 'Naked came I into the world, and naked must I return.' Will she stone me? I remembered Stephen. Behead me? John Baptist came into my mind," etc. Thus it should be with every one that intends to live and die comfortably: they must, as we say, lay up something for a rainy day; they must stock themselves with graces, store up promises, and furnish themselves with experiences of God's lovingkindness to others and themselves too, that so, when the evil day comes, they may have much good coming thereby. — John Spencer

My ordination in the Church of God in Christ was at age 9, and I later became a Baptist minister, which I am today. — Al Sharpton

I have my own religion. I'm sort of one-quarter Baptist, one-quarter Catholic, one-quarter Jewish. — Tom T. Hall

University of Chicago is a Baptist school, where atheist professors teach Jewish students about St. Thomas Aquinas. — Martin Gardner

Yeah his being Sumerian to this group would go over like an Ozzy Osbourne/Marilyn Manson duet at the Southern Baptist Convention's annual meeting. He might as well be wearing a shit that said "Kibbles and Bits," with a heavy emphasis on the "bits" part ... — Sherrilyn Kenyon

were, indeed, much like kidnapping, just as the tales said. If you had been seized, tied to the saddle of a horse like a sack of meal, and ridden off without a chance to kiss your wife goodbye forever - this is what happened to William Grose of Virginia in the 1820s - you might compare your experience to that of being kidnapped.26 Some African — Edward E. Baptist

On island after island, Europeans and their pathogens killed the natives, slave ships appeared on the horizon, and cane sprouted in the fields. Streams of survivors crawled forth from slave ships to replenish the cane-field work gangs of men and women as they died. But enslavers grew fabulously rich. — Edward E. Baptist

Pathology, probably more than any other branch of science, suffers from heroes and hero-worship. Rudolf Virchow has been its archangel and William Welch its John the Baptist, while Paracelsus and Cohnheim have been relegated to the roles of Lucifer and Beelzebub ... Actually, there are no heroes in Pathology-all of the great thoughts permitting advance have been borrowed from other fields, and the renaissance of pathology stems not from pathology itself but from the philosophers Kant and Goethe. — Harry S.N. Greene

Religion triggers a lot of emotions in me, most of which stem from being raised Jewish in a very Baptist community in the South. I didn't believe any of it from an early age - the clubby quality of whatever religion or church you belonged to, Judaism included. It just struck me as foolish. — David Cross

I was raised as a Baptist in the Bible Belt of the South. Until the age of 37, I had never heard anyone teach or preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Oh yes, I had heard those scriptures read, more aptly read over, and had read over them myself, but I had never heard anyone try to explain this amazing experience or even give it any credence. — Kimberly Eady

few years after Ball was herded south, a slave trader marched a coffle past the US Capitol just as a gaggle of congressmen took a cigar break on the front steps. One of the captive men raised his manacles and mockingly sang "Hail Columbia," a popular patriotic song. — Edward E. Baptist

Wright told Klein that he saw the Obamas as secularists, for whom "church is not their thing": And even after Barack and Michelle came to the church their kids weren't raised in the church like you raise other kids in Sunday school. No. Church is not their thing. It never was their thing. Michelle was not the kind of black woman whose momma made her go to church, made her go to Sunday school, made her go to Baptist Young People's Union. She wasn't raised in that kind of environment. So the church was not an integral part of their spiritual lives after they got married. But the church was an integral part of Barack's politics. Because he needed that black base. — Phyllis Schlafly

All the Baptist churches she's ever visited smelled of the same sweat and boredom. — Sheri Holman

I grew up Jewish. I am Jewish. I went to an Episcopal high school. I went to a Baptist college. I've taken every comparative-religion course that was available. God? I have no idea. — Michael Eisner

1845, when the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society declared that any slave owner would be disqualified from consideration for missionary service, Baptist churches in the South seceded and formed the Southern Baptist Convention so that members would not have to choose between their slaves and their calling to be missionaries. — Robert P. Jones

When I see guys huddling up after the game, to pray, that's what scares me about the game. I'm a Baptist, but I'm also a quarterback killer, and I ain't praying with you. But I will give you 30 seconds to ask your Lord and master to keep me from killing you. — Deacon Jones

It was love that motivated His self-emptying, that led Him to become a little lower than angels, to be subject to parents, to bow His head beneath the Baptist's hands, to endure the weakness of the flesh, and to submit to death even upon the cross — Bernard Of Clairvaux

Don't you ever wonder if this life has just gotten old and stale? When suddenly faced with my possible demise, I can't think of one thing I would miss, except you.
- Vampire, Michel Baptiste — Denise K. Rago

This depression comes over me whenever the Lord is preparing a larger blessing for my ministry; the cloud is black before it breaks, and overshadows before it yields its deluge of mercy. Depression has now become to me as a prophet in rough clothing, a John the Baptist, heralding the nearer coming of my Lord's richer benison — Charles Spurgeon

The suburban evening was grey and yellow on Sunday; the gardens of the small houses to left and right were rank with ivy and tall grass and lilac bushes; the tropical South London verdure was dusty above and mouldy below; the tepid air swarmed with flies. Eeldrop, at the window, welcomed the smoky smell of lilac, the gramaphones, the choir of the Baptist chapel, and the sight of three small girls playing cards on the steps of the police station. — T. S. Eliot

I go to church too, y'all. And I've heard it, too. And I want to say to all of our faith leaders out there that I understand that probably in my Baptist church in Maryland, it is not likely that there will be performed - in my church - gay marriages. — Donna Edwards