Counter Cultural Quotes & Sayings

Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship,1 they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. Thus, they are generally not counter-cultural. With some significant exceptions, they avoid "rocking the boat," and live within the confines of the larger culture. At times they have been able to call for and realize social change, but most typically their influence has been limited to alterations at the margins. So, despite having the subcultural tools to call for radical changes in race relations, they most consistently call for changes in persons that leave the dominant social structures, institutions, and culture intact. This avoidance of boat-rocking unwittingly leads to granting power to larger economic and social forces. It also means that evangelicals' views to a considerable extent conform to the socioeconomic conditions of their time. — Christian Smith

The counterculture has nothing to do with Dolce & Gabbana having a 'Hippy Summer' or something. Street kids, and kids who want to live in any sort of counter-cultural experience other than what's being presented by the mainstream media or political climate, or 'normal' cultural climate, are never going to look like that. — Chris Robinson

If we aren't prepared to be counter-cultural we aren't ready to be Christians. — Kevin DeYoung

Jesus Christ lived a radical, counter-cultural life. He obeyed God the Father and transformed the world. He overcame the power of the enemy. Jesus relentlessly resisted sin, opposed legalism, and confronted hypocrisy. He loved unconditionally, he forgave freely, and he sacrificed himself completely. He spoke the truth boldly, exhibited humility, and lived with — David Fiorazo

My hope and prayer for all who read this book is a reformation - that an army of African-American men will make their way back into the church, back into the leadership of the church, back into leading a change in the church to be and do what it is called to be and do, so that we may have power to do good for our people, and people all over the world, in a way that no government or service organization has been or will be able to do, and that no one will be able to take away. — Eric Redmond

Moreover, seeing ourselves as a majority led at times to both a theological downgrade and a counter-productive public stance. The application of the promises to Israel to the United States of America, for example, caused many to miss, as we will see in the next chapter, the meaning of the kingdom of God, and thus to bypass Jesus Christ himself. The idea of America as a Christian nation is able to get "Amens" in the churches only as long as the churches believe America is, at least in some ways, with us and not against us. But what happens when the cultural climate starts to shift in obvious ways? If the church believes the United States is a sort of new Israel, then we become frantic when we see ourselves "losing America." We then start to speak in gloomy terms of America as, at best, Babylon, a place of hopeless exile, or, at worst, Gomorrah, slouching toward the judgment of God. — Russell D. Moore

because it's not my dad's fault he wasn't the dad I wanted growing up. Just like it's not his fault he got cancer. Blaming other people for the situation you find yourself in is just a waste of time. And besides, what's he going to learn if I tell him a few home truths? — Matt Dunn

Seeds have the power to preserve species, to enhance cultural as well as genetic diversity, to counter economic monopoly and to check the advance of conformity on all its many fronts. — Michael Pollan

God does not choose those who are fit. He outfits those whom He chooses. — Jack Hyles

Respect elders; protect children. This I do believe. As a young man it is sometimes, in a charitable sense, difficult to shake the sentiment that every elderly person is my grandparent, and every child is my child. — Criss Jami

There is still a need for those of us nestled deep within the Christian bubble to look beyond the status quo and critically assess the degree to which we are really living biblically. — Francis Chan

Before the counter-culture revolutionary Li Lian was executed in 1971 for criticising the Cultural Revolution, pour policemen pushed her face against the window of a truck, lifted her shirt and cut out her kidneys with a surgical knife,' Mau Sen said, his face stony and white. 'I think that removing the organs of convicts while they are still alive is too much. It completely contravenes medical ethics.' 'This is a dissection class, not a political meeting,' Sun Chunlin said. — Ma Jian

counter-cultural. We're so used to having more than enough that many of us have never truly learned what it is to trust God to provide what we need. Yet sometimes God will lead us to this place to teach us to trust Him, to rely on His provision and to experience the wonder of His love. — Jennifer Carter

From the woman who musters the courage to ask her husband to wear a condom, counter to cultural pressures, to the woman in Parliament who demands access to affordable reproductive health services for women who need them most, daring knows no scale or status. — Purnima Mane

He strips me to my last nakedness, that underskin of mauve, pearlized satin, like a skinned rabbit; then dresses me again in an embrace so lucid and encompassing it might be made of water. And shakes over me dead leaves as if into the stream I have become.
Sometimes the birds, at random, all singing, strike a chord.
His skin covers me entirely; we are like two halves of a seed, enclosed in the same integument. I should like to grow enormously small, so that you could swallow me, like those queens in fairy tales who conceive when they swallow a grain of corn or a sesame seed. Then I could lodge inside your body and you would bear me. — Angela Carter

You have the moral courage to run a long way, in the rain, in the cold, if you have the strength to keep going until the end, to give it all you have and to reach your goal, then you're capable of writing a book. Never let fear or fatigue stop you. On the contrary: You should use them to help you keep going. — Joel Dicker

Statement earrings and statement necklaces each deserve their own moment. I never wear the two together; it looks overdone. — Ashley Madekwe

At the tattoo parlor, my friend worked with needle and ink applying a design to the skin on his client's back, as the three of us sat discussing our spiritual desires and ambivalence about religion. In the midst of our conversation, the man under the needle turned and said, 'Jesus is cool, it's just that they have f***ed with Jesus. I mean, Christianity was at its best when it was secret and hidden and you could die for it.' This profound, if crass, statement recognizes that the power of the gospel lay in its ability to be a counter-cultural and revolutionary force - not only a story to believe, but a distinctive way of life. The man's comment prompted me to consider the questions: Am I in some measure complicit in the domestication of Jesus? — Mark Scandrette

Contrition means finding the courage to let your heart break over sin. Willfully letting your heart break and then offering the pieces to God is a radically counter cultural idea in our society (pg. 168) — Ellen F. Davis

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.' — Keith O'Brien

People ask a lot about how I can be a believer in a culture that perhaps is counter cultural to what you believe in. I've come to the conclusion that I'm able to be in this culture and in this industry and fruitful because I don't look to my circumstances to determine what I believe to be true about God. — Kelly Clark

Christopher Dawson was one of the most counter-cultural of all intellectuals. As the world rejected God, Dawson embraced God. As the world rejected myth, Dawson embraced myth. As the world rejected the significance of prophets, Dawson attempted to speak as one. As the world mocked the saints as superstition, Dawson regarded them as the only lights - reflecting the true light of the Logos - in history. — Bradley J. Birzer

But here in my hometown, history was like a fine dust that settled out on everything. There was nothing to counter it. The culture had been hardened by a religion suspect of joy, yet fascinated by sin. Its moral acceptance of slavery eroded compassion. And gentility became a necessary pretense to cover the resentment created long ago when the North's industrial prestige trumped the agrarian South. It was not an easy place to feel lighthearted or triumphant. Nor was it an easy place to remember the beauty of wonder and awe. — Christina Carson

All I've got is a red guitar, three chords and the truth. — Bob Dylan

I think Edward Sharpe's music is counter-cultural music in the strangest sense where you have a time now where love, optimism, hope and community are uncool and not part of the mainstream culture. — Alex Ebert

Belloc led the charge in his critique of this misguided sense of superiority and myopic view of progress. But it was he alone among historians, social commentators, and counter-cultural voices who predicted that Islam - or as he called it, "Mohammedanism" - would rise again and, as it had in the past, harness the technology of the West as a weapon to turn back on the West and crush it by degrees. After September 11, 2001, no one is surprised to learn that Islam is turning the West's superiority back on itself; what is surprising is that a lone historian and essayist saw this coming in the 1930s. That he captivates and places the reader in the middle of the action is an added bonus to the prophetic vision of what embroils our age. — Hilaire Belloc

Stop telling God what to do with his dice. — Niels Bohr

Restoration ecology is experimental science, a science of love and altruism. In its attempts to reverse the processes of ecosystem degradation it runs exactly counter to the market system, to land speculation, to the whole cultural attitude of regarding the Earth as commodity rather than community. It is a soft-souled science. — Stephanie Mills

It's impossible to say that live art enjoys any single status in the information age
there are versions of live art that are still primarily art-world phenomena, others that appeal to much broader audiences. The Burning Man festival is a case in point
an event featuring performance that is itself a performance, which partakes simultaneously of frontier mythology, a counter-cultural impulse, and popular cultural visibility. — Philip Auslander

The standard story of cultural conflict in America has conservative Christians defending established forms of social authority, while Progressives see themselves as challenging established norms and institutions, a self-assessment that the media accept at face value. The reality is the opposite. The counter-culturalism of the Faithful gives them an independent spirit. The committed core of Christians in America increasingly lives on the peripheries of cultural and institutional power. The Engaged Progressives, in command of civic institutions, are the establishmentarians. A — R. R. Reno