Quotes & Sayings About Division In The Church

The arbitrary division between church and state ... is used, as an easily identifiable rallying point, to subdue the opinions of that vast body of citizens who represent those with religious convictions. — Francis Schaeffer

The actions of the police division today will be to assist the church for the funeral. We anticipate that a fairly large crowd will be outside the church and the general area, ... We're trying to approach everything with common sense. — Thomas Streicher

St. Thomas adopts a division of the nine choirs into three groups, according to their intellectual perfection and consequent nearness in being to God - Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Other writers suggest different arrangements; and there is a mass of magnificent theological speculation as to the difference of function between one choir and another. But the Church has defined nothing upon this matter. — Frank Sheed

My identity in Christ is more important than my identity as an American or as a Coloradan or as a white male or as a Protestant. Church is the place where I celebrate that new identity and work it out in the midst of people who have many differences but share this one thing in common. We are charged to live out a kind of alternative society before the eyes of the watching world, a world that is increasingly moving toward tribalism and division. — Philip Yancey

Tragically, from the Orthodox point of view, we only too often convert people not to this one church, the body of Christ, but to our own denomination, at the same time imparting to them the "poison of division" (Nissiotis 1968:198). — David J. Bosch

Well-meaning members lose sight of their role as servants and become increasingly focused on controlling the very church they are called to serve. When a serving heart is replaced by a controlling heart, division is bound to ensue. And when selfish division lies unchallenged, areas of ministry and service become turfs to be defended, and brother and sisters in Christ become opponents and obstacles to individual accomplishment. — Darrin Patrick

It is an absolutely unique success of the church community to have introduced such an epoch-making change, in just a few years, without having a serious division. — Hans Kung

Correct division should be preferred over corrupt unity. — Mark Dever

I certainly think so, and I argue so, and I give talks on that. Are there risks by putting people together? Absolutely. Is there value in the black church? Absolutely. Is there value in having immigrant churches? Absolutely. But if we don't have congregations gathering with people of different races, what we're doing is we are redefining racial division, a racial inequality. — Michael Emerson

When I became Archbishop I set myself three goals for my term of office. Two had to deal with the inner workings of our Anglican (Episcopalian) Church - the ordination of women to the priesthood which our Church approved in 1992 and through which our Church has been wonderfully enriched and blessed; and the other in which I failed to get the Church's backing, the division of the large and sprawling Diocese of Cape Town into smaller episcopal pastoral units. The third goal was the liberation of all our people, black and white, and that we achieved in 1994. — Desmond Tutu

We are a people of many races, many faiths, creeds, and religions. I do not think that the men who made the Constitution forbade the establishment of a State church because they were opposed to religion. They knew that the introduction of religious differences into American life would undermine the democratic foundations of this country. What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools. — John Dewey

You may invite the entire 35th Division to your wedding if you want to. I guess it's going to be yours as well as mine. We might as well have the church full while we are at it. — Bess Truman

Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty. — Henry Stephens Salt

We are to celebrate what God has done for us (18; 106; 136).10 Prayer: Father God, give me insight into what form of worship is pleasing to You. I don't want to be negative in my church regarding how we come to You and worship. Amen. Action: Pray about this new division in our churches. Be willing to create harmony, not discord. Today's Wisdom: It is in the whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has meaning. Problems are the cutting edge that distinguishes between success and failure. Problems call forth our courage and our wisdom; indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally and spiritually. It is through the pain of confronting and resolving problems that we learn. - M. SCOTT PECK — Emilie Barnes

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end; where all men and all churches are treated as equal; where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice; where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind; and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood. — John F. Kennedy

The truth divides people. The more fundamental the truth, the deeper and wider the division. The goal of Christian preaching - the goal of presenting the gospel, the goal of the church - is not just to open the door so wide that we can suck everybody in and make them feel comfortable. The goal is to preach the truth to as many people as possible, so that we can sort out the true from the false. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Deists, not religious authoritarians, codified the clear separation of church from state in addition to the division of powers within the state. Deists, not the Continental philosophers, established our democratic republic upon uniquely radical interpretations of constitutional and procedural stability, representation, accountability, and transparency. Deists, not autocrats, formed a more perfect Union that preserved equally for each individual the universal civil liberties inscribed in the Bill of Rights. It was Deists who stood up for Everyman by instituting true equality and freedom for all. — Beth Houston

Let each one ask him- or herself today, "Do I increase harmony in my family, in my parish, in my community, or am I a gossip? Am I a cause of division or embarrassment?" And you know the harm that gossiping does to the Church, to the parishes, the communities. Gossip does harm! Gossip wounds. Before Christians open their mouths to gossip, they should bite their tongue! To bite one's tongue: this does us good because the tongue swells and can no longer speak, cannot gossip. — Pope Francis

In 1231, Pope Gregory ordered the Dominicans to take charge of papal courts and decisions and so prevent mob rule and guarantee that the accused received a fair trial and the right of defence. This was the foundation of the Inquisition, and it was a move to organize, control, and limit violence, disruption, and division. Of course, it often failed and even achieved the opposite of its stated and original purpose, but it's surprising how often in an age of casual and brutal violence a relative moderation and legality was achieved. Civil law was far harsher than canon law, demanding confiscation of a heretic's property and usually death, something the Church had tried to prevent for generations. — Michael Coren

I doubt if wickedness does half as much harm as sectarianism, whether it be the sectarianism of the church or of dissent, the sectarianism whose virtue is condescension, or the sectarianism whose vice is pride. Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men, than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken. It is the half-Christian clergy of every denomination that are the main cause of the so-called failure of the Church of Christ. — George MacDonald

Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today!
We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all. — J. Gresham Machen