Laity Quotes & Sayings

We cannot build up the idea of the apostolate of the laity without the foundation of the liturgy. — Dorothy Day

There is a long and well-documented tradition of wisdom in the Christian faith that any venture into leadership, whether by laity or clergy, is hazardous. it is necessary that there be leaders, but woe to those who become leaders. — Eugene H. Peterson

Every profession is a conspiracy against the laity. — George Bernard Shaw

One major teaching of the Protestants that we the Protestants of today must go back to is the fact that the European Protestants did not emphasize five fold ministry the way we do today. Today our teaching on the five fold ministry only tends to view only those called to the five fold ministry as those called to be ministers, while the rest of the congregation is just viewed as laity who just go to secular jobs. — Sunday Adelaja

All professions are conspiracies against the laity. — George Bernard Shaw

It is the whip that clerics use on the laity, making the sheep slaves to whatever moral code the shepherds espouse. It is a catalyst for suicide and untold other acts of selfishness and stupidity. — Kevin Hearne

One may desire a spurious respect and precedence among one's fellow monks, and the veneration of outsiders. "Both monks and laity should think it was my doing. They should accept my authority in all matters great or small." This is a fool's way of thinking. His self-seeking and conceit just increase. — Gautama Buddha

The term 'laity' is one of the worst in the vocabulary of religion and ought to be banished from the Christian conversation. — Karl Barth

Among our own people also the church sorely needs clergy in close touch with the ordinary life of the laity, living the life of ordinary men, sharing their difficulties and understanding their trials by close personal experience. — Roland Allen

The clergy profession is fundamentally self-defeating. Its stated purpose is to nurture spiritual maturity in the church - a valuable goal. In actuality, however; it accomplishes the opposite by nurturing a permanent dependence of the laity on the clergy. Clergy become to their congregations like parents whose children never grow up, like therapists whose clients never become healed, like teachers whose students never graduate. — Christian Smith

There are saints in the Roman Curia, among the cardinals, priests, religious, sisters and laity. They work hard, and also do things that are often hidden. I know some who concern themselves with feeding the poor or who give up their free time to work in a parish. As always, the ones who aren't saints make the most noise ... a single tree falling makes a sound, but a whole forest growing doesn't. — Pope Francis

Pope Francis has aimed a blow at what the whole hierarchical system is built on: a graded system with the higher clergy in the skyboxes, the devoted religious in festival seating, as they say of the crowds at rock concerts, and, on the bottom, the laity in standing room only. — Eugene Kennedy

A revival almost always begins among the laity. The ecclesiastical leaders seldom welcome reformation. History repeats itself. The present leaders are too comfortably situated as a rule to desire innovation that might require sacrifice on their part. And God's fire only falls on sacrifice. An empty altar receives no fire! — Frank Bartleman

As long as art is understood and valued as an "absolute" activity, it will be a separate, elitist one. Elites presuppose masses. So far as the best art defines itself by essentially "priestly" aims, it presupposes and confirms the existence of a relatively passive, never fully initiated, voyeuristic laity which is regularly convoked to watch, listen, read, or hear - and then sent away. — Susan Sontag

The main focus of this group is to help bridge the gifts and abilities of the pastor (and other staff) and laity in the church. Building the bridges that will link the faithfulness of the past with the possibilities of the future is crucial. — General Board Of Discipleship

Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the laity. I would go further: in Technopoly, all experts are invested with the charisma of priestliness. Some of our priest-experts are called psychiatrists, some psychologists, some sociologists, some statisticians. The god they serve does not speak of righteousness or goodness or mercy or grace. Their god speaks of efficiency, precision, objectivity. And that is why such concepts as sin and evil disappear in Technopoly. They come from a moral universe that is irrelevant to the theology of expertise. And so the priests of Technopoly call sin "social deviance," which is a statistical concept, and they call evil "psychopathology," which is a medical concept. Sin and evil disappear because they cannot be measured and objectified, and therefore cannot be dealt with by experts. — Neil Postman

A missionary church cannot rely on the professional ministry for the primary work of mission. The role of the laity is critical because it is the lay members of the church who have the greatest contact with those who are outside of the normal structures of church life. In such a situation the task of clergy is not so much to engage in mission themselves, as to support the laity in their mission. — Martin Robinson

Evangelism is not a calling reserved exclusively for the clergy. I believe one of the greatest priorities of the church today is to mobilize the laity to do the work of evangelism. — Billy Graham

The problem is that, regardless of what our theologies tell us about the purpose of the clergy, the actual effect of the clergy profession is to make the body of Christ lame. This happens not because clergy intend it (they usually intend the opposite) but because the objective nature of the profession inevitably turns the laity into passive receivers. — Christian Smith

During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. — James Madison

And at thirty-eight a brilliant exponent of arms and a knight of the great fighting and religious Order of St John, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had absolutely no use for common sense himself, but respected it in the laity. — Dorothy Dunnett

Individualism. Narcissism. Value-free choices. These are all key elements in the decline of the practice of mutual accountability in Western churches, among clergy and laity alike. — David Augsburger

They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not
meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point. — Alexis De Tocqueville

In fact, I would say what makes so much religion so innocuous, ineffective, and even unexciting is that there has seldom been a concrete "decision to turn our lives over to the care of God," even in many people who go to church, temple, or mosque. I have been in religious circles all my life and usually find willfulness run rampant in monasteries, convents, chancery offices, and among priests and prelates, ordinary laity, and at church meetings. — Richard Rohr

Something terrible happens to people who don't create, something poisonous. Creating is a necessity for all humans, like breathing. If you don't do it, you suffer. — K.A. Laity

The laity ought to understand the faith, and since the doctrines of our faith are in the Scriptures, believers should have the Scriptures in a language familiar to the people, and to this end the Holy Ghost endued them with knowledge of all tongues. — John Wycliffe

Edward Markquart, a brilliant homoletician, wrote: People want their preachers to be authentic human beings ... who experience the same feelings and struggles as the laity, who do not hide behind the role of reverend so and so. — Calvin Miller

In principle, to be sure, the Reformation idea of the universal priesthood of all believers meant that not only the clergy but also the laity, not only the theologian but also the magistrate, had the capacity to read, understand, and apply the teachings of the Bible. Yet one of the contributions of the sacred philology of the biblical humanists to the Reformation was an insistence that, in practice, often contradicted the notion of the universal priesthood: the Bible had to be understood on the basis of the authentic original text, written in Hebrew and Greek which, most of the time, only clergy and theologians could comprehend properly. Thus the scholarly authority of the Reformation clergy replaced the priestly authority of the medieval clergy. — Jaroslav Pelikan

The fatal tendency to divide Christians into two groups-the religious and the laity, exceptional Christians and ordinary Christians, the one who makes a vocation of the Christian life and the man who is engaged in secular affairs. That tendency is not only utterly and completely unscriptural; it is destructive ultimately of true piety, and is in many ways a negation of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no such distinction in the Bible. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Humility is a virtue all men preach, none practice, and yet everybody is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servants, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity. — John Selden

The most important truths always appear first as blasphemies or obscenities. That's why every great innovator is persecuted. And the sacraments look obscene, too, to an outsider. The eucharist is just sublimated cannibalism, to the unawakened. When the Pope kisses the feet of the laity, he looks like an old toe-queen to some people. The rites of Pan look like a suburban orgy. — Robert Anton Wilson

Most people give up their pursuit of genius early on and spend their lives desperately seeking it in others. — K.A. Laity

We have one precious life: do something extraordinary today, even if it's tiny. A pebble starts the avalanche. — K.A. Laity

Consistently, [Yves] Congar emphasized the distinction between Tradition and traditionalism. The latter was an unyielding commitment to the past. The former was a living principle of commitment to the Beginning, a process that required creativity, inspiration, and a spirit of openness to the present as well as respect for the past.
Two of Congar's works, on reform in the church and on the theology of the laity, proved especially controversial ... Congar believed that reform was a vital and necessary dimension of the church. This was rooted in the distinction between the church and the kingdom of God and in the intermingling in the church of both divine and human elements. In light of the church's constant temptation to revert to institutionalism, it was always necessary to allow room for the prophetic voice, issuing from the margins, even though this might mean attending to uncomfortable truths. — Robert Ellsberg

Great, huge sobs for herself, for her relatives, for the torment and shame of her past, for losses which could never be recovered. — Sally Laity

The Church, rightly conceived, is the whole covenant people called to serve in the world. The clergy are also part of the laity, and their true function is to help equip the laity to be the Servant People. If they turn aside to rule and to secure their own status, they have betrayed the calling of the special ministry. — Franklin Littell

The laity are called to become a leaven of Christian living within society. — Pope Francis

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by this light it becomes a coherent scheme, and not the monstrous maze the laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive that its grand principle is to make business for itself at their expense, and surely they will cease to grumble. — Charles Dickens

Some are born brilliant, some have brilliance thrust upon them
and others cower in the dark crying, It burns! It burns! — K.A. Laity

It's for us that the University exists, for the dispossessed of the world; not for the students, not for the selfless pursuit of knowledge, not for any of the reasons that you hear. We give out the reasons, and we let a few of the ordinary ones in, those that would do in the world; but that's just protective coloration. Like the church in the Middle Ages, which didn't give a damn about the laity or even about God, we have our pretenses in order to survive. And we shall survive - because we have to. — John Edward Williams

I owe my nurture to evangelicalism. The evangelical wins hands down in the history of the church when it comes to nurturing a biblically literate laity. When we think of evangelism, evangelicals are the most resourceful, the most intrepid, and the most creative. But evangelicals themselves would say that they have never come to grips with what the whole mystery of the church is. — Thomas Howard, 3rd Duke Of Norfolk

But though such a belief might, by such means, be rendered almost general among the laity, it is next to impossible to account for the continual persecution carried on by the church, for several hundred years, against the sciences, and against the professors of science, if the church had not some record or tradition that it was originally no other than a pious fraud, or did not foresee that it could not be maintained against the evidence that the structure of the universe afforded. CHAPTER — Thomas Paine

The medical profession (is) a conspiracy to hide its own shortcomings. No doubt the same may be said of all professions. They are all conspiracies against the laity ... (U)ntil there is a practicable alternative to blind trust in the doctor, the truth about the doctor is so terrible that we dare not face it. — George Bernard Shaw

Outreach begins with a well-taught laity, stirred by the great truths of Scripture. — Michael S. Horton

A Bible reading laity is a nation's surest defence against error. — J.C. Ryle