Quotes & Sayings About Paganism And Christianity

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. — Sri Aurobindo

Those countries in Europe which are still influenced by priests, are exactly the countries where there is still singing and dancing and coloured dresses and art in the open-air. Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground. Christianity is the only frame which has preserved the pleasure of Paganism. — G.K. Chesterton

Within evangelicalism is a distressing drift toward accepting a Christianity that does not demand a life-changing walk with God. Many evangelicals (today) do not realize that the church has always been an island of righteousness in a sea of paganism, but as a result they turned the world upside-down. — Erwin W. Lutzer

Strength was the virtue of paganism; obedience is the virtue of Christianity. — David Hare

To those Romans December twenty-fifth was the birthday of the sun. They wrote that in gold letters in their calendar. Every year about that time, the middle of winter, the sun was born once more and it was going to put an end to the darkness and misery of winter. So they had a great feast, with presents and dolls for everybody, and the best day of all was December twenty-fifth. That feast, they would tell you, was thousands of years old- before Christ was ever heard of. — John G. Jackson

Nevertheless, despite all superficial continuity, a remarkable change has come about within the last seventy-five years. The change is nothing less than the substitution of paganism for Christianity as the dominant view of life. Seventy-five years ago, Western civilization, despite inconsistencies, was still predominantly Christian; today it is predominantly pagan. (1923) — J. Gresham Machen

The slightest force, when it is applied to assist and guide the natural descent of its object, operates with irresistible weight; and Jovian had the good fortune to embrace the religious opinions which were supported by the spirit of the times and the zeal and numbers of the most powerful sect. Under his reign, Christianity obtained an easy and lasting victory; and, as soon as the smile of royal patronage was withdrawn, the genius of Paganism, which had been fondly raised and cherished by the arts of Julian, sunk irrecoverably in the dust. — Edward Gibbon

Christianity is stigmatized by the myriad of child abuse scandals; Islam is hijacked by fanatics and given a bad name. Buddhism is all about the good teaching of peace, respect and nonviolence, and Hinduism is all about finding faith, respect and belief in everything as they strongly believe that God is omnipresent and lives in everything, and other religions have their own faith, belief and way of reaching the almighty one. No religion is good or bad; it is the man who makes it bad. Paganism is a path to nowhere; but the subject of religion is a can of worms that is better left uncorked. Agnosticism might get their chance, and for the sake of equality and fairness, let the monotheist speak out.'"

My No.7 book is coming....! — Tim I. Gurung

The virtue of paganism was strength; the virtue of Christianity is obedience. — Augustus Hare

Another factor: Christianity offered opportunities for advancement in the church to intelligent young men, some of whom might otherwise have become mathematicians or scientists. Bishops and presbyters were generally exempt from the jurisdiction of the ordinary civil courts, and from taxation. A bishop such as Cyril of Alexandria or Ambrose of Milan could exercise considerable political power, much more than a scholar at the Museum in Alexandria or the Academy in Athens. This was something new. Under paganism religious offices had gone to men of wealth or political power, rather than wealth and power going to men of religion. For instance, Julius Caesar and his successors won the office of supreme pontiff, not as a recognition of piety or learning, but as a consequence of their political power. — Steven Weinberg

Where once I prayed for forgiveness from a father God who held up huge palms and said "Thou shalt not," now I find peace with a sister god who takes my open hands in hers and says, "You will. — Betsy Cornwell

Chabrias, ever preoccupied to offer the gods the worship due them, was disturbed by the progress of sects of this kind among the populace of large cities; he feared for the welfare of our ancient religions, which yoke men to no dogma whatsoever, but lend themselves, on the contrary, to interpretations as varied as nature itself; they allow austere spirits who desire to do so to invent for themselves a higher morality, but they do not bind the masses to precepts so strict as to engender immediate constraint and hypocrisy. — Marguerite Yourcenar

Caeiro's work is truly a manifestation of a pagan mind. The order and discipline of paganism which Christianity caused us to lose, the reasoned intelligence of things, which was paganism's most obvious attribute and no longer ours - permeate his work. Because it speaks here its form, we see the essence, not the exterior shape, of paganism. In other words, I do not see Caeiro reconstructing the exterior form of paganism. Paganism's very substance has in fact been summoned up from Avernus, as Orpheus summoned Eurydice, by the harmelodic magic of Caeiro's emotion. — Ricardo Reis

Paganism is that view of life which finds the highest goal of human existence in the healthy and harmonious and joyous development of existing human faculties. Very different is the Christian ideal. Paganism is optimistic with regard to unaided human nature, whereas Christianity is the religion of the broken heart. — J. Gresham Machen

It has frequently been asserted that low Christologies are "Jewish" ones, while high Christologies have come into Christianity from the Greek thought world. Oddly enough, this position has been taken both by Jewish writers seeking to discredit Christianity as a kind of paganism and by orthodox Christian scholars wishing to distinguish the "new religion" from the old one as far and as quickly as possible. This doubly defensive approach can no longer be maintained. — Daniel Boyarin

One day I said to them, Where is the God you worship? They said he was like Chukwu, that he was in the sky. I asked then, Who is the person that was killed, the person that hangs on the wood outside the mission? They said he was the son, but that the son and the father are equal. It was then that I knew that the white man was mad. The father and son are equal? Tufia! Do you not see? — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Christianity did not destroy paganism; it adopted it. — Will Durant

All the elements and forms that are essential to religion (a concept of God, a sense of guilt, a desire for redemption, sacrifice, priesthood, temple, cult, prayer, etc.), though corrupted, nevertheless do also occur in pagan religions ... Hence Christianity is not only positioned antithetically toward paganism; it is also paganism's fulfillment. Christianity is the true religion, therefore also the highest and purest; it is the truth of all religions. What in paganism is the caricature, the living original is here. What is appearance there is essence here. What is sought there can be found here. — Tony Reinke

It is often said by the critics of Christian origins that certain ritual feasts, processions or dances are really of pagan origin. They might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin. Nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was Christian; and no Church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced, either in a pilgrimage or a ballet. What can really be maintained, so as to carry not a little conviction, is this: that where such a Church has existed it has preserved not only the processions but the dances; not only the cathedral but the carnival. One of the chief claims of Christian civilisation is to have preserved things of pagan origin. — G.K. Chesterton

Quit Believing in Lies and Always Search For the Truth! — Charleston Parker

Throughout the years, I have found people are confused about my love for both Christianity and Paganism. I tell them what was revealed to me while I lay sleeping in the hospital. The All, whether perceived as a God, or a Goddess, or as one being, or even as an energy field, cares only about one thing: Love. Absolute and unconditional love.
High Priestess Enoch — Arin Murphy-Hiscock

Missiologists have in recent years begun to think seriously about inculturation, and historians have begun to learn from them. When the Christian message is inserted into a cultural framework, if the messengers are insensitive to the local culture the result can be cultural imperialism. On the other hand, if they grant too much hegemony to the local culture, the result at best is 'syncretism' and at worst 'Christo-paganism.' Things are most wholesome when sensitive interchange takes place leading to 'a truly critical symbiosis.' But for this to happen, there must be a second stage - a time of 'pastoral follow-up work,' of catechizing and life formation enabling the new faith to express its genius in the institutions and reflexes of its new host culture. — Alan Kreider

The more I see of Italy and her treasures, the more I see paganism in Christianity ... — Henrietta Szold

Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of — G.K. Chesterton

Nature is also God's way of communicating with us. Jesus himself used nature to teach us about God. He used birds and flowers, the weather, precious stones ... Looking at nature, we can come to understand God himself. — Adelina St. Clair

The Nazi regime intended eventually to destroy Christianity in Germany, if it could, and substitute the old paganism of the early Germanic gods and the new paganism of the Nazi extremists. — William L. Shirer

In that way, we Jews can see Christianity as God's chosen instrument for redeeming the world from paganism, and Christians can recognize their obligation to preach the message of Christianity to the world, but not to the Jewish people, who had that message before they did. — Harold S. Kushner

I would love to go back to any time in European history, especially in Irish history, to the second or third century, prior to the arrival of Christianity when Paganism flourished. I can always go back there in my imagination, of course. It doesn't cost anything, and it's a form of time travel, I suppose. — Gabriel Byrne

Olympus is still a patriarchy. Zeus heads his royal household as jealously as Jehovah rules his harem of dull, harp-playing angels. Both are templates for order on earth, don't you think? — Cliff James

All questions concerning the rise of Christianity are one: How was it done? How did a tiny and obscure messianic movement from the edge of the Roman Empire dislodge classical paganism and become the dominant faith of Western civilization? Although this is the only question, it requires many answers - no one thing led to the triumph of Christianity. — Rodney Stark

Modern Western culture has become a mixture of paganism and Christianity. We are a blend of both. We talk of God, but we often act as though we are atheists. — Billy Graham

Popery is the gospel transubstantiated into the flesh and blood of Paganism, under a few of the accidents of Christianity. — James Aitken Wylie

In what did the emancipating message of Christianity consist but in the announcement that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked? — William James