A Quote by David Augsburger

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

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Accountability Alike Among Choices Churches Clergy Decline Elements Free Free Choice Individualism Key Mutual Narcissism Practice Value Western

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David Augsburger
American - Author

Humility is a virtue all preach, none practise, and yet every body is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.

John Selden

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

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 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

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

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. It seeks to show new perspectives and other choices. It is a way to help expand and liberate the consciousness; our experiences, understandings, imaginings, options and thereby our lives.

Oscar Wilde

We say yes to the society of solidarity and democracy where free people together, in mutual respect and under mutual responsibility, shape a life where everyone has equal opportunities and equal value.

Olof Palme

Choices abound in the free market. Choice creates real and immediate accountability.

Pete Hoekstra

Once you accept the fact that people have 'individual choices' and they're 'free' to make those choices. Free to make choices means without being influenced and I can't understand that at all. All of us are influenced in all our choices by the culture we live in, by our parents, and by the values that dominate. So, we're influenced. So there can't be free choices.

Jacque Fresco

Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.

Rick Bayan

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

If the decline of Christianity created the modern political zealot - and his crimes - so the evaporation of religious faith among the educated left a vacuum in the minds of Western intellectuals easily filled by secular superstition. There is no other explanation for the credulity with which scientists, accustomed to evaluating evidence, and writers, whose whole function was to study and criticize society, accepted the crudest Stalinist propaganda at its face value. They needed to believe; they wanted to be duped.

Paul Johnson

By the 1870s, ex-Confederates had taken their support for Western individualism a step further. They insisted the federal government was actively persecuting Western individuals.

Heather Cox Richardson

Transparency is key to reciprocal accountability, which we use to be both free and smart. It is the miracle tool that enables us to question the lies of monsters.

David Brin

Various Eastern fathers referred to the practice of married priests in their churches, offering each one of us elements for a further careful evaluation of the choice of the Latin church to connect celibacy to ordained priesthood.

Angelo Scola

A Quote by David Augsburger

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