A Quote by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Politics are not the task of a Christian.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quote Topics

Politics Christian Task

Quote Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer
German - Theologian
February 4, 1906 - April 9, 1945

The only analogy I have before me is Socrates. My task is a Socratic task, to revise the definition of what it is to be a Christian. For my part I do not call myself a "Christian" (thus keeping the ideal free), but I am able to make it evident that the others are still less than I.

Soren Kierkegaard

That the religious right completely took over the word Christian is a given. At one time, phrases such as Christian charity and Christian tolerance were used to denote kindness and compassion. To perform a "Christian" act meant an act of giving, of acceptance, of toleration. Now, Christian is invariably linked to right-wing conservative political thought -- Christian nation, Christian morality, Christian values, Christian family.

Peter McWilliams

I am Christian from when I was little. Because of the politics in Spain, everybody must be Christian by law. But I'm not a real big believer. I believe in people. I believe in life. But not especially in Catholics or priests or whatever.

Jesus Franco

The politics of personal destruction, the politics of division, the politics of fear, it's all there. It helps you to define the politics of moderation - the politics of democratic respect, the politics of hope - more clearly.

Michael Ignatieff

But the consequences of the whole-hearted and uncritical embrace of politics by Christians has been, IN EFFECT, to reduce Christian faith to a political ideology and various Christian denominations and para-church organizations as special interest groups. The political engagement of the various Christian groups is certainly legal, but in ways that are undoubtedly unintended, it has also been counterproductive of the ends to which they aspire.

James Davison Hunter

It is true that we have not deliberately or wholly abandoned the Christian element in our tradition, but does that element count with us as it once did? Is the moral tone of the nation - its politics, its business life, its literature, its theatre, its movies, its radio networks, its television stations - Christian?

Robert McCracken

Our special task, as French Canadians, is to insert into America the spirit of Christian France.

Henri Bourassa

C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with politics. Politics, which always runs by the rules of ungrace, allures us to trade away grace for power, a temptation the church has often been unable to resist.

Philip Yancey

A Christian way of thinking is not just thinking Christian thoughts, singing Christian songs, reading Christian books, going to Christian schools; it is learning to think about the whole spectrum of life from the perspective of a mind that has been trained in truth.

Alistair Begg

We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.

Arundhati Roy

The basic problem is not political, it is apolitical and human. One of the most important things to do is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politics pretend to arrogate entirely to themselves. This is the necessary first step along the long way toward the perhaps impossible task of purifying, humanizing and somehow illuminating politics themselves.

Thomas Merton

The task of the church is to make the invisible Kingdom visible through faithful Christian living and witness-bearing .

J. I. Packer

Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology.

Christopher Dawson

For the Christian man to reason that God does not want him involved in politics because there are too many evil men in government is as insensitive as for a Christian doctor to turn his back on an epidemic because there are too many germs there.

Mark Hatfield

Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.