Top 1200 Church And State Quotes & Sayings

A horrible human toll the Russian Orthodox Church suffered throughout almost the entire 20th century. The Church is just rising from its knees. Our young post-Soviet state is just learning to respect the Church as an independent institution.

There's no doubt that the Christian right has gone to bed with the more conservative elements of the Republican Party. And there's been a melding in their goals when it comes to the separation of church and state. I've always believed in the separation of church and state.

The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.

Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ's people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor's palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world... When ... Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars.

As you know, the separation of church and state is not subject to discussion or alteration. Under our Constitution no church or religion can be supported by the U.S. Government. We maintain freedom of religion so that an American can either worship in the church of his choice or choose to go to no church at all.

Today the separation of church and state in America is used to silence the church. When Christians speak out on issues, the hue and cry from the humanist state and media is that Christians, an all religions, are prohibited from speaking since there is a separation of church and state.

We have this idea in our minds that there's this separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics - not just church and state, but it's also there's a separation of religion and politics. But of course there isn't.

We believe in separation of church and state, that there should be no unwarranted influence on the church or religion by the state, and vice versa.

Today the separation of church and state is America is used to silence the church... The way the concept is used today is totally reversed from the original intent... It is used today as a false political dictum in order to restrict the influence of Christian ideas... To have suggested the state separated from religion and religious influence would have amazed the Founding Fathers.

State assaults on the separation of church and state are nothing new.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute - where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me.

For me, it's church and state, not church in state, and I really feel there are some churches in central Ohio crossing that line.

Protestants are the more segmented group. Mainline churches - you have problems in the U.S., Europe, the Scottish Church, the Dutch Protestant Church, the state church in Norway. The evangelicals have been pro Israel, but a major effort is to bring them in on the Palestinian side. A huge problem and the problems are rising.

To try to turn Iraq into a liberal democracy is absolutely crazy. Islam has no understanding of the separation between church and state because they don't understand Islam to be a church.

I wish, in America, (that) we were as concerned about separation from church and sin as we are about separation between church and state. Church and sin-- it's a monstrous problem.

The coziness between church and state is good for the state and bad for the church

I talk about a Christianity that is enlightened enough to separate spirituality from the rest of life. Not just church and state, but knowledge and church.

It is the church's job, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King says, to be the conscience of the state, not the chaplain of the state.

Church is what you do. Church is who you are. Church is the human outworking of the person of Jesus Christ. Let's not go to Church, let's be the Church.

I have never met a happy atheist. I believe in separation of church and state, but I think we have gone so far over in the other direction of separating church and state.

We have this idea in our mind that there's a separation of church and state in America, which I think is a good thing. And we extend that to our politics. Like it's not just church and state, but it's also there's a separation of religion and politics. But of course, there - there isn't.

Each of us has the choice to attend the church we want to, or none at all. Separation of church and state allows for religions to have their own set of rules as to whom they will accept and who they won't, and the practices they support and the ones they don't. They will continue to be able to do so.

The decision for complete religious freedom and for separation of church and state in the eyes of the rest of the world was perhaps the most important decision reached in the New World. Everywhere in the western world of the 18th century, church and state were one; and everywhere the state maintained an established church and tried to force conformity to its dogma.

I fully understand it's important to maintain the separation of church and state. We don't want the state to become the church, nor do we want the church to become the state.

It is the wall of separation between church and state . . . that is largely responsible for religion thriving in this country, as compared to those European countries in which church and state have been united, resulting in opposition to the church by those who disapprove of the government.

The separation of church and state was meant to protect church from state; a state that declares religion off limits in public life is a state that declares itself supreme over all religious values.

The separation of church and state is necessary partly because if religion is good then the state shouldn't interfere with the religious vision or with the religious prophet. There must be a realm of truth beyond political competence, that's why there must be a separation of churches, but if religion is bad and a bad religion is one that gives an ultimate sanctity to some particular cause. Then religion mustn't interfere with the state - so one of the basic Democratic principles as we know it in America is the separation of church and state.

The union of Church and State is not to make the Church political, but the State religious.

In the first place, the church can ask the state whether its actions are legitimate and in accordance with its character as state, i.e., it can throw the state back on its responsibilities. Secondly, it can aid the victims of state action. The church has an unconditional obligation to the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community. The third possibility is not just to bandage the victims under the wheel, but to put a spoke in the wheel itself.

I appreciate that question because I, in the state of Texas, had heard a lot of discussion about a faith-based initiative eroding the important bridge between church and state.

One of the primary questions in a state-church arrangement is, 'which controls which?' . . . In Norway, for example, the liberal labor government has regularly angered Church officials by making controversial ministerial appointments against the wishes of the clergy. . . . These and other actions have strained the church-state relationship almost to the breaking point. As a result, some of the bishops have advocated disestablishment.

I do believe in the separation of church and state. But I don't think separation of church and state means you have to be free from your faith.

There's a reason we seperate Church and State. The reason for the richness and the diversity of religion in this nation is because of the seperation of Church and State, and there are people out there who can't wait to make this nation a nation of one religion... THEIR religion.

If the state - and within the state, the judiciary particularly - harasses and undermines the Church , in any society the state undoes itself.

It can have a secular purpose and have a relationship to God because God was presumed to be both over the state and the church, and separation of church and state was never meant to separate God from government.

The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.

Once the Roman Catholic Church in the West became the church most closely connected with the state, the Roman Catholic Church did not recognize the validity of any religion other than its own.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

Religion mustn't interfere with the state - so one of the basic Democratic principles as we know it in America is the separation of church and state.

The current version of... separation of church and state says you can be salt, and you can be light, but only inside the four walls of the church.

Once involved in the school-prayer fight, I rapidly became aware of, and appalled by, the political and economic power of the Church in America -all based on the violation of one of our nation's canon laws: the separation of church and state.

Martin Luther described the doctrine of justification by faith as the article of faith that decides whether the church is standing or falling. By this he meant that when this doctrine is understood, believed, and preached, as it was in New-Testament times, the church stands in the grace of God and is alive; but where it is neglected, overlaid, or denied, ... the church falls from grace and its life drains away, leaving it in a state of darkness and death.

Both church and state claiming to be of divine origin have assumed divine right of man over woman; while church and state have thought for man, man has assumed the right to think for woman.

The union of church and state put the church under a political control... The church was thoroughly subordinated to the state.

There could be no issue between the Church and the State. The Church, as such, has nothing to do with political affairs. On the other hand, the State has nothing to do with the faith or inner organization of the Church

We worry a great deal about the problem of church and state. Now what about the church and God? Sometimes there seems to be a greater separation between the church and God than between the church and state.

If the State cannot survive the anti-slavery agitation, then let the State perish. If the Church must be cast down by the strugglings of Humanity to be free, then let the Church fall and its fragments be scattered to the four winds of Heaven, never more to curse the earth.

The church must be reminded that it is not the master, or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.

The Constitution separated the ideologies and values of the Church from the State, and leaders of the State were thus educated in matters pertaining to the State. These leaders proved themselves time after time with their pragmatic intellectual capacities.

I don't believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute. The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country.

I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church.

The church must never become a government factory, carrying on a nationalized industry of religion with the people as the bolts and nuts; with God reduced to the role of cramped advocate of current national policy. Surely the pages of history are replete and the examples in many a foreign country convincing that this kind of church-state union-whatever the original motives, or however noble the original purposes-winds up with a state that is less than stable and a church that is less than sanctified, and with the poor still hungry.

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.

The divorce between Church and State ought to be absolute. It ought to be so absolute that no Church property anywhere, in any state or in the nation, should be exempt from equal taxation; for if you exempt the property of any church organization, to that extent you impose a tax upon the whole community.

It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. It does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.

It is true that traditional Christianity is losing some of its appeal among Americans, but that is a religious, not political, matter. It is worth remembering that the Jeffersonian 'wall of separation' between church and state has always been intended to protect the church from the state as much as the state from the church.

National Socialism would have every German decide for himself on spiritual questions, just as in the days of Frederick the Great. The National Socialist state gives to the church what belongs to the church, and to the state what belongs to the state.

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

The contemporary quarrel over church and state is not really about whether a wall of separation of church and state should exist or not... The real question is what does 'separation' mean?

Declare Church and State forever separate and distinct, but each free within their proper spheres, and that all church property shall bear its own proportion of taxation.