Evangelicals Quotes

“What I'd like to read is a scientific review, by a scientific psychologist--if any exists--of 'A Scientific Man and the Bible'. By what route do otherwise sane men come to believe such palpable nonsense? How is it possible for a human brain to be divided into two insulated halves, one functioning normally, naturally and even brilliantly, and the other capable only of such ghastly balderdash which issues from the minds of Baptist evangelists? Such balderdash takes various forms, but it is at its worst when it is religious. Why should this be so? What is there in religion that completely flabbergasts the wits of those who believe in it? I see no logical necessity for that flabbergasting. Religion, after all, is nothing but an hypothesis framed to account for what is evidentially unaccounted for. In other fields such hypotheses are common, and yet they do no apparent damage to those who incline to them. But in the religious field they quickly rush the believer to the intellectual Bad Lands. He not only becomes anaesthetic to objective fact; he becomes a violent enemy of objective fact. It annoys and irritates him. He sweeps it away as something somehow evil...”
― H.L. Mencken, American Mercury

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”
― John Brown

“Evangelicals now stand among those who are on easiest terms with the world, for they have lost their capacity for dissent.”
― David F. Wells, No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology?

“Another confusing thing about Protestants: they ask “What would Jesus do?” then they give themselves Lego man haircuts and vote Republican and avoid the wrong side of town. Jesus was a bearded, long-haired socialist who hung out with lepers; someone those prigs would call a wild man.”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo

“You see the whole culture (watching television) . . . Nazis, deodorant salesman, wrestlers . . . beauty contests, the talk show . . . Can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling? Hmm? But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers . . . third-rate con men, telling the poor suckers that watch them that they speak for Jesus . . . and to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back, and saw what’s going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up.”
― Woody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters

“When I heard of the shady tactics of the Moonies, my initial indignation was modified by empathy. I remembered only too well all the innocuous-sounding "fronts" operated by Evangelicals in order to witness to sinners, e.g., coffee houses, concerts, philosophical forums, religious surveys. None of these was ever billed for what it was. The idea was to hook the unsuspecting sinner and win an opportunity to tell him the gospel. Similar Machiavellian tactics govern various interpersonal contacts. A campus leader or foreign student may find himself the object of an Evangelical's friendly attention, not realizing he has been singled out for "friendship evangelism" because of his potentially strategic position.”
― Robert M. Price

“Mike Pence, the most anti-science religious fundamentalist in Washington, is now in charge of America's biggest science project ever: finding a cure for the coronavirus. I think we all better start praying.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes

“Evangelicals usually fail to challenge the system not just out of concern for evangelism, but also because they support the American system and enjoy its fruits. They share the Protestant work ethic, support laissez-faire economics, and sometimes fail to evaluate whether the social system is consistent with their Christianity.”
― Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

“Evangelicals come from all ethnic and racial backgrounds, but nearly 90 percent of Americans who call themselves evangelicals are white.”
― Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

“From the isolated, individualistic perspective of most white evangelicals and many other Americans, there really is no race problem other than bad interpersonal relationships.”
― Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

“In intertwining sentimentality, healing, narcissism, and authority, modern evangelicals give authority to those emotions themselves...The sentimental becomes evidence and authority in a world in which most evangelicals have given up intellectual pursuits and concerns over doctrine. Essentially, sentimentality represents an abandonment of theology and critical introspection in popular evangelicalism. Instead of crafting intellectual responses to the challenges to evangelicalism, popular evangelicals appeal to the power of feeling as an authority to counteract science and criticism of the Bible. They offer their audiences the opportunity to FEEL that evangelicalism is right rather than asking them to accept the veracity of doctrinal positions of evangelicalism.”
― Todd M. Brenneman, Homespun Gospel: The Triumph of Sentimentality in Contemporary American Evangelicalism

“…evangelicals were instrumental in advancing the ideal of companionate marriage, one built on shared faith and mutual affection, a revolutionary notion in an era in which forced marriages were a not-so-distant memory.”
― Karen Swallow Prior, Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More—Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist

“If [John] Piper's beliefs on authority clash with the doctrine of the Reformers as I argue, one would expect that Piper would have much less conflict with Roman Catholicism than the Reformers did. This is indeed the case. In fact, Piper's mystic hedonism is leading evangelicals on a fast trot back to Rome, where mystics have long nestled under its skirts.”
― Enoch Burke, The Hedonism and Homosexuality of John Piper and Sam Allberry: The Truth of Scripture

“There is also an imaginative communal aspect of reading. Built into the experience of engaging with a text is the experience of thinking about other readers. As an individual reads, he positions himself in a relationship to other possible responses to the text, the differences allowing an assertion of identity in terms of taste, preference, and even values.

As much as reading allows you to imagine what it is like to be someone else, it also allows you to imagine what it is like to be yourself, though distinguished from others. who are also imagined.”
― Daniel Silliman, Reading Evangelicals: How Christian Fiction Shaped a Culture and a Faith

“Most white American Christians have a unique way of interpreting the world and the Bible that is not shared by any other group or sect, including by other Christians.”
― Paul D. Miller, The Religion of American Greatness: What’s Wrong with Christian Nationalism

“Evangelicals simply cannot be identified immediately with the political right. Non-
Anglican Protestants in Britain were long aligned with the political Left, and Australia’s
left-wing parties have also enjoyed a measure of evangelical support. Canada’s major
left-wing political organization, the New Democratic Party, came to prominence under
the leadership of a Baptist pastor, Tommy Douglas.”
― John G. Stackhouse Jr., Evangelicalism: A Very Short Introduction

“Evangelicals are the shitty people Jesus warned you about.”
― Oliver Markus malloy, Atheism Memes: 40 Reasons Why I'm An Atheist

“For years the Church of Scotland, the Established Church, had been tearing itself apart. Two key issues dominated: patronage - the right of landowners to appoint and even force ministers on an unwilling congregation - and the interference of the state in church affairs. On one side were the Moderates, supporters of patronage, friends of the lairds, and, according to an earlier General Assembly report, often 'inattentive to the interests of religion'... The rival faction, the Evangelicals, opposed patronage, wanted complete church independence, and insisted on a far stricter interpretation of religious doctrine. So entrenched were the divisions that it brought the Disruption of 1843 - perhaps 'the most momentous single event of the nineteenth century' - with 470 ministers out of 1,200, plus their elders, congregations and 400 schoolteachers breaking away to create the Free Church.”
― David Taylor, 'The People Are Not There': The Transformation of Badenoch 1800 - 1863

“Human walks not in luxury suits,
but in dusty rags of the street -
human feasts with homeless folks,
and dies happy at their feet.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology

“In seeking to hasten the end of the world, evangelicals often make it worse for others who do not anticipate being snatched up into the clouds to sit by Christ's side, as the seas boil and Satan takes possession of the earth. For those who are not perennially looking out for signs of armageddon, and awaiting it as a child waits for a father to return, the drama of apocalypse looks merely like a collection of people who, in waiting for the world to end, are actively worsening life in the present.”
― Talia Lavin, Wild Faith: How the Christian Right Is Taking Over America

“MAGA Evangelicals are pro-slavery. That's why they hate it when "woke" people talk bad about slavery.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Atheist Guide: Atheism in a Nutshell

“I was raised to believe Jesus was my best friend. It's hard to say who introduced Jesus and me. My mother, or maybe her mother or her mother before her. Though maybe in Oklahoma, you're just born with this familiarity, the way you can tell if a tornado's coming from the color of the sky.”
― Angie Sullivan, Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t Sandwiches

“I remember thinking how exhausting it was to exist as a rational thinker in the Bible Belt. No one judged you based on your character; instead it was all about how many times per week you went to church.”
― Jennifer Welch, Life Is a Lazy Susan of Sh*t Sandwiches