I am a former newspaper reporter turned church secretary turned vampire novelist. I wrote my first complete novel, 'Nice Girls Don't Have Fangs,' at night while I was working as the receptionist for a Baptist church. That was an interesting conversation with the pastor.
It could fairly be said that the U.S. is increasingly out of step with the rest of the world. As our neighbors to the south elect left-wing or even socialist governments, we are lurching further to the right. As Europe becomes less engaged to the Church, we are becoming more fundamentalist.
I like Church furniture.
My church has a health and fitness ministry to encourage our members to take care of spiritually and physically; how could I not?
God Almighty never intended that the devil should triumph over the Church. He never intended that the saloons should walk rough-shod over Christianity.
We're not at a point in time to be taking chances with children and young people in the church. The Holy Father himself said... there is no room in the priesthood or religious life for someone who has abused a child. I think he's right.
9/11 allowed us to witness the ordinary face of goodness in the love that those about to die brought with them to work that day. It is fitting that we refer to a large segment of the church year as Ordinary Time because it describes the look of the true faith that, as we read of the Kingdom, is spread about us.
Conversion is a very, very important part of what you are doing. We will have a responsibility to report to Heavenly Father regarding those we bring into the Church.
I was married awfully young and I felt trapped. My wife had been divorced and all the time we were married we were out of the Church. It wasn't until we were divorced that we became good Catholics again.
If men are wont to play with swearing anywhere, can we expect they should be serious and strict therein at the bar or in the church.
My mother's family is Christian: her father was a Baptist lay preacher, and her brother, in a leap of Anglican upward mobility, became a vicar in the Church of Wales. But my mother converted to Islam on marrying my father. She was not obliged to; Muslim men are free to marry ahl al-kitab, or people of the Book - among them, Jews and Christians.
The world looks at preachers out of church to know what they mean in it.
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.
Think of me as the weathered sheriff coming back into Dodge 'cause the youngsters are shooting up the church and scaring the horses and not doing right by the women.
I was an outcast growing up with a bunch of Christian people. My father didn't go to church, and that was not good news if you lived right in the middle of it.
I had a born-again experience at the age of 33. As a result of that I found a church where I felt I was being fed properly. I don't say that as a reflection on Catholicism. But once I was born again, I got an evangelical spirit.
I believe that the real difference in the American church is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats. The real difference is between the aware and the unaware.
To Western eyes and ears, Sharia law seems devoid of respect for differences of opinion or complex moral thinking. Certainly the American idea of separation between church and state is lost in Sharia-style governance.
We are insisting and we will continue to insist that this faith of the church must continue to be upheld come rain, come fire. That is our position.
Our church has been legal since late 1960s. I've been involved since 1972. I was ordained in 1975.
Leaders in the realm of religious activity are to be judged by their praying habits and not by their money or social position. Those who must be placed in the forefront of the Church's business must be, first of all, men who know how to pray.
I think water seeks its own level, that we go through challenges to become better. And now more than ever, it's good to look at who you're following in any type of hierarchy or institution - be it a church or the government. We can see how easy it is for people to lose their footing when they have great power.
When I was young, I had an 'aha' moment in church. There was a thing called testimony service, and somebody would sing a song, and everyone else would join in, finding a note where they fit. During one of those, a light went on in my head. In that moment, I heard everything - Parliament, the Staple Singers, Curtis Mayfield, Prince - in there.
I contend the state ought to do its thing and provide legal rights for all couples who want to be joined together for life. The church should bless unions that it sees fit to bless, and they should be called marriages.
Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn't know what to do with us.
For me, and maybe for many religious kids of the '60s, the church lost relevance the more it became a surrogate in the movement for social and political change.
And you know, we'd go to church. We were Baptists. And every now and then there'd be a tent would set up, and it was the Holiness folks. And we liked their music.
When pastors don't have rich spiritual lives with Christ, they become victimized by other models of success - models conveyed to them by their training, by their experience in the church, or just by our culture.
'Hallelujah' is going to be a standard that our grandkids, our great-great grandkids will learn to sing in church. It's one of those really, really special songs.
I grew up in the north of Chile, and this is why there are a lot of religious symbols in my pictures: because the Catholic Church in Latin America is very strong.
It's very difficult to determine whether this is the fault of the world that has abandoned the Church, or the Church that does not know how to relate to the world.
I believe the collapse of the House of Windsor is tied in with the collapse of the Church of England.
The Synod of Bishops has existed for forty years. In that long span of time it has been for all of us a good school for introducing us to the universal dimension of the Church.
In the ordinary church, it is suppressed by respectability, by a desire to appear better than we really are.
The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.
Do good 'cause God wants you to be happy. When you come to church, when you worship Him, you're not doing it for God, really. You're doing it for yourself because that's what makes God happy.