Quotes about Spiritual Disengagement

Henry Fonda

I found myself facing a Christian Science Reading Room. My God! It had been eight years. There had never been any renunciation of religion on my part, but like so many people, it was a gradual fading away.

Meir Soloveichik

Europe is no longer a Christian continent; few Europeans attend religious services on Sunday, and the European Union recently refused to refer to Europe's religious heritage in its fledgling constitution.

Os Guinness

The Christian church in the U.S. is still strong numerically, but it has lost its decisive influence both in American public life and in American culture as a whole, especially in the major elite institutions of society.

William P. Young

He was sick of God and God's religion, sick of all the little religious social clubs that didn't seem to make any real difference or affect any real changes.

Rod Dreher

We are really living in a culturally, post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend upon no longer exist.

There were several dynamics that contributed to the change. Younger Americans of all persuasions were much more tolerant than previous generations. A much larger proportion of Americans did not identify with any religion. The many Christian sects were very diverse and almost never presented a unified view of exactly what were Christian values for any issue. The tactics of the religious extremists had alienated many people from all religious efforts to shape, much less dominate, the norms and culture. Finally, the Courts and the Politicians began to take the separation of church and state much more seriously than and been the case in many past generations.

Sally Quinn

The Europeans have fallen away from religion and the church while the rest of the world is seemingly more religious. I don't know how to explain it.

Felix Adler

No one can fail to see that the power of the Church among large numbers in many communities is today diminishing, or has already ceased.

Mark Twain

The reason most people don't go to church is because they've already been.

C. S. Lewis

If you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?

John Shelby Spong

My audience is made up of two groups of people. The first group includes people whose roots are deep in the Christian faith, but for whom the traditional symbols, as traditionally understood, no longer make sense. The other audience is the audience that has left. I call them the Church Alumni Association, citizens of the secular city. They are a bit nostalgic about this faith of their childhood, but they aren't really interested in trotting it out or becoming involved with it again as it is presently organized.

Spiritual Disengagement Quotes