Baptist 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

“It would have been a help if at some time Baptist preacher, resting his forearms on the pulpit and hunching his shoulders, had said People neither get what they deserve nor deserve what they get. The gentle and the trusting are trampled on. The rich man usually forces his way through the eye of the needle, and there is little or no point in putting your faith in Divine Providence. . . . On the other hand, how could any preacher, Baptist or otherwise, say this?”
― William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow

“The sparkle and morning-freshness of the shop, and the butter-conjuring girl, formed a mind-picture which accompanied the whole of my youth.(about the Buttercup Dairy)”
― Muriel Spark, Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography

“I wish you believe, not for myprofit, but for yours. I daily pray the true God give you light, that you may believe. Whether you will ever believe in tis world I do not know, but when you die I know you will believe what I now say. You will then appear before God you now deny. - Adorinam Judson to his Burman teacher.”
― Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson

“The temptation for a new generation, however, could be to see Baptist identity as a nuisance in the quest for converts. The effort to minimize an offensive "denominational brand name" will be counterproductive if we produce a generation of "anonymous Baptists," those whom we believe cannot handle the truth about Christ's design for His church. It will be tragic indeed if a future Broadman and Holman catalog includes a book titled, "Why I Am a Community Church (SBC) member."
But it will be equally tragic if the volume is titled, "Why I Want to Be a Presbyterian, but the Bible Won't Let Me.”
― Russell D. Moore

“You know it’s a real salvation when Baptists use cold water.”
― Jared Brock, A Year of Living Prayerfully

“Soul competency is not the voice of a dean celebrating the latest lesbian at his divinity school; it is the voice of R. G. Lee thundering 'Payday Someday!”
― Russell D. Moore, Why I Am a Baptist

“A holiness that is never seen by others is not a genuine holiness. A holiness that is only tacked up like a false front is not a genuine holiness, either.”
― Tom Brennan

“In the name of rejecting ecclesiastical authority as "hierarchy" or "tradition" as theological manipulation and bondage, we have instead created a hermeneutic of suspicion and have invested every biblically informed conscience (instead of a pope) to speak ex cathedra. It is a Pyrrhic victory for Free church Protestantism when the net effect of its teaching results in the replacing of the tyranny of the magisterium with the tyranny of individualism.”
― Daniel H. Williams, Retrieving the Tradition and Renewing Evangelicalism: A Primer for Suspicious Protestants

“We are up to the hilt advocates for peace, and we earnestly war against war. I wish that Christian men would insist more and more on the unrighteousness of war, believing that Christianity means no sword, no cannon, no bloodshed, and that, if a nation is driven to fight in its own defence, Christianity stands by to weep and to intervene as soon as possible, and not to join in the cruel shouts which celebrate an enemy’s slaughter. . . . Today, then, my brethren, I beg you to join with me in seeking renewal.”
― Charles Spurgeon

“Like a Baptist at a liquor store, my greatest urge was to avoid being seen.”
― Valentine Glass, Jarring Sex