Nicholas

“When the church is set aside as the primary institution of the kingdom, Christians find a substitute to serve as the communal form and chief instrument of the kingdom of God. In American history, this substitute has generally been found in the “Redeemer Nation.” What is called “American civil religion” is the product of a failure of ecclesiology.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

“Christians fail to recognize that, though their numbers are great in America, the United States is in no sense guided by Christian norms and cannot be understood as a Christian nation. Christian America and Christian Europe are things of the past. They were in many ways wonderful while they lasted, and we can hope that future generations will see a rebirth of Christian civilization in a more mature form. In the West, that prospect is, to all appearances, a distant one.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

“Orthodox Christians must stop thinking of ourselves as the temporarily exiled rulers of America who can be restored to power if only an election or two would go our way. We must start accepting the truth that, sociologically speaking, we are a minority subculture. If this accurately describes the current state of American Christianity, the task before the church is not to “take back the levers of power,” but rather to convert a pagan world.”
― Peter J. Leithart, The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church

“Lastly, the care with which a gardener directs water to cause plants to flourish should be seen as instructive of how a husband should care for his wife and family. One does not grasp or force water, and neither can a man grasp or force his wife.”
― James B Jordan, Trees and Thorns: Studies in the First Four Chapters of Genesis