God & Government Quotes

“A government cannot be truly just without affirming the intrinsic value of human life.”
― Charles Colson, God and Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries between Faith and Politics

“If Christians today understood this distinction between the role of the private Christian citizen and the Christian in government, they might sound less like medieval crusaders. If secularists understood correctly the nature of Christian public duty they would not fear, but welcome responsible Christian political involvement.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“In his 1978 Harvard commencement address, Solzhenitsyn listed a litany of woes facing the West: the loss of courage and will, the addiction to comfort, the abuse of freedom, the capitulation of intellectuals to fashionable ideas, the attitude of appeasement with evil.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Christian patriots spend more time washing feet than waving flags.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“In a pluralistic society it is not only wrong but unwise for Christians to shake their Bibles and arrogantly assert that “God says . . .” That is the quickest way for Christians, a distinct minority in civil affairs, to lose their case altogether.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“The lure of power can separate the most resolute of Christians from the true nature of Christian leadership, which is service to others. It’s difficult to stand on a pedestal and wash the feet of those below.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“In a slick manifesto called Cosmos, Carl Sagan artfully packaged his own creed: “The Cosmos is all there is, or was, or ever will be.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Maybe some find that so, but Joseph Sobran better expresses my feelings: “It can be exalting to belong to a church that is five hundred years behind the times and sublimely indifferent to fashion; it is mortifying to belong to a church that is five minutes behind the times, huffing and puffing to catch up.”1”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Who is to decide what are the ‘right’ values?” wrote a professor of education. “Does ultimate moral authority lie with institutions such as church and state to codify and impose? Or, in a free society, are these matters of private conscience, with final choice belonging to the individual?”2”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“When the church aligns itself politically, it gives priority to the compromises and temporal successes of the political world rather than its Christian confession of eternal truth. And when the church gives up its rightful place as the conscience of the culture, the consequences for society can be horrific.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“One of the most startling commentaries on this century is the fact that millions more have died at the hands of their own governments than in wars with other nations — all to preserve someone’s power.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Columnist Joseph Sobran writes, “The prevailing notion is that the state should be neutral as to religion, and furthermore, that the best way to be neutral about it is to avoid all mention of it. By this sort of logic, nudism is the best compromise among different styles of dress. The secularist version of ‘pluralism’ amounts to theological nudism.”35”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“A Christian writer has summed this up well: “The ‘Christian state’ is one that gives no special public privilege to Christian citizens but seeks justice for all as a matter of principle.”6”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“And so we come full circle, back to where we began. For it is this pervasive sense of impotence that has paved the way for the emergence of political saviors and the all-powerful state that promise salvation through changed structures.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Millions more are addicted to Internet pornography, which has led to a horrific increase in the sexual exploitation of children and attacks on young girls naive enough to arrange meetings with men”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“That which man builds man destroys, but the city of God is built by God and cannot be destroyed by man. AUGUSTINE”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Democracy is not prescribed in the Bible, and Christians can and do live under other political systems. But Christians can hardly fail to love democracy, because of all systems it best assures human dignity, the essence of our creation in God’s image.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Justice without mercy is tyranny, and mercy without justice is weakness. Justice without love is pure socialism, and love without justice is baloney. JAIME CARDINAL SIN speaking at a Prison Fellowship International conference in Nairobi, Kenya, 1986”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“Only a church free of any outside domination can be the conscience of society and, as Washington pastor Myron Augsburger has written, “hold government morally accountable before God to live up to its own claims.”21”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“How does a Christian deal with the inherent divided loyalties: duty to God and duty to the national interest? Can a Christian successfully avoid the subtle snares of power? Can a Christian make the compromises necessary for the everyday business of politics?”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“see how God used my powerlessness for His purposes. What He has chosen for my most significant witness was not my triumphs or victories, but my defeat.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“And after my imprisonment I could look back and”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves,” He said.8”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“The greatest thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day as though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years. C.S.LEWIS”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“We know, and it is our pride to know, that man is by his constitution a religious animal; that atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts; and that it cannot”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“What they fail to reckon with, however, is the reverse of that slogan: if nothing is worth dying for, is anything worth living for?”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“But the most dangerous consequence of the naked public square is the loss of community.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“The naked public square cannot remain naked, the direction is toward the state-as-church, toward totalitarianism.”6”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“We live in a society in which all transcendent values have been removed and thus there is no moral standard by which anyone can say right is right and wrong is wrong. What we live in is, in the memorable image of Richard Neuhaus, a naked public square.”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics

“The greatest question of our time is not communism versus individualism, not Europe versus America, not even the East versus the West; it is whether men can live without God. WILL DURANT”
― Charles W. Colson, God & Government: An Insider's View on the Boundaries Between Faith & Politics