Baptist Quotes

We made four feature films with Sherwood Baptist. The wonderful thing was the church (members) volunteered. It was an awesome atmosphere of attitudes. The hard part was (that) all four of the first feature films we made take place in modern-day Albany, Georgia. We know that not all of our films going to be (set in) modern-day Albany, Georgia. ~ Alex Kendrick

I was raised Baptist, and I like the fact that I got my conscience installed early. ~ Octavia Butler

I have my own religion. I'm sort of one-quarter Baptist, one-quarter Catholic, one-quarter Jewish. ~ Tom T. Hall

I was raised as a Baptist in the Bible Belt of the South. Until the age of 37, I had never heard anyone teach or preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Oh yes, I had heard those scriptures read, more aptly read over, and had read over them myself, but I had never heard anyone try to explain this amazing experience or even give it any credence. ~ Kimberly Eady

I was one of I think three white girls in my school. So, I was very much an outsider. And plus I was Jewish and all of my friends were black and Baptist because they listen to the coolest music. We were all listening to Ray Charles and what was then called race music. ~ Janis Ian

It's not about being a Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, or 5-Point Calvinist. God has only one family and, as Christians, we're in it! ~ Jim Cymbala

Ted was a Baptist when he was a child but he became an atheist. It was therefore somewhat surprising that he became involved with the Mormon Church during the summer of 1975. This was a dramatic departure from his religious beliefs, or lack of them. He took the missionary lessons and was baptized into the Mormon Church. ~ Al Carlisle

If you start parsing the cause-and-effect chain backward through time, eventually you land in cosmology - does the story begin with the Big Bang or the out-of-nothing creation of the world by the word of a Southern Baptist god? And that question is even more fraught than any of the others. The stakes couldn't be any higher, because not it's not just a question of life and death, but also a question of life after death or eternal torture after death. ~ Kyle Minor

When Jesus stepped into the waters of the Jordan and was baptized by John the Baptist, he did so not because he was in need of repentance, or conversion: he did it to be among people who need forgiveness, among us sinners, and to take upon himself the burden of our sins. ~ Pope Francis

Before that summer, I had many times heard long-winded Baptist preachers take ten minutes to pray over card tables of potato salad and fried chicken at church picnics, but the way those sweating, red-faced men sat around on stacked pallets of lumber gulping oysters taught me most of what I knew about simple gladness. ~ Mary Karr

I wasn't allowed to see movies when I was a child. It was against the religion I was raised in, Fundamentalist Baptist. I didn't go into a commercial movie house until I was a senior in college, and that was on the sly. It wasn't until I was in graduate school that I immersed myself in films. Then, I went to see all the films by Bergman, Fellini, etc. ~ Wes Craven

If the thought police come to Armitage Baptist Church, we will meet them at the door respectfully, unflinchingly, willing to die on this hill, holding a copy of the Sacred Scriptures in one hand and a copy of the U.S. Constitution in the other. ~ Todd Starnes

It was customary for the town's three churches - Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian - to unite and listen to one visiting minister, but occasionally when the churches could not agree on a preacher or his salary, each congregation held its own revival with an open invitation to all; sometimes, therefore, the populace was assured of three weeks' spiritual reawakening. Revival time was a time of war: ~ Harper Lee

In a broader sense, much of this story about the expansion of slavery and how it shaped the lives of black folks and the wider world is driven by the white men who tried to impose their codes on everything around them. ~ Edward E. Baptist

He's a Catholic, a Hindy, an atheist, a Chein, a Buddhist, a Baptist and a Jew, and he knows, he shouldn't kill. ~ Buffy Sainte-Marie

Have you considered that the Bible, like all religious doctrine, may be allegorical and symbolic, to direct us toward one holy entity of love, as opposed to a simplistic litiginous text to direct the behavior of human beings? ~ Russell Brand

I go to church too, y'all. And I've heard it, too. And I want to say to all of our faith leaders out there that I understand that probably in my Baptist church in Maryland, it is not likely that there will be performed - in my church - gay marriages. ~ Donna Edwards

He got me a cup of tea with honey, toast with honey, yogurt with honey, like I was John the Baptist with the flu. ~ Anne Lamott

Amen" Lula said and she made the sign of the cross.
"I thought you were Baptist."
"Yeah, but we don't got any hand signals for an occasion like this. ~ Janet Evanovich

Perhaps we should worry less about judging people for being Mormon or Baptist or Muslim or gay or straight or black or white or Latino or by their religious or political brands and worry more about electing thoughtful, serious and ethical politicians on both sides of the political isle who are willing to work together for progress. ~ Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick

But Jesus wanted the crowd to know, look, 'John's (the baptist) the one who got this whole thing started.' In verse ten He says, 'This is the one about whom it is written, 'I'll send my messenger ahead of you who will prepare Your way before You.' Jesus says, 'If it wasn't for John, I wouldn't even be here performing these miracles.' ~ Steven Furtick

The dead of Auschwitz should have brought upon us a total transformation; nothing should have been allowed to remain as it was, neither among our people nor in our churches. Above all, not in the churches. ~ Johann Baptist Metz

There are more Baptist preachers in Texas than Baptist missionaries in all the world. ~ Ray Thompson

I actually was raised Baptist. I'm from the South, so you definitely know a lot of conservative people. ~ Clark Duke

My grandmother's idea of a mixed marriage is a Methodist who marries a Baptist. Although she'd never admit it, in her heart, I know she believes Jesus was Methodist. ~ L. King Perez

evening, they began to think that although he could never hope to be an Englishman, still it would be hard to visit that affliction on his head. They began to accommodate themselves to his level, calling him 'Mr Baptist,' but treating him like a baby, and laughing immoderately at his lively gestures and his childish English - more, ~ Charles Dickens

University of Chicago is a Baptist school, where atheist professors teach Jewish students about St. Thomas Aquinas. ~ Martin Gardner

I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, "You deserve to be in the pit." The Catholic said, "You need to suffer while you're in the pit." The Baptist said, "If you'd been saved, you wouldn't have fallen into the pit." The charismatic said, "Just confess I'm not in the pit." The mathematician said, "Let me calculate how you fell into the pit." The IRS agent said, "Have you paid taxes on that pit?" The optimist said, "Things could be worse." The pessimist said, "Things will get worse. ~ Joel Osteen

Lincoln was raised in the thick of Old School Calvinism. In Kentucky and Indiana, his parents belonged to a fire-breathing sect called Separate Baptism, in which congregants heard - in the tradition of Jonathan Edward's famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" - that they were bound for eternal hellfire, and nothing they could do or say or think would change their fate. Preachers did allow that a chosen few were ordained for grace and would be saved, but these fortunate ones had been selected by God before time began. As one Baptist preacher in Lincoln's Kentucky explained it, "Long before the morning stars sang together . . . the Almighty looked down upon the ages yet unborn, as it were, in review before him, and selected one here and another there to enjoy eternal life and left the rest to the blackness of darkness forever." Such Baptist ministers were so intense that it has been said that they "out-Calvined Calvin. ~ Joshua Wolf Shenk

here was a Baptist church near their house, and at age twelve or thirteen, Kayne began to walk to it and attend services on a regular basis. She told me that one Sunday during the altar call, "I was just so drawn. I want to do this. For some reason, I started crying, and a lady came back to where I was sitting-I didn't come down; she saw me where I was sitting and came back-and started talking to me. She said, `You want to go down?' and I said, `Yes.' So she walked with me. ~ Susan M. Shaw

Well, for me, I grew up very Southern Baptist, and I definitely lived in my bubble. You know, I lived in my bubble that was in my church. ~ Jessica Simpson

It seems that, after nineteen centuries of extraordinary glorification, the small Host for which so many cathedrals have sprung up, the small Host that has rested in millions of breasts and that has found a tabernacle and worshippers even in the desert - it seems that the triumphant Host of Lourdes and the Eucharistic Congresses of Chicago and Carthage remains as unknown, as secret as when it appeared for the first time in a room in Jerusalem. Light is in the world as in the days of St. John the Baptist, and the world does not know it ~ Francois Mauriac

Early June, Providence, Rhode Island, the sun up for almost two hours already, lighting up the pale bay and the smokestacks of the Narragansett Electric factory, rising like the sun on the Brown University seal emblazoned on all the pennants and banners draped up over campus, a sun with a sagacious face, representing knowledge. But this sun
the one over Providence
was doing the metaphorical sun one better, because the founders of the university, in their Baptist pessimism, had chosen to depict the light of knowledge enshrouded by clouds, indicating that ignorance had not yet been dispelled from the human realm, whereas the actual sun was just now fighting its way through cloud cover, sending down splintered beams of light and giving hope to the squadrons of parents, who'd been soaked and frozen all weekend, that the unseasonable weather might not ruin the day's activities. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

As proof of her faith, my mother used to carry a samll leatherette Bible when she went to the First Chinese Baptist Church every Sunday. But later, after my mother lost her faith in God, that leatherette Bible would up wedged under a too-short table leg, a way for her to correct the imbalances of life. It's been there for over twenty years.
My mother pretends that Bible isn't there. Whenever anyone asks her what it's doing there, she says, a little too loudly, "Oh, this? I forgot." But I know she sees it. My mother is not the best housekeeper in the world, and after all these years that Bigle is still clean white...
My mother, she stills pay attention to it. That Bible under the table, I know she sees it. I remember seeing her write in it before she wedged it under.
I lift the table and slide the Bible out. I put the Bible on the table, flipping quickly through the pages, because I know it's there. On the page before the New Testament begins, there's a section called "Deaths," and that's where she wrote "Bing Hsu" lightly, in erasable pencil. ~ Amy Tan

My father's a Southern Baptist minister. I wasn't lighting cars on fire; I just wasn't. ~ Aaron Paul

I would not cross the street to make a Baptist, but I would go round the world to make a Christian. ~ James Sharp

I grew up in a Southern Baptist-style church with a choir, a band, and music, but I've been asking myself my whole life, "Why is my own church, my own community, rejecting me because of my sexuality?". ~ Roger Ross Williams

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

Link ran his hands over his hair nervously. Dude, my mom's a Baptist. You think she's gonna let me stay in the house when she finds out I'm a Demon? She doesn't even like Methodists. ~ Kami Garcia

I grew up in the church, Resurrection Baptist Church in Philadelphia, and my grandmother was that grandmother at the church, the one always at the church, always putting on the events. It was deeply instilled in me that every action, everything I create, everything I say and do in the world is inexorably bound to the lives of everybody I come in contact with - and it's my responsibility to put things into the world that have a positive influence on humanity. ~ Will Smith

REPENT:FOR THE KINGDOM OF GOD
IS AT HAND

The whole message of John the Baptist and Jesus Christ are: Repent: For the Kingdom of God is at hand.

But this message has been terrible misunderstood by the priests and the Christians.

It is almost the same kind of people that crucified Jesus, which founded Christianity.

The symbol for Christianity has also become the cross on which Jesus was crucified, which is a bit morbid.

When you do not repent, your eyes will be filled with this world: the world of possession, the world of greed, the world of anger and hate, the world of ego and the world of hatred.

Your eyes has to be completely cleansed before you can see the Kingdom of God.

Repentance will open the door to God, to the divine.

What does it mean to repent? Repentance does not mean to ask to be forgiven for making a mistake. This will not change you, it will not transform
you.

What John the Baptist and Jesus Christ mean by repentance is something totally different. They mean to look to the very roots of your being, of your existence. It is not about asking to repent for a specific act, it is about changing the whole quality of your being.

It is about returning to your original being. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is within you. The Kingdom of God is to return to your deepest core of being, which transforms you.

It is to stand naked before God. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

There were two things Southerners hated to see knocking on their door. Jehovah Witnesses, because the majority of us were Baptist, and the undertaker. It was understandable that when Terk Rhinehammer opened the door, his face turned white as all the blood was drained from it after he looked past me and saw my hearse.
"What's wrong?" He used his hands to pat down his chest. "I'm not dead, am I? ~ Tonya Kappes

The suburban evening was grey and yellow on Sunday; the gardens of the small houses to left and right were rank with ivy and tall grass and lilac bushes; the tropical South London verdure was dusty above and mouldy below; the tepid air swarmed with flies. Eeldrop, at the window, welcomed the smoky smell of lilac, the gramaphones, the choir of the Baptist chapel, and the sight of three small girls playing cards on the steps of the police station. ~ T. S. Eliot

I think that young people are going to continue on with the work on pluralism for two reasons, really. One is because it's the reality of the world that they live in, and I think young people from different backgrounds are asking themselves, what does it mean for me to be a Buddhist and friends with a Baptist? ~ Eboo Patel

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendent in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth ~ William Gaddis

Every great movement needs an agitator. Every leader of spiritual ideals need a John the Baptist. ~ William Allen White

The Baptist found him far too deep; The Deist sighed with saving sorrow; And the lean Levite went to sleep, And dreamed of tasting pork to-morrow. ~ Winthrop Mackworth Praed

If I were to die today, she thought, and someone were to think over my life, they'd never know that moments like this, here on the Horseferry Road, between a Baptist chapel and a tobacconist's, were the truest things in it. ~ Sarah Waters

It's all right," she said. "You're through."
"Jesus," he finally managed, pushing water off his face. "Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. For that matter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John." Still not enough. He needed to reach back to the Old Testament for this. "Obadiah. Nebuchadnezzar. Methuselah and Job."
"Be calm," she said, taking him by the shoulders. "Be calm. And there are women in the Bible, you know."
"Yes. As I recall it, they were trouble, every last one. ~ Tessa Dare

Jane Addams too knew that Chicago's blood was hustler's blood. Knowing that Chicago, like John the Baptist and Bathhouse John, like Billy Sunday and Big Bill, forever keeps two faces, one for winners and one for losers, one for hustlers and one for squares. ~ Nelson Algren

When you transgress or sin, you must return to your personal religion for forgiveness. Catholics do not confess their sins to Baptist ministers. Baptists don't ask forgiveness from Muslim clerics. You must seek forgiveness from the place where you learned about sin. It is as if the religion infects you with the disease and then gives you a fake cure. ~ Darrel Ray

I grew up going to a real small missionary baptist church. We would sing a lot of the old standards ... the hymns and everything. Those songs are still my favorite and are pretty timeless. ~ Josh Turner

And don't succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord's torment could not have been on a couple of planks nailed together, but on an entire forest.'
'Master!' I said, shocked.
'So it is, Adso. And there are ever richer treasuries. Some time ago, in the cathedral of Cologne, I saw the skull of John the Baptist at the age of twelve.'
'Really?' I exclaimed, amazed. Then, siezed by doubt, I added, 'But the Baptist was executed at a more advanced age!'
'The other skull must be in another treasury,' William said, with a grave face. I never understood when he was jesting. ~ Umberto Eco

Now, if children were considered to be capable of admission into the Church by an ordinance in the Old Testament, it is difficult to see why they cannot be admitted in the New. The general tendency of the Gospel is to increase men's spiritual privileges and not to diminish them. Nothing, I believe, would astonish a Jewish convert so much as to tell him his children could not be baptized! "If they are fit to receive circumcision," he would reply, "why are they not fit to receive baptism?" And my own firm conviction has long been that no Baptist could give him an answer. In fact I never heard of a converted Jew becoming a Baptist, and I never saw an argument against infant baptism that might not have been equally directed against infant circumcision. No man, I suppose, in his sober senses, would presume to say that infant circumcision was wrong. ~ J.C. Ryle

History is not to be whitewashed "by a screening out of the importance of suffering." ~ Johann Baptist Metz

I'm a member of the Primitive Baptist Church, and they will buy every CD that I have released, but they don't me just to bring the instruments much into the church. ~ Ralph Stanley

I regarded him skeptically. "Mark Gottler would agree to have a private meeting with you in the hopes of getting you to join the congregation?"
"Of course he would. I'm a public sinner with a ton of money. Any church would want me."
I laughed. "Don't you already belong to one?"
Jack shook his head. "My parents were from two different churches, so I was raised Baptist and Methodist. With the result that I've never been sure if it's okay to dance in public. And for a while I thought Lent was something you brushed off your jacket."
-Ella & Jack ~ Lisa Kleypas

The priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man's. Now and then you may see one bend and give a delicate tug, of a purely symbolical character: as when the Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Bootstrap-lifters comes once a year to wash the feet of the poor; or when the Sunday-school Superintendent of the Baptist Bootstrap-lifters shakes the hand of one of his Colorado mine-slaves. But for the most part the priests and preachers of Bootstrap-lifting walk haughtily erect, many of them being so swollen with prosperity that they could not reach their bootstraps if they wanted to. Their role in life is to exhort other men to more vigorous efforts at self-elevation, that the agents of the Wholesale Pickpockets' Association may ply their immemorial role with less chance of interference. ~ Upton Sinclair

My spiritual life is an interesting thing. It's pretty private. I was raised Catholic in the Baptist Bible belt, so my spirituality was challenged and very much a private thing and it continues to be. ~ Kelli O'Hara

Pentecostals also used sarcasm to gouge their enemies. [Charles] Parham led the way, challenging a local Baptist antagonist who routinely tagged his name with Ph.D., D.D., and LL.D. to come by and spend a week at Parham's school. When God was finished with him, Parham promised, he would want to add 'A.S.S.' to the list. ~ Grant Wacker

At last, John Baptist, now able to choose his own spot within the compass of those walls for the exercise of his faculty of going to sleep when he would, lay down upon the bench, with his face turned over on his crossed arms, and slumbered. In his submission, in his lightness, in his good humour, in his short-lived passion, in his easy contentment with hard bread and hard stones, in his ready sleep, in his fits and starts, altogether a true son of the land that gave him birth. The ~ Charles Dickens

Well, you could become a Southern Baptist. I mean, instead of having to obey the Pope, you could just obey your husband. ~ Arianna Huffington

I have not contended for Democrat, Republican, Protestant or Baptist for an agent. I have worked for freedom, I have laboured to give my race a voice in the affairs of the nation. ~ Sarah Winnemucca

God doesn't care what you call yourself. He's not impressed with Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Episcopalian, Baptist, Lutheran… Those are words that people made up, and they mean nothing to God…nothing. He sees right through all that stuff, into your heart. It's not about church, it's not about doing a list of activities, and it's not about calling yourself a particular name or going through some particular ritual. It's much more personal than that. ~ Vic Mignogna

Ordained Baptist minister; I make no apology for my faith. ~ Mike Huckabee

John the Baptist, who we are told was related by blood to Jesus, was preaching the impending judgement of God, urging repentance and moral reform, and baptizing in the Jordan River those who responded. ~ Kenneth Scott Latourette

Because the bill in reserving a certain parcel of land in the United States for the use of said Baptist Church comprises a principle and a precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment." ~ James Madison

Gratitude, the ability to count your blessings, is the ultimate way to connect with the heart. ~ Baptist De Pape

You may be Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist or Baptist or Muslim or Mormon or Jewish or Jain, or you have no religion at all. I'm not interested in your religious background. Because God did not create the universe for us to have religion. He came for us to have a relationship with him. ~ Rick Warren

No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least. ~ Robert Graves

My family are very, very religious in Texas. They're Southern Baptists. I left to go to New York when I was 17 and I realised I wasn't Southern Baptist. That's not how I am inclined. ~ Lynn Collins

Like most things in life, there's also a spiritual side to my beard. Look at John the Baptist, one of the most important people in the New Testament. According to Matthew 3:4, "John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey." He baptized Jesus, who was God in human body, despite his appearance being that of a deranged vagrant. When I try to visualize John the Baptist, I see a bearded hunter who had to have some sort of weaponry to function in the wild. I would also assume he dipped the locusts in wild honey before he ate them. Based on what I read in the Bible about John the Baptist, I actually tried to eat a locust once, but it tasted terrible, which gave me the idea that John the Baptist probably dipped them in honey first. Then again, almost everything tastes good with honey. ~ Jase Robertson

Logic, order, truth, reason, we consign them all to the oblivion of death," said one Surrealist manifesto. We must "cultivate the hatred of intelligence," said the leader of the Futurists, Filippo Marinetti, an artist hailed by Mussolini as the John the Baptist of Fascism.17 ~ Leonard Peikoff

All Carolina folk are crazy for mayonnaise, mayonnaise is as ambrosia to them, the food of their tarheeled gods. Mayonnaise comforts them, causes the vowels to slide more musically along their slow tongues, appeasing their grease-conditioned taste buds while transporting those buds to a place higher than lard could ever hope to fly. Yellow as summer sunlight, soft as young thighs, smooth as a Baptist preacher's rant, falsely innocent as a magician's handkerchief, mayonnaise will cloak a lettuce leaf, some shreds of cabbage, a few hunks of cold potato in the simplest splendor, restyling their dull character, making them lively and attractive again, granting them the capacity to delight the gullet if not the heart. Fried oysters, leftover roast, peanut butter: rare are the rations that fail to become instantly more scintillating from contact with this inanimate seductress, this goopy glory-monger, this alchemist in a jar.
The mystery of mayonnaise-and others besides Dickie Goldwire have surely puzzled over this_is how egg yolks, vegetable oil, vinegar (wine's angry brother), salt, sugar (earth's primal grain-energy), lemon juice, water, and, naturally, a pinch of the ol' calcium disodium EDTA could be combined in such a way as to produce a condiment so versatile, satisfying, and outright majestic that mustard, ketchup, and their ilk must bow down before it (though, a at two bucks a jar, mayonnaise certainly doesn't put on airs)or else slink away in disgrace. Who but the ~ Tom Robbins

I was six years old when my mother died. For a long time afterward, the sweet and earthy magnolia scent of her would permeate my dreams. No matter what I was dreaming about, good or frightening, my mother's smell would waft through my nighttime adventures, infusing them with her unseen presence, reassuring me even through their darkest moments. I never told anyone about this. I felt that, somehow, my mother had found a way to communicate with me from heaven even though I knew from the down-to-earth practicality of my Baptist Sunday School lessons that it was likely impossible. Still, I have heard it said more than once that with God, nothing is impossible. Is it so hard to imagine that He, in His infinite compassion, might have, for a moment in time, comforted a scared little girl with her mother's familiar scent? ~ Earlene Fowler

Whether we're looking at the burial box of St. James, a fragment of the True Cross, the Shroud of Turin, or some bones supposedly belonging to John the Baptist, there is always excitement and distrust, faith and doubt. ~ Jay Parini

Bernie could talk a Baptist into burning a Bible, ~ Pat Conroy

As the people came to a desert place to hear John the Baptist proclaim, "Thus saith the Lord," so [man] in his confusions, frustrations, and bewilderment will come to hear the minister who preaches with authority. ~ Billy Graham

There was a lot of Southern Baptist preachers and some yelling ones but mostly we had a pastor who didn't scream and I found a lot of comfort and joy and peace as a child hearing the Bible. ~ Victoria Jackson

Tod Clifton's one with the ages. But what's that to do with you in this heat under this veiled sun? Now he's part of history, and he has received his true freedom. Didn't they scribble his name on a standardized pad? His Race: colored! Religion: unknown, probably born Baptist. Place of birth: U.S. Some southern town. Next of kin: unknown. Address: unknown. Occupation: unemployed. Cause of death (be specific): resisting reality in the form of a .38 caliber revolver in the hands of the arresting officer, on Forty-second between the library and the subway in the heat of the afternoon, of gunshot wounds received from three bullets, fired at three paces, one bullet entering the right ventricle of the heart, and lodging there, the other severing the spinal ganglia traveling downward to lodge in the pelvis, the other breaking through the back and traveling God knows where. ~ Ralph Ellison

He can heal me. I believe He will. I believe I'm going to be an old surely Baptist preacher. And even if He doesn't ... that's the thing: I've read Philippians 1. I know what Paul says. I'm here let's work, if I go home? That's better. I understand that. ~ Matt Chandler

I held my hand up, frowning. "Wait a minute. Where did you say this thing was stolen from?"
"The Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist." Father Vincent said.
"In Northern Italy." I said.
He nodded.
"In Turin, to be exact."
"He nodded again, his expression reserved.
"Someone stole the freaking Shroud of Turin?" I demanded.
"Yes."
I settled back in the chair, looking down at the photos again. This changed things.
This changed things a lot. ~ Jim Butcher

Dale is Baptist. He doesn't worry about much in life, but he worries about the devil afterwards. ~ Sheila Turnage

My family is still very Southern Baptist, and they're religious. ~ Missi Pyle

On island after island, Europeans and their pathogens killed the natives, slave ships appeared on the horizon, and cane sprouted in the fields. Streams of survivors crawled forth from slave ships to replenish the cane-field work gangs of men and women as they died. But enslavers grew fabulously rich. ~ Edward E. Baptist

In the entire works of the Jewish historian Josephus (37-c. 100 CE), which constitute hundreds of pages, there are only two paragraphs that purport to refer to Jesus. Although much has been made of these 'references,' they have been dismissed by many scholars and even by Christian apologists as forgeries, as have been those referring to John the Baptist and James, 'brother' of Jesus. Bishop Warburton (1698-1779) labeled the Josephus interpolation regarding Jesus as 'a rank forgery, and a very stupid one, too. ~ D.M. Murdock

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a ~ John F. Kennedy

I don't care whether you're Baptist, Buddhist, Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, Muslim, or no religion at all. Jesus Christ still loves you. You still matter to God. ~ Rick Warren

Within half a century after Butler sent Charles Mallory away from Fortress Monroe empty-handed, the children of white Union and Confederate soldiers united against African-American political and civil equality. This compact of white supremacy enabled southern whites to impose Jim Crow segregation on public space, disfranchise African-American citizens by barring them from the polls, and use the lynch-mob noose to enforce black compliance. White Americans imposed increased white supremacy outside the South, too. In non-Confederate states, many restaurants wouldn't serve black customers. Stores and factories refused to hire African Americans. Hundreds of midwestern communities forcibly evicted African-American residents and became "sundown towns" ("Don't let the sun set on you in this town"). Most whites, meanwhile, believed that ~ Edward E. Baptist

Everyone knows that banks take in deposits and lend out money, but they don't always realize that when banks lend, they actually create money. We call that money credit. ~ Edward E. Baptist

The next day, as they walked, a stranger rode up, matching the Georgia-man's pace. "Niggers for sale?" He wanted to buy two women. The two men negotiated, argued, and insulted each other a little. The new man stared at the women and told them what he thought he'd do with them. The coffle kept moving. The white men rode along, bargaining. Maybe the deal could be sweetened, allowed the Georgia-man, if the South Carolinian paid to have the chains knocked off the men. One thousand dollars for the two, plus blacksmith fees. They stopped at a forge, and they kept arguing. The new man stated for everyone's benefit that he had worked African men to death in iron collars. The blacksmith came out, and he asked what "the two gentlemen were making such a frolick about," Ball later said. Frolicking: Down there, Ball realized, the Carolinians' play, the time when they were most fully themselves, was evidently when they were arguing, negotiating, dealing, and intimidating the enslaved. ~ Edward E. Baptist

Jesus is not a white, middle-class Republican. Jesus is not a Democrat, a Libertarian, a Marxist, or a Socialist. Jesus is not a Baptist, a Catholic, a Lutheran, or a Buddhist. Jesus isn't even a Christian. Jesus Christ is Lord. ~ Ronnie McBrayer

If the enemy could only know that Marcus Garvey is but a John the Baptist in the wilderness, that a greater and more dangerous Marcus Garvey is yet to appear, the Garvey with whom you will have to reckon for the injustice of the present generation. ~ Marcus Garvey

The fundamentalists were equally stymied. "We were worried about Adam and Steve," a Baptist minister said. "Should we have been more worried about Rover and Fluffy? ~ Charlaine Harris

Psychologically, I'm a Roman Baptist. ~ Samuel Bowers

Religion is best when it points beyond itself, like Isaiah or John the Baptist. It is worst when it gives you just enough of the forms to inoculate you against the substance, when it substitutes rituals for reality, the container for the contents, the wineskins for the ecstatic wine. ~ Richard Rohr

You see, I was the son of a baptist minister. ~ DeForest Kelley

1845, when the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society declared that any slave owner would be disqualified from consideration for missionary service, Baptist churches in the South seceded and formed the Southern Baptist Convention so that members would not have to choose between their slaves and their calling to be missionaries. ~ Robert P. Jones

'Christian' used to be a throwaway word. People didn't used to use it much. People didn't start self-labeling or getting labeled Christian until the last part of the 20th century. Before that, you might identify as a Baptist, or a Southern Baptist or a Methodist. But there wasn't one identifier that put you in a fold with all the other believers. ~ Penn Jillette

[On refusing to be silenced:] I do not pretend to be John the Baptist rebuking the Pharisees. I do not claim to be Nathan upbraiding David. I aspire only to be Balaam's ass, castigating his master. ~ Katharina Zell