Methodist ministers

"In a large congregation, while there is a wide diversification of interest, it is also true that there are only a few basic human problems. It must also be taken into consideration that people are people regardless of who they are or what their backgrounds may be. There are certain deep universal appeals to human interest and to these human nature always responds."

"Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake."

"Every human being is a child of God and has more good in him than evil — but circumstances and associates can step up the bad and reduce the good. I've got great faith in the essential fairness and decency — you may say goodness — of the human being."

"It's not necessary to be born again. You have your way to God, I have mine. I found eternal peace in a Shinto shrine … I've been to Shinto shrines and God is everywhere. … Christ is one of the ways! God is everywhere."

"Our problem is to become acquainted with our own selves, letting our personalities loose upon the world for the sheer adventure of their full development and in the positive hope that they may in their own way lift the level of humanity."

"When obstacles or difficulties arise, the positive thinker takes them as creative opportunities. He welcomes the challenge of a tough problem and looks for ways to turn it to advantage."

"Optimism is a philosophy based on the belief that basically life is good, that, in the long run, the good in life overbalances the evil."

"Who is God? Some theological being? He is so much greater than theology. God is vitality. God is life. God is energy. As you breathe God in, as you visualize His energy, you will be reenergized!"

"Believe that problems do have answers. Believe that they can be overcome. Believe that they can be handled. And finally, believe that you can solve them."

"People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. When they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success."

"Happiness will never come if it's a goal in itself; happiness is a by-product of a commitment to worthy causes."

"If you put off everything till you're sure of it, you'll get nothing done."

"Change your thoughts and you can change the world."

"Empty pockets never held anyone back...it's only empty heads and empty hearts that do it."

"Every individual forms his own estimate of himself and that basic estimate goes far toward determining what he becomes. You can do no more than you believe you can. You can be no more than you believe you are. Belief stimulates power within yourself. Have faith in faith. Don't be afraid to trust faith."

"The dynamic and positive attitude is a strong magnetic force which, by its very nature, attracts good results. This, of course, does not mean you will get everything you want. When you live on a faith basis your desire will be only for that which you can ask in God's name. But whatever you should have, whatever is good for you will be granted."

"By success, of course, I do not mean that you may become rich, famous, or powerful for that does not, of necessity, represent achievement. Indeed, not infrequently, such individuals represent pathetic failure as persons. By success I mean the development of mature and constructive personality. Through the application of the principle of constructive thinking you can attain your worthy goals. The natural outcome of living by creative principles is creative results. Believe and create is a basic fact of successful living."

"The more jealousy one has in his nature the more critical he is of those who have accomplished things. If you are critical and mouthing negativisms it could be that your own failures are caused by a mixed-up, hate-filled mind. A sign of mental health is to be glad when others achieve, and to rejoice with them. Never compare yourself or your achievements with others, but make your comparisons only with yourself. Maintain a constant competition with yourself This will force you to attain higher standards and achievements. do not defeat yourself by holding spiteful or jealous thoughts. Think straight, with love, hope and optimism and you will attain victory in life."

"The power of the Plus Factor is potential but it is not self-activating. It is latent in human beings and will remain latent until it is activated."

"The Plus Factor makes its appearance in a person's life in proportion as that person is in harmony with God and His universal laws."

"And now we get down to two magic words that tell us how to accomplish just about anything we want to accomplish, two powerful words that can change any situation, two dynamic words that all too few people use. And what are these two amazing words? Do it!"

"So what are you afraid of? What is holding you back? What is it that stands in your way? Do it!"

"Sometimes we see people persevering in the face of what seem to be insuperable odds. When that happens, I can't help but think that through their Plus Factor information has been conveyed to them that even they are unaware of."

"Of vast importance in achieving peace of mind is dealing with the contents of mind itself: the mass of all ill thoughts you have stored up over the years, all the regrets, all the futilities, all the hidden sins, all the hates, all the grudges, all the vindictiveness. The minds of many people are filled with pockets of poison."

"Tell yourself every morning as you go to work that you love your job. Think of it as interesting, even fascinating. By so doing you will ultimately get enthusiastic about your work — and you will undoubtedly do a better job."

"Just a moment ago nature put on one of its most spectacular demonstrations.The widest rainbow I have ever seen stretched from the lake over a high snow-clad mountain to touch down in a deep valley in the Alps. There was about this gigantic rainbow a deep benediction of peace and hope. But as ineffable as nature is in the effect of natural beauty on the mind, it cannot match the peace of God in its healing effect on the human mind."

"It is inconceivable that a Roman Catholic president would not be under extreme pressure by the hierarchy of his church to accede to its policies with respect to foreign relations in matters, including representation to the Vatican."

"Norman Peale saw psychology and Christian experience as very compatible… he had the courage to stand pat on this position in spite of the opposition of the entire Christian church for nearly half a century. His genius was that he… translated psycho-theology into the language of the people."

"With saccharine terrorism, Mr. Peale refuses to allow his followers to hear, speak or see any evil. For him real human suffering does not exist; there is no such thing as murderous rage, suicidal despair, cruelty, lust, greed, mass poverty, or illiteracy. All these things he would dismiss as trivial mental processes which will evaporate if thoughts are simply turned into more cheerful channels. This attitude is so unpleasant it bears some search for its real meaning. It is clearly not a genuine denial of evil but rather a horror of it. A person turns his eyes away from human bestiality and the suffering it evokes only if he cannot stand to look at it. By doing so he affirms the evil to be absolute, he looks away only when he feels that nothing can be done about it ... The belief in pure evil, an area of experience beyond the possibility of help or redemption, is automatically a summons to action: "evil" means "that which must be attacked ..." Between races for instance, this belief leads to prejudice. In child-rearing it drives parents into trying to obliterate rather than trying to nurture one or another area of the child's emerging personality ... In international relationships it leads to war. As soon as a religious as a religious authority endorses our capacity for hatred, either by refusing to recognize unpleasantness in the style of Mr Peale or in the more classical style of setting up a nice comfortable Satan to hate, it lulls our struggles for growth to a standstill ... Thus Mr Peale's book is not only inadequate for our needs but even undertakes to drown out the fragile inner voice which is the spur to inner growth."

"The man who has impacted and influenced my thinking and my theology and my life more than any other living person"

"Well, speaking as a Christian, I would like to say that I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling."

"My grandfather was an adherent to Norman Vincent Peale's doctrine of positive thinking. It certainly... didn't begin with... Peale. My grandfather had always been the kind of person who could not deal with negativity. He had no patience... It allowed room for nothing else, and there are times in our lives when we are legitimately distressed... sad... in pain. ...[T]o be prevented to feel those feelings honestly and openly is a form of torture."

"No young woman should be placed in circumstances such as to make marriage an only refuge from poverty or dependence upon her friends or a life of ennui"

"Christ has recognised and declared woman's equality with man"

"Truth is the daughter of God, and in all her attributes God-like and eternal. Truth never depreciates in value"

"We know as well as history can teach us that all religions are one and the same- all the outgrowth of man's moral nature, differing only according to the intelligence and advancement of the people among whom they originated"

"To know the Truth, to love the Truth, and to live the Truth is the whole duty of man."

"Every word of Truth proceeds from God, whether that Truth be written in the rocks and read by the geologist or written in the heavens and read by the astronomer or written in the heart of man or written in this old book"

"There is no divine Truth, and no impure Truth. There is no secular Truth, the Truth taught in the college or the school house is as sacred as Truth taught from the pulpit"

"A difficulty in seeking Truth is the notion that certain men are ordained of heaven to seek Truth for all mankind and that we are to accept their acquisitions in the place of seeking for ourselves. We can never attain Truth by proxy. By divine ordination every man is an original investigator of Truth. He denies his own reason who hands over his religious views and opinions to any priest or religious teacher… We are to accept nothing on the opinions of others. What another man has thought and believed, what a Church Council or synod has formulated is nothing to me, only that it may be a reason for personal investigation ending in acceptance or rejection as I may find it in harmony with reason and well established truth."

"It is a mistaken notion that all spiritual truth was given to the world in one complete system nearly 2000 years ago."

"Jesus' teachings were never set before his followers as a finality. God has dealt with Humanity as we deal with children. He has given to every…age Truths adapted to their development"

"The Church has become hostile to new ideas. If any doctrine came from the priesthood the church would hear it and heed it, but if it came from an out of the way place, like Nazareth, they would scorn and persecute it. It was churchmen who put Jesus to the cross. In Luther's time when he hurled his advanced ideas like bombshells into the Roman Church, it was the churchmen of his day that sought his death. In Wesley's time, though he preached the purest form of spiritual Truth that was proclaimed to his age, yet the churchmen of his time drove him out and he had to preach in graveyards and coal mines and on the markets."

"New truths in science are often condemned and 25 years ago it was very common and very popular for preachers to sneer at the evolution theory, but to-day it is no longer sneered at, for there is arising in all intelligent minds who have candidly examined the evidence the conviction that this was the method of creation, and no scientist of note to-day denies it."

"The scientific fact of clairvoyance, telepathy, soul-flight, psychometry, and prophecy are well established by incontrovertible evidence yet to mention them in certain circles is to ostracize yourself."

"Why should old interpretations of scripture, all of which reflect the ignorance and prejudice and limitations of the age in which they were formulated, bar the way to progress in our modern day?"

"Have we not the right to our own views, and own interpretations, and own creeds, and own Truths equal to those that proceeded us? Must we forever wear the cast-off garments of past ages?"

"Why should inspiration be limited to one past age? If Truth came to Paul 1900 years ago it can come to you today. After all, Heaven is as near to-day, God is as loving and as kind to-day, and truth as abundant to-day, as in the ages when men are said to have possessed inspiration."

"Is God asleep that he should cease to be all that he was to the prophets of the past?"

"I have found a truth that humanity needs, that brings unspeakable joy to human hearts and homes, that brightens all the life, that assuages sorrow, that dispels care, that kills the materialistic spirit of our age, and lifts mankind into noble thought and life"

"The use of the divine gift of common sense would teach the opponents of the philosophy that what was shown to be fraud was not spiritualism and that a doctrine that thrives in the midst of the bitterest oppression and grows in the fire of persecution has some measure of truth in its keeping to give it vitality"

"We live in a period of transitions. Old interpretations of the scripture are giving way to new ones. Old conceptions of the method of creation are no longer popular"

"The creeds are not changing as rapidly as the beliefs of the people, nor as rapidly as most men of progressive mind desire"

"The heterodoxy of one age will become the orthodoxy of the next"

"It is easy to see what is heresy today, but who can tell what will be heresy tomorrow"

"I do not believe in infallible men, nor in an infallible church, nor in an infallible book"

"Guide me, O Thou great Jehovah, Pilgrim through this barren land; I am weak, but Thou art mighty; Hold me with Thy powerful hand; Bread of heaven! Feed me till I want no more."

"Liberation theologians assert that the reigning theologies of the West have been used to legitimate the established order. Those to whom the church has entrusted the task of interpreting the meaning of God's activity in the world have been too content to represent the ruling classes. For this reason, say the liberation theologians, theology has generally not spoken to those who are opposed by the political establishment."

"In examining Black theology, it is necessary to make one of two assumptions: (1) either black women have no place in the enterprise, or (2) black men are capable of speaking for us. Both of these assumptions are false and need to be discarded. They arise out of a male-dominated culture, which restricts women to certain areas of the society. In such a culture, men are given the warrant to speak for women on all matters of significance."

"Black men must ask themselves a difficult question. How can a white society characterized by Black enslavement, colonialism, and imperialism provide the normative conception of women for Black society? How can the sphere of the woman, as defined by white men, be free from the evils and oppressions that are found in the white society? The important point is that in matters relative to the relationship between the sexes, Black men have accepted without question the patriarchal structures of the white society as normative for the Black community. How can a Black minister preach in a way that advocates St. Paul’s dictum concerning women while ignoring or repudiating his dictum concerning slaves? Many Black women are enraged as they listen to “liberated” Black men speak about the “place of women” in words and phrases similar to those of the very white oppressors they condemn."

"I can agree with Karl Barth as he describes the peculiar function of theology as the church’s “subjecting herself to a self-test.” “She [the church] faces herself with the question of truth, i.e., she measures her action, her language about God, against her existence as a Church.”On the one hand, Black theology must continue to criticize classical theology and the white church. But on the other hand, Black theology must subject the Black church to a “self-test.”"

"If the liberation of women is not proclaimed, the church’s proclamation cannot be about divine liberation. If the church does not share in the liberation struggle of Black women, its liberation struggle is not authentic. If women are oppressed, the church cannot possibly be “a visible manifestation that the gospel is a reality”—for the gospel cannot be real in that context. One can see the contradictions between the church’s language or proclamation of liberation and its action by looking both at the status of Black women in the church as laity and Black women in the ordained ministry of the church."

"It is often said that women are the “backbone” of the church. On the surface this may appear to be a compliment, especially when one considers the function to the backbone in the human anatomy. ... The telling portion of the word backbone is the word “back.” It has become apparent to me that most of the ministers who use this term have reference to location rather than function. What they really mean is that women are in the “background” and should be kept there. They are merely support workers."