anglicans-from-the-united-states

"Neither creeds nor correct doctrines are the objects of our faith. They did not die for our salvation. Yet, as faithful guidelines to the inevitable implications of scripture and boundaries for what can be called authentic Christianity, they are far more important than is currently appreciated. There are symbols that point to God but, like dogs being trained to fetch, we look at the trainer’s finger rather than toward that to which the finger points. Faithfulness to correct doctrine and loyalty to the creeds is not the same thing as trust in the God whom the creeds describe. This is the perennial temptation of orthodoxy itself. It is like tennis players who mark off the court, put up the net, sit down and call that “tennis.”"

"The righteousness whereby we are accepted by God is the righteousness of Christ imputed to us when we are incorporated in Christ."

"Christians are justified by the righteousness of Christ whereby they dwell in him and are thus acceptable to God, but this is not on account of any inherit righteousness of their own. The righteousness of sanctification is that whereby we grow in grace by virtue of being in Christ. It is a grateful response to a gratuitous justification."

"If our hope lies in human ability to make all things right, the tendency is to believe that some historical action, program or ideal could bring the ultimate victory for which everyone yearns. No matter how commendable and beneficial such programs or ideals, they will inevitably become occasions of dangerous and destructive idols."

"Inasmuch as we are sinners, we see ourselves as the center of all we survey. We hope, we wish, we want to have whatever we desire. And we believe that being able to have or to do what we want is freedom. We tell such lies as “we are born free,” “he’s free to choose to take revenge or to forgive,” “he’s free to get drunk or to stay sober,” “she’s free to commit suicide or to renew her hope,” “terrorists are free to kill innocent people or to refrain from doing so.” Each destructive choice is made from bondage. Drunkenness, suicide, vengeance, and mass murder are instances of bondage, not freedom. Having no restraints is not freedom but license, a state of hazardous slavery."

"When Christianity is reduced to a religion of control, an endeavor to keep order by condemning sinners are giving no word that enables us to escape our bondage, it loses all joy and love. People will naturally turn away from such an atmosphere and seek the worldliness of the Sadducee rather than the joylessness of the Pharisee."

"Christianity did not and cannot start with people who have forsaken sin. It receives them and begins to free them from the bondage that is sin."

"“Ye shall be as gods” is as flattering now as it has been since the Garden of Eden. “All is one,” “all is God,” and “all is well” is as attractive to adults as dessert before dinner is to a child. Would the realities of the Balkans, inner-city blight, troubled marriages, rebellious children, and irresponsible parents be any less difficult to solve if we all believed we were gods? On the contrary, humans trying to be gods is precisely what is wrong in the Balkans, our cities, our marriages, our children, our parents, and in ourselves."

"One can understand his caution in telling of God’s unmerited mercy, forgiveness and love, lest people get the impression that it is unnecessary to behave. This reaction to the gospel has been with us since the beginning, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” (Rom 6:1). Fear of antinomianism seems always to be a justification for Pharisaism."

"The saints testify that the deeper into sanctification one goes the clearer one sees one’s sins. The more majestic the vision of God the more unworthy sinners see themselves in his reflection. Confidence is rare in the face of the text: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; so that each one may receive good or evil according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor 5:10). Confidence before such a test may be a mere product of limited self-knowledge or a small god."

"Clergy often make the mistake of thinking, when they preach from one of the Gospels, that they are preaching good news. Most of the gospel material is not gospel but what leads up to the good news of Good Friday and Easter. A large part of the Gospels is conviction of sinners, rebuke of Israel’s unfaithfulness, disappointments of expectation, and declaring salvation as a human impossibility."

"The Sermon on the Mount is not a blue print for society or an individual’s rule of life. It is an introduction to the passion, and invitation to Good Friday."

"When Christianity is reduced to be like Jesus, it loses its grace and becomes a mere law that can be obeyed only by inflated confidence in human nature’s ability to fulfill all obligations and/or by lowering the law to levels that one can obey."

"When one begins with the false assumption of being free, all concern will be involved with how to keep such freedom in check, how to control sin. The result is the deadly religion of the Pharisee. If one begins with the assumption of bondage, the concern will be how to proclaim the gospel story in kindness, patience, and love so that people are enabled to be set free."

"One of the spiritual hazards of scholarship is that it can become Gnostic. A lifetime of submersion in conceptual and subtle complexities with an ever more sophisticated vocabulary can seduce some of the best scholars into elitism, inept pedagogy, and irrelevance."

"When we realize before God that we have deserved no forgiveness, yet are forgiven, the heavy burdens of hatred, resentment, and bitterness are removed from our souls."

"St. Paul established the guidelines for all subsequent orthodoxy that race, nationality, degree of servitude, and gender are not barriers to identification with Christ’s saving humanity, and it is an Antiochene heresy to say that any of these differences is a barrier."

"The fact is that our freedom lies in God’s will and his service. The mystery lies in the final triumph of justice, mercy, and love and how we are, or are not, a part of that victory. Our human nature persists in attempting to abolish the mystery by the lie that in our freedom it is we who choose to have the faith that saves. Scripture and the saints have unanimously insisted otherwise: God has chosen us and our faith is his gift, not our accomplishment."

"A common expression: “heaven for the climate, but hell for the company” is an indication how people react to Pharisaical Christians. They would rather be in hell with other sinners than in heaven with those who thought that they were good enough to be there."

"The trust that there will be justice is a Christian trust. But it includes justice for us as well, which none of us can endure. As long as I trust that my relative goodness needs less mercy than that of the murderous Idi Amin (genocidal dictator of Uganda), I am where Charles Wesley was prior to his conversion. This is not to say that there are no significant differences between Amin’s atrocities and my sins. But when the gold medal Olympic swimmer, Josh Davis, and I are in a boat together, fishing in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and the boat sinks, it is ultimately unimportant that Josh can swim a great deal better and longer than I can. We both drown. God’s justice is bigger than the Pacific Ocean."

"The Sermon on the Mount is the necessary, rigorous, and devastating purging of Pharisee yeast. It’s chemotherapy for the Pharisee cancer. Any confidence in one’s own righteousness before God has no authentic way to wiggle through chapters 5–7 of St. Matthew. Any genuine pilgrimage through this Sermon leaves us bereft of self-righteousness, with no pedestals from which to judge other sinners. Jesus, in these passages, leaves us in the only posture legitimately possible on Good Friday: on our knees with empty hands to receive the incomparable and desperately needed mercy of God."

"The Sermon on the Mount is a deeper unfolding of the law of Moses. It leaves no hope that human goodness can replace (or make waste of) the costly betrayal, rejection, passion, suffering, death, and resurrection of God’s action in Jesus Christ."

"The Sermon is not some elevated ideal that we are to stretch and strive for, but a window through which to see God’s kingdom. It is not a set of rules by which to live but a vision which enables us to die to self. This vision empties us of any confidence or trust in our own center. Humility is the only appropriate posture before the cost of God’s love at the crucifixion."

"Of course it’s disheartening. It’s a shame that that is the climate in this world to focus that much on that or that that would be discriminatory in that sense. But I think, you know, at the end of the day I’m really just proud of who I am and where I come from and we have never put any focus on that. We have just focused on who we are as a couple. So when you take all those extra layers away and all of that noise, I think it makes it really to just enjoy being together and tune all the rest of that out."

"It’s so interesting because we talk about it now and even then, you know, because I’m from the States, you don’t grow up with the same understanding of the royal family. While I now understand very clearly there is a global interest there, I didn’t know much about him and so the only thing that I had asked her when she said she wanted to set us up was — I had one question. I said, ‘Well, is he nice?’ Because if he wasn’t kind, then it didn’t seem like it would make sense. So we went and met for a drink then, I think, very quickly into that we said, ‘What are we doing tomorrow? We should meet again.’"

"It’s incredible, I think, you know, a.) to be able to meet her through his lens, not just with his honor and respect for her as the monarch, but the love that he has for her as his grandmother. All of those layers have been so important for me so that when I met her I had such a deep understanding and, of course, incredible respect for being able to have that time with her. And we’ve had a really — she’s an incredible woman."

"No matter what you look like, you should be taken seriously. I think it’s really great to be able to be a feminist, and be feminine. To embrace both."

"Of course Trump is divisive—think about female voters alone. I think it was in 2012, the Republican Party lost the female vote by 12 points. That’s a huge number and as misogynistic as Trump is—and so vocal about it—that’s a huge chunk of it."

"I don’t think that I would call it a whirlwind in terms of our relationship. Obviously there have been layers attached to how public it has become after we had a good five, six months almost with just privacy, which was amazing. But no, I think we were able to really have so much time just to connect and we never went longer than two weeks without seeing each other, even though we were obviously doing a long distance relationship. So it’s — we made it work."

"I've heard about the marriage, but didn't know about Markle's interests. Naturally pleased to hear it. Sounds as though she may, for many reasons, shake up the royal family."

"Suffrage is not simply about the right to vote but also about what that represents. The basic and fundamental human right of being able to participate in the choices for your future and that of your community."

"Paid leave should be a national right, rather than a patchwork option limited to those whose employers have policies in place, or those who live in one of the few states where a leave program exists"

"It’s surreal being back because I haven’t been back since I graduated, and as I am walking around I remember things like the schlep of getting to South Campus from up north. The 24-hour Burger King also definitely helped me put on the Freshman Fifteen."

"I am proud to be a woman and a feminist."

"There is a misconception that because I have worked in the entertainment industry that this would be something I would be familiar with. But even though I had been on my show for I guess six years at that point, and working before that, I have never been part of tabloid culture. I have never been in pop culture to that degree and lived relatively quiet life, even though I focus so much on my job. So that was a really stark difference out of the gate. And I think we were just hit so hard at the beginning with a lot of mistruths that I made the choice to not read anything, positive or negative, it just didn’t make sense. So instead we focused all of our energies on nurturing our relationship."

"I think for both of us, though, it was really refreshing because given that I didn’t know a lot about him, everything that I have learned about him, I learned through him as opposed to having grown up around different news stories or tabloids, whatever else. Anything I learned about him and his family was what he would share with me, and vice versa. So for both of us it was a very authentic and organic way to get to know each other."

"I try to eat vegan during the week and then have a little bit more flexibility with what I dig into on the weekends. But at the same time, it’s all about balance. Because I work out the way I do, I don’t ever want to feel deprived. I feel that the second you do that is when you start to binge on things. It’s not a diet; it’s lifestyle eating."

"​I was able to see the unshakable bonds between service men and women on the ground together, but at the same time to feel the palpable longing for family and friends while deployed."

"Women make up more than half of the world’s population and potential, so it is neither just nor practical for their voices, for our voices, to go unheard at the highest levels of decision-making. The way that we change that, in my opinion, is to mobilize girls and women to see their value as leaders, and to support them in these efforts."

"It is said that girls with dreams become women with vision. May we empower each other to carry out such vision – because it isn't enough to simply talk about equality. One must believe it. And it isn't enough to simply believe in it. One must work at it. Let us work at it. Together. Starting now."

"You’re not just voting for a woman if it’s Hillary because she’s a woman, but certainly because Trump has made it easy to see that you don’t really want that kind of world that he’s painting."

"We film Suits in Toronto and I might just stay in Canada. I mean come on, if that’s the reality we are talking about, come on, that is a game changer in terms of how we move in the world here."

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I could barely let you finish proposing. I said, ‘Can I say yes now?’"

"We should protect her privacy and not reveal too much of that."

"We've killed more Muslims than they've killed us by an awful lot, and we've invaded more Islamic nations. But we're exempted from these things?"

"I asked Michael (Bay) why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers. He told me to shut the fuck up, so that was the end of that talk. He said, 'You know, Ben, just shut up, okay? You know, this is a real plan.' I was like, 'You mean it's a real plan at NASA to train oil drillers?' And he was, 'Just shut your mouth.' See, here's where we demonstrate that, because Bruce (Willis) is going to tell the guys they did a bad job of building the drill tank. See, he's a salt-of-the-earth guy, and the NASA nerd-o-nauts don't understand his salt-of-the-earth way, his rough-and-tumble ways. Like somehow they can build rocket ships, but they don't understand what makes a good tranny. Like eight whole months, as if that's not long enough to learn to drill a hole. But in a week, we're gonna learn how to be astronauts. I mean, this a little bit of a stretch, let's face it. 'They don't know jack about drilling'? How hard can it be? Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on."

"I'm always described as "cocksure" or "with a swagger," and that bears no resemblance to who I feel like inside. I feel plagued by insecurity."

"This is a second act for me, and you give me that. I wanna thank you for this. I'm so grateful and proud. I just wanna to dedicated this (the award) to anyone else out there, who is trying to get a second act, because you can do. (Speech after receiving the British Academy Film Awards for the Best Director)"

"We must reinstate Jesus in the rightful place which belongs to Him in the church; or the church will soon be driven into the wilderness."

"Jesus aimed to impregnate the natural with the spiritual, and to resolve all our avocations into a heavenly discipline."