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Home > 2007 > AprilChristianity Today, April, 2007  |   |  
Quotation Marks
Comments on smear campaigns, being a chaplain in Iraq, religious life in China, and other stories.



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"When you're a Christian and a middle linebacker for the Colts, you still hit people when they come over the middle. You just make sure it isn't a cheap shot."
Political strategist Ralph Reed, on why he uses negative campaign ads. He says he admits mistakes in going too far, but says, that as with Malchus's severed ear, "we have to trust Christ to heal it."

"Nothing is normal here. You try to get used to church in a war zone where people bring weapons into God's sanctuary. Once we had to leave to help with a mass casualty coming into our main aid station. Today we have no musicians because they are all out on a mission."
Charlie Fenton, chief military chaplain at the U.S. Army base outside Baquba, Iraq.

"More Chinese feel unstable and harassed by the rootless lives they lead now. The standards of morality are declining. People don't trust each other anymore. They are looking for something to anchor their lives in."
Liu Zhongyu, professor at East China Normal University, on a government-sponsored survey that found 300 million religious believers in the country. Government statistics had previously put the figure at 100 million.

"There should be no confusion that deliverance from habitual, life-controlling problems is a journey and not an event. Ted will need years of accountability to demonstrate his victory over both actions and tendencies."
Larry Stockstill, a Baton Rouge, La., pastor and overseer of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard served as pastor. Stockstill was responding to another overseer's remarks that Haggard is now "completely heterosexual" and media reports that Haggard had been "cured."

"It's baptizing the city of Los Angeles. It's a cleaning of the city."
Pearl Fuquay, one of hundreds of members of Los Angeles's United House of Prayer that received baptism by firehose in a February outdoor service. All members of the church were encouraged to take part, even those who had already been baptized.

"I promise it will be funnier than Handel, although probably not as good."
Former Monty Python member Eric Idle, who is writing an oratorio based on the Pythons' 1979 film, The Life of Brian, to capitalize on the success of Broadway's "Spamalot."

"The preachers told us it was a form of worship."
Basri, one of five Indonesian Muslims arrested (and this week, convicted) for beheading four Christian girls on Sulawesi island.

"You could say that Darwinism is one man's outdated ideology of the 19th century. And Darwinism sounds like Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism. That's a problem. … [I]t must be made clear that the modern theory of evolution is in part anti-Darwin. Darwin did not, for instance, take into account the principle of evolution by cooperation."
German evolutionary biologist Ulrich Kutschera, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science on why biologists should stop defending and promoting Charles Darwin.



Related Elsewhere:

Earlier Quotation Marks columns are available from the March 2007, February 2007, January 2007, December 2006, November 2006, October 2006, and earlier issues of Christianity Today.

Christianity Today's Weblog offers a quote of the day.





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Displaying 1 - 3 of 7 comments.See all comments
Gary Sweeten   Posted: March 24, 2007 9:13 AM
I am very happy that Larry Stockstill has spoken up about what it takes to bring "Substantial Healing" to folks with "Substantial Problems". The ireesponsible and confusing statements by those who seem to think all changes are instant and complete are deeply damaging to people who struggle with life controlling problems. Any Pastor who is awake knows his members struggle and relapse along with times of "victory" and sucees when the try to change eating habits, smoking, anger, sex, Bible study, and all other issues. Why are they misleading people by saying that change is easy, quick and permanent? Perhaps rhy have a chronic problem with misleading people just can't change.

Stephen Leonard   Posted: March 22, 2007 12:05 PM
Commenter David Johnston paints others with a such a broad stroke it makes one wonder if he knows what righteousness is, or if he knows the God and Christ revealed in Scripture. Possibly he needs to review the platforms of both political parties and compare them with the teaching and commandments of the Triune God of the Bible. We're all sinners, as is Ralph Reed, and our President, George Bush, but that has not kept them from proposing and supporting policies that defend the sanctity of life and marriage, and pursue the commandment to deliver and protect the oppressed especially when one bears the responsibility of power to do so.

Arlyn Plowman   Posted: March 22, 2007 5:34 PM
The challenge for Christians called to advocate is to practice what Paul preached in the fourth chapter of Ephesians: 14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

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