Church Politics Quotes

“The ecclesiastical governors of the Christians were taught to unite the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove; but as the former was refined, so the latter was insensibly corrupted, by the habits of government. In the church as well as in the world, the persons who were placed in any public station rendered themselves considerable by their eloquence and firmness, by their knowledge of mankind, and by their dexterity in business; and while they concealed from others, and perhaps from themselves, the secret motives of their conduct, they too frequently relapsed into all the turbulent passions of active life, which were tinctured with an additional degree of bitterness and obstinacy from the infusion of spiritual zeal.”
― Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume I

“We sometimes think, and even like to think, that the two greatest exertions that have influenced mankind, religion and science, have always been historical enemies, intriguing us in opposite directions. But this effort at special identity is loudly false. It is not religion but the church and science that were hostile to each other. And it was rivalry, not contravention. Both were religious. They were two giants fuming at each other over the same ground. Both proclaimed to be the only way to divine revelation.”
― Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

“It is too easy to call the church political. The nature of fallen people is political. And they happen to make up the church. So the church is innately political. This cannot be helped. But it can be navigated if not always stomached.”
― Mea McMahon

“The exercise of power became a constant feature of those years. And those who disagreed with Pell on matters theological or spiritual felt thoroughly marginalised. As the 2000s wore on, it was not just a case of Pell necessarily exercising the power himself, but that he had remade the Australian Church in his image. Dissent was actively discouraged, discussion about subjects he had declared off limits was avoided. (p.115)”
― Louise Milligan, Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell