Orthodox christianity Quotes

“Whisper it softly, but many Greeks, including clergy, welcomed the Ottomans. On the whole Muslim rulers have been much more tolerant of infidels than their Christian counterparts have. As long as their subjects paid taxes and provided recruits to the harems and armies of the Sultan, they could have whatever religion they liked. Only when they joined religion with revolt did scimitars and stakes come out. Orthodox Christianity was under far greater threat from the Roman variety imposed by Venetians and Franks and Catalans. Jews too were safer from pogrom under the crescent than the cross. This is not a line of thought that goes down well in Greek company.”

“Among the tastemakers and power brokers and intellectual agenda setters of late-twentieth-century America, orthodox Christianity was completely déclassé.”

“The supernatural Christ of the New Testament, the god of orthodox Christianity, is dead. But priestcraft lives and conjures up the ghost of this dead god to frighten and enslave the masses of mankind. The name of Christ has caused more persecutions, wars, and miseries than any other name has caused. The darkest wrongs are still inspired by it. The wails of anguish that went up from Kishinev, Odessa, and Bialystok still vibrate in our ears.”

“At the same time, we may not as a culture be fond of old-fashioned supernaturalism, but we certainly like spirituality in whatever form we can get it. I suspect that if anyone other than Jesus (Krishna, say, or Buddha) were suddenly put forward as being due for a second coming, millions in our postsecular society would embrace such a thing uncritically, leaving Enlightenment rationalism huffing and puffing in the rear. We are a puzzled and confused generation, embracing any and every kind of nonrationalism that may offer us a spiritual shot in the arm while lapsing back into rationalism (in particular, the old modernist critiques) whenever we want to keep traditional or orthodox Christianity at bay.”