Frederica Mathewes-Green Quotations

You can latch onto theological ideas that are, in fact, not accurate, and refuse to let them go. I think we've seen this a few times in church history.

Women and men just aren't that different. Oh, we're different in some intriguing ways, and it can be fun to band together for all-gal or all-guy projects. But when it comes to the tragic mess Christ came to heal, we're pretty much the same.

The Church is the safe place to be. I can safely believe everything the Church teaches. It will not harm me, and in fact it will equip me to grow and grow and have a better and better ability to experience that direct presence.

Lots of Orthodox go to church every Sunday but don't know much about the faith. Yet they know that there is something that they don't know much about.

I know by experience that Jesus Christ is a very powerful spirit - I know by experience that he is probably the most powerful spirit in the universe. I know by experience he is not a mere human being. He is something beyond that.

Women don't need to have our own little corner of the church where we can feel precious or, alternatively, cranky. In every essential thing, as far as life in Christ is concerned, the differences between men and women are irrelevant.

The Orthodox hierarchy doesn't have the kind of power that high-ranking clergy do in other churches. There isn't even a worldwide governing board to hold all the various Orthodox bodies together.

The New Testament Scriptures are full of references to the malice of the devil, but we generally overlook them. I think this is because our idea of salvation is that Christ died on the cross to pay His Father the debt for our sins.

The devil's main purpose is not to scare us, in a horror-movie way; when we're scared of him, we're alert to him, and that might undermine his plans. Instead, he wants to quietly, subtly lure us into stepping away from God.

The Church's teaching isn't an official statement, but the cumulative understanding of all the people who have loved and experienced Jesus through time.