Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clements, wrote some wonderful American literature. After watching a documentary I decided to check out some of those challenging Christian quotes from Mark Twain (http://twainquotes.com/Christianity.html):

One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang the now flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest journey our Saviour ever performed was from here to Jerusalem – about one hundred to one hundred and twenty miles. The next longest was from here to Sidon – say about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide apart – as American appreciation of distances would naturally suggest – the places made most particularly celebrated by the presence of Christ are nearly all right here in full view, and within cannon-shot of Capernaum. Leaving out two or three three short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary county in the United States. It is as much as I can do to comprehend this stupefying fact.
– The Innocents Abroad
Collier’s Weekly Magazine for
November 3, 1900
from the Dave Thomson collection

For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till Christ comes again–which I hope he will not do; he made trouble enough before.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, January 25, 1900

I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking glass.
– “A Salutation from the 19th to the 20th Century,” December 31, 1900
There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him–early.
– Notebook, 1898

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.
– Mark Twain, a Biography

This is a Christian country. Why, so is hell. Inasmuch as “Strait is the way and narrow is the gate, and few-few-are they that enter in thereat” has had the natural effect of making hell the only really prominent Christian community in any of the worlds; but we don’t brag of this and certainly it is not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the narrow gate.
– Mark Twain in Eruption

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.
– Mark Twain in Eruption

If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be–a Christian.
– Mark Twain’s Notebook

Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence–stuffed and in a museum.
– Notebook, 1898

You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient “people say.” In all my seventy-two years and a half I have never come across such another ass as this human race is.
– Mark Twain’s Autobiography

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive…but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.
– Mark Twain, a Biography

One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang the now flourishing plant of Christianity. The longest journey our Saviour ever performed was from here to Jerusalem – about one hundred to one hundred and twenty miles. The next longest was from here to Sidon – say about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide apart – as American appreciation of distances would naturally suggest – the places made most particularly celebrated by the presence of Christ are nearly all right here in full view, and within cannon-shot of Capernaum. Leaving out two or three three short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary county in the United States. It is as much as I can do to comprehend this stupefying fact. – The Innocents Abroad
Collier’s Weekly Magazine for November 3, 1900 from the Dave Thomson collection

For England must not fall: it would mean an inundation of Russian & German political degradations which would envelop the globe & steep it in a sort of Middle-Age night & slaverly which would last till Christ comes again–which I hope he will not do; he made trouble enough before.- Letter to W. D. Howells, January 25, 1900

I bring you the stately matron named Christendom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in Kiaochow, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philipines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocrisies. Give her soap and towel, but hide the looking glass.- “A Salutation from the 19th to the 20th Century,” December 31, 1900

There has been only one Christian. They caught him and crucified him–early.- Notebook, 1898

The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetics in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve.- Mark Twain, a Biography

This is a Christian country. Why, so is hell. Inasmuch as “Strait is the way and narrow is the gate, and few-few-are they that enter in thereat” has had the natural effect of making hell the only really prominent Christian community in any of the worlds; but we don’t brag of this and certainly it is not proper to brag and boast that America is a Christian country when we all know that certainly five-sixths of our population could not enter in at the narrow gate.- Mark Twain in Eruption

I found out that I was a Christian for revenue only and I could not bear the thought of that, it was so ignoble.- Mark Twain in Eruption
If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be–a Christian.- Mark Twain’s Notebook

Christianity will doubtless still survive in the earth ten centuries hence–stuffed and in a museum.- Notebook, 1898

You can never find a Christian who has acquired this valuable knowledge, this saving knowledge, by any process but the everlasting and all-sufficient “people say.” In all my seventy-two years and a half I have never come across such another ass as this human race is.- Mark Twain’s Autobiography

The so-called Christian nations are the most enlightened and progressive…but in spite of their religion, not because of it. The Church has opposed every innovation and discovery from the day of Galileo down to our own time, when the use of anesthetic in childbirth was regarded as a sin because it avoided the biblical curse pronounced against Eve. And every step in astronomy and geology ever taken has been opposed by bigotry and superstition. The Greeks surpassed us in artistic culture and in architecture five hundred years before Christian religion was born.- Mark Twain, a Biography

Alex McCullie