Doubt, rather than faith, is high among the causes of the religious boom. And the church's response to this current situation will reveal, better than anything else, our faith in God - or our faithlessness. If we churchmen interpret such pervasive doubt as a threat, then we will do as the church has done so often in the past we will substitute the church for God, and make our church-centered activities into an ersatz kingdom of God. Our faithlessness will be evident in the easy paraphrase of the hard truth of the gospel, and in the lapse from the critical loyalty that God requires of us, into the vague and corrupting sentimentalism that has so marred American Protestantism. Or the church can interpret the present religious situation as a promise, as God's recall of His people to a new reformation. Our faithfulness to God-in-Christ will be manifest in the willingness to be honest with ourselves and with the gospel. Then we may view the church, not as an end in itself, but as the point of departure into the world for which the Son of God died. Which will it be.
Quotes about sentimentalism (6 Quotes)
We have to repent of our blindness, our lukewarmness, and our disobedience, and turn back to the central truth of Christ as Lord and Saviour an ethical system will not save us here, nor a timid sentimentalism, nor an excited emotional return, nor a dilet.
Newspapermen, as journalists used to be called, have long been charged with the sin of cynicism. a characterization that many of us encourage to deflect attention from our far more widespread flaw, incorrigible sentimentalism.
Do not feed children on maudlin sentimentalism or dogmatic religion give them nature
Sentimentalism is the working off on yourself of feelings you haven't really got.
I think there ought to be a club in which preachers and journalists could come together and have the sentimentalism of the one matched with the cynicism of the other. That ought to bring them pretty close to the truth.