Daily Inspiration Quote by Josiah Strong

A jab disguised as pastoral concern, Josiah Strong is arguing that official religion doesn’t just corrupt politics; it anesthetizes faith. The phrasing is clinical and bodily: the “body of Christ” becomes a living organism, and “union” with the State isn’t marriage so much as a neurological event - paralysis. He’s not primarily worried about doctrine getting distorted. He’s worried about Christianity becoming safe, salaried, and ceremonial, with believers reduced to inert limbs attached to a government spine.

The “There/Here” structure matters. Strong is writing from the American Protestant confidence of the late 19th century, when the United States liked to cast itself as the modern antidote to Old World rot. “There” is Europe: established churches, national hierarchies, inherited privilege. “Here” is the U.S., where disestablishment and denominational competition were celebrated as engines of spiritual vitality. The subtext is that religious liberty isn’t just a political arrangement; it’s a revival strategy. Without state backing, churches must persuade rather than presume, convert rather than administer.

But the line also carries Strong’s era-specific blind spots. His “spiritual life and power” language echoes revivalist Protestantism, and Strong himself was entangled with Social Gospel activism and the moral certainty that often traveled with Anglo-American expansion. So the quote doubles as a national self-compliment: America, by avoiding established religion, supposedly protects the authentic Christian core. It’s an argument for separation of Church and State that flatters the speaker’s country and warns the church: security can be the first step toward spiritual rigor mortis.