Kierkegaard on Nominal Christians

Søren Kierkegaard

"There arose in Christendom a class of Christians so strange and curious that they might be exhibited for money in a sideshow. For in the course of time there emerged in established Christendom freethinkers and other spirits of that ilk, who attacked, insulted, derided Christianity worse than the worst pagan mockers had done. But as these men were nevertheless born in Christendom and were living in Christendom where all are Christians; and as they themselves presumably did not consider it worth the trouble, or perhaps accounted it too great a sacrifice, to renounce the name of Christian; and as Christendom, by reason of its extraordinary extension no doubt, did not possess elasticity enough to shake off from it such Christians as these - so these men continued to call themselves Christians."