How to use heresy in a sentence

19 example sentences · noun

Heresy means a doctrine held by a member of a religion at variance or conflict with established religious beliefs. Example: “St. Augustine was the hammer of heresies.”

Examples of heresy by meaning

nounA doctrine held by a member of a religion at variance or conflict with established religious beliefs.

Heresy meant deliberate departure from the accepted doctrines of the church.1968, History of Western Civilization, edited by Heyes, Baldwin & Cole, p.47. Macmillan. Library of Congress 67–13596

nounA controversial or unorthodox opinion held by a member of a group, as in politics, philosophy or science.

I'm going to declare a heresy for you.1985 April 17, Frank Herbert, 15:58 from the start, in Frank Herbert speaking at UCLA 4/17/1985, UCLACommStudies, archived from the...

More sentences with heresy

St. Augustine was the hammer of heresies.From the entry hammer
For Erasmus's anticoercive heresy was about baptism, not about the state.2013, John Keown, Robert P. George, Reason, Morality, and Law: The Philosophy of John Finnis, →ISBN, page lxi. From the entry anticoercive
The best mask for moral heresy is one of pretended sanctity.2012, Anton LaVey, Ragnar Redbeard, Might is Right. From the entry wiseling
Yesterday's heresy—the sort of thing that made orthodox theologians spit feathers—becomes today's tourist attraction.2011, Jonathan Wright, Heretics: The Creation of Christianity from the Gnostics to the Modern Church, →ISBN, page 258. From the entry spit feathers
Pessimism was heresy in Bushland—the relentlessly upbeat Karl Rove wouldn’t hear of it.2004, Evan Thomas, with reporting by the staff of Newsweek, Election 2004: How Bush Won and What You Can Expect in the Future, →ISBN, page…. From the entry Bushite
Witchcraft, heresy, and counterfeiting formed a triptych in popular imagination and in the law.1994, John L. Brooke, The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644–1844, →ISBN, page 115. From the entry triptych
No heresy in our time is more noxious than trying to implant ochlocracy in the Church.1993, Jorge Amado, translated by Gregory Rabassa, The War of the Saints, Bantam Books, →ISBN, page 117, →ISBN. From the entry ochlocrat
The 'art or mystery of printing' could spread sedition and heresy more perturbingly than word of mouth.1978, Peter H Sutcliffe, The Oxford University Press: an informal history. From the entry perturbingly
It would not only help civilize street urchins, but also overcome the heresies of the Catholic church.1977, Leonard L. Richards, “The Search for Order”, in “The Turbulent North”, in Carl N[eumann] Degler, editor, The Advent of American…. From the entry two birds—one stone
Governor Winthrop attributed the heresies of Mistress Anne Hutchinson to Grindletonian doctrines.1972, Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down, Folio Society, published 2016, page 63. From the entry Grindletonian
Local heresies from the central conception of the good life are inevitable.1957 autumn, Norton E[nneking] Long, “Aristotle and the Study of Local Government”, in Alvin Johnson, editor, Social Research […], volume…. From the entry subpolity
'You talk heresy, smoothskin,' the barbarian growled.2018, Michael Moorcock, Barbarians of Mars, →ISBN, page 43. From the entry smoothskin
But of course, heresy and nonbelief are hardly comparable crimes.1988 January 15, Name withheld, “Movie Politics”, in Chicago Reader. From the entry nonbelief
The Apocryphal Acts of John expresses the Gnostic and docetist heresy of distinguishing the Cosmic Christ from Jesus the Christ.1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, London…. From the entry docetist
Admittedly, I discussed race more than typical History of Christianity survey courses, but my discussion of race referred to early-modern heresies, antisemitism, and antimuslim campaigns not modern blackness.2017, David Evans, Tobin Miller Shearer, “A Principled Pedagogy for Religious Educators”, in Religious Education, volume 112, number 1…. From the entry antimuslim
For many Muslim scholars and mystics, however, the Ṣūfism of al-Ḥallāj clearly steps out of the bounds of Islāmic orthodoxy, entering the abode of heterodoxy and even heresy.2012, John Andrew Morrow, Religion and Revolution, page 212. From the entry Islāmic
The Mutazilīs, in a counterpolemic, allege that the argument advanced by the Asharīs is implicitly a backhanded and retrospective way of imputing heresy to the early community of believers.2006, Ebrahim Moosa, Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination, →ISBN, page 196. From the entry backhanded

Meaning of heresy

noun A doctrine held by a member of a religion at variance or conflict with established religious beliefs.
noun A controversial or unorthodox opinion held by a member of a group, as in politics, philosophy or science.

Full definition of heresy

Questions about heresy in a sentence

How do you use heresy in a sentence?: Heresy is used as a noun. For example: “St. Augustine was the hammer of heresies.”
What is a short sentence with heresy?: “'You talk heresy, smoothskin,' the barbarian growled.”
What does heresy mean?: Heresy means a doctrine held by a member of a religion at variance or conflict with established religious beliefs.

Adapted from Wiktionary: heresy (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this page: “How to use heresy in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/heresy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.