Buddha, Sidhartha Gautama, himself kept denying his divinity but that was ignored.
A "church" is God's house so "Buddha" and "church" haven't anything to do with each other.
But I like your quote from him. There was no writing at the time of Buddha, so ALL his sayings were from an ORAL tradition. Nothing wrong with that but WRITTEN traditions are often in error so I imagine that many of the Enlightened One's sayings are...non-traditional.
Instead of ‘church’ perhaps a better word would be ‘sect’.
There seems to be debate as to whether Buddhism should count as a religion, because religion seems to involve (for some definitions) belief in some superhuman class of beings, or in the case of atheism, non-belief.
Buddhism seeks to avoid the consideration of superhuman beings.
No doubt there are many errors in the teachings, but a lot of Buddhism seems to be created long after Buddha because it works. Northern School practices, such as meditation, perhaps are in this category.
There is a story about an airborne soldier who was really afraid to jump. His sergeant took pity on him, and told him that if his main didn’t open to use his reserve. The soldier was still scared. The Sergeant said, if the reserve doesn’t open, then say “Buddha, Buddha, Buddha”.
The soldier said, “Sergeant, I can’t do that, I am a Baptist!”
The Sergeant said, I told you what to do, so be brave and do as you have been trained.
So the airborne soldier jumped. As luck would have it, his main chute didn’t open. He pulled his reserve, and that cigarette rolled and the ground was coming up very quickly.
The soldier remembered! “Buddha, Buddha, Buddha!” A great hand came out of a cloud and he landed softly on it. He was slowly lowered to the ground. The soldier was greatful but startled. “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed.
The hand rolled over and slammed him into the ground....