Quotes About Religion

It just seems helpful to admit that Christianity is as complicated and conflicted as any other religion, with groups of followers who can believe in the unity of their faith even as they refuse Communion to one another.

Somewhere along the line we bought—or were sold—the idea that God is chiefly interested in religion. We believed that God's home was

Here is a law as reliable as gravity: The degree to which we believe our faith is makes us human is the same degree with which we will question the humanity of those who do not share our faith.

Here is a law as reliable as gravity: the degree to which we believe our faith is what makes us human is the same degree to which we will question the humanity of those who do not share our faith.

The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor. That self-canceling feature of my religion is one of the things I like best about it. Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.

Another favorite hymn mourns Israel's lonely exile from the Son of God. Another years for a future in which every knee will bow to Jesus. Another urges Christian soldiers onward, marching as to war. When I imagined singing it with a Muslim or Hindu student sitting next to me, my voice dried up. It was a song for insiders, not outsiders. If I had learned anything from going on all of those class field trips, it was how religious language sounds to outsiders, and how much that matters.

AS IMPORTANT AS IT IS to mark the places where we meet God, I worry about what happens when we build a house for God.

Is Christian faith primarily about being Christian or becoming truly human?

Greenspan calls this "spiritual bypassing"—using religion to dodge the dark emotions instead of letting it lead us to embrace those dark angels as the best, most demanding spiritual teachers we may ever know.

What I see here, what I feel here is that people in your world believe spirituality isn't distant. It's close and real. Religion seems born in the home, stays in the home. I mean, the services are even held in the home. And there's not one person in charge, one speaker set above the others. It's farmers and carpenters, and well, just average folk speaking spontaneously about the message they find in the Bible. [...] A message from the heart to the heart.

It was a real surprise to me to come across the evidence that Christianity might once have been a danced religion. Certainly, some of the early church leaders thought this was great and spoke of what seems to have been circle dancing, perhaps around an altar.

Still, calling on god seems to be a human reflex that has more to do with terror than faith.

This is the Italy I dreamed of, saints, snakes, gypsies, cutthroats in a baroque tutu of religion and sin.

Justice for the Hebrews meant . . . making sure that all persons . . . can even worship any gods they choose [Katherine Patterson, "Metaphors to Live By"].

Legalism is man-centered; discipline is God-centered.

We are guilty of idolatry every time we think about God in any way other than the way Scripture portrays Him.

I used to think religion was just more of the same thing. Dump responsibility on the big guy. Now I see an importance in that. It's a relief to accept that not everything is under your control.

Theology being the work of males, original sin was traced to the female.

Once the divinity of doctrine has been questioned there is no return to perfect faith.

The safest way to live is first, inherit money, second be born without a taste for liquor, third, have a legitimate job that keeps you busy, fourth, marry a wife who will cooperate in your sexual peculiarities, fifth, join some big church, sixth, don't live too long.

Women were considered the snare of the Devil, while at the same time the cult of the Virgin made one woman the central object of love and adoration.

That the Jews were unholy was a belief so ingrained by the Church that the most devout persons were the harshest in their antipathy, none more so than St. Louis. If the Jews were unholy, then killing and looting them was holy work.

Only the Church offered an organizing principle, which was the reason for its success, for society cannot bear anarchy.

When a pope's election could not be explained rationally, it was attributed to the Holy Ghost.