Quotes About Religion

Archaeologists have made discoveries that challenge fundamental traditions of Judaism as well as those of Christianity and Islam.

Christians are not in bondage to do things as the world does, and moreover, the traditions and rudiments of men are not necessary to honor God.

Religious traditions are in a constant state of development and renewed self-understanding.

We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten.

The Hindu nationalists see a religion near perfection save for the tampering of Muslims and Christians. So they fall upon these groups, rather than try to reform their own practices by drawing on India's sophisticated philosophical traditions.

Regrettably, many religious traditions exacerbate our innate proclivity to divide the world into two clearly demarcated camps, and in doing so, this fans the flames of intolerance and hate.

The power that religion has is that you think nothing is random: If there's a tragedy in my life, that's God testing me or sending me a message.

Our bodies are at once the receiving and transmitting stations for life itself. It is the highest wisdom to recognize this fact and train our bodies to render them sensitive and responsive to nature. art and religion.

I was born and bred a Catholic. I was brought up a very strong Catholic - I practiced in a seminary for four years, from eleven to fourteen, and trained to be a Catholic priest. So I was very steeped in all that.

You should always take what I say about religion with a grain of salt, because the 7 deadly sins are more like my seven daily activities. I try to check them all off at least once a day. All of them except gluttony; my trainer keeps that under control.

I was raised as a Catholic and as an Ismaili. My father felt that I should have some training in Islam, but my mother was a Catholic, so really, I was raised with both.

We have a priest at Inter Milan and a chapel at the training ground. That is where I was baptised and confirmed into the church.

In Japan, the people preserve their temples for their exquisite beauty, and there are a great many sincere Buddhists; but China is irreligious: a nation of atheists or agnostics, or slaves of impious superstitions. In an extended tramp among temples, I have not seen a single male worshiper or a thing to please the eye.

To restore the American experiment in democratic self-government, religious believers need to redouble their civic efforts. For without our active participation in politics, the government will continue to trample on our rights. The Constitution does not prevent people of faith from being active in politics.

Now celebrity has taken on a holy status all of its own, and we look to the stars to provide us with the transcendental experience that was once achieved through religion.

I went to church every Sunday and sang in the choir. But for all that the church gave me - for all that it represented belonging, love and community - it also shut its doors to me as a gay person. That experience left me with the lifelong desire to explore the power of religion to transform lives or destroy them.

Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has been to see how little actual spiritual curiosity there is in so many people.

My grandmother and mother were from Italy, so I was raised Catholic. That kind of just meant going to church on Easter and Christmas. I saw a radical transformation in my family when they started going to a Christian church. I watched them fall in love with God.

Then, when my dad was diagnosed with cancer, I started to notice this crazy transformation, where he fell desperately in love with Jesus.

Where I came from, it was more shocking to be an atheist than to be transgender.

People who study the way religions develop have shown that if you have a charismatic teacher, and you don't have an institution develop around that teacher within about a generation to transmit succession within the group, the movement just dies.

Every first Friday, my father would go to confession, and he took very seriously the faith he would someday transmit to us.

But every perceived difference, no matter how slight, can become an argument for Otherness- money, education, skin color, religion, political party, hairstyle, anything. Enemies are enlivening. Evil-doers, jihadists, barbarians. Hatred is exciting and contagious and conveniently eliminates all ambiguity. You just spew your own garbage onto someone else.

Only God is perfect. Men are not.