Quotes About Religious

Under the direction of the patriarch Niketas (741–775), iconoclasts removed figurative portraits (probably saints' busts) from the council hall of the church of Hagia Sophia and replaced them with plain crosses.31 Already, by 743, Constantine V had rebuilt the earthquake-damaged church of Hagia Eirene and ordered its apse decorated with a simple, unadorned cross. Somewhat surprisingly, this cross has remained its sole decoration to this day.

Laws requiring a certain frequency of church attendance, the taking of Communion, and baptism of infants soon appeared all across the Lutheran areas of Germany. So did laws excluding all religious nonconformists, especially Jews.

the Reformations resulted in state churches that were even more repressive of individuals than the Catholic Church ever attempted to be. The Reformations did not contribute anything to religious freedom and tolerance; to the contrary. Finally, Martin Luther's vicious anti-Semitism played a significant role in legitimating the Holocaust, just as William Shirer claimed.

About all that Lutherans, Calvinists, Anglicans and Anabaptists agreed upon was the divinity of Jesus and the wickedness of the pope.

To sum up: the Reformations resulted in state churches that were even more repressive of individuals than the Catholic Church ever attempted to be. The Reformations did not contribute anything to religious freedom

Liberation Theology led nowhere because it was neither a revolutionary nor a religious movement, but involved a weak, self-cancelling mixture of each.

People who are always in praise and pursuit of the beautiful are an embarrassment, like people who make a constant display of their religious faith.

I invoke the other's protection, the other's return: let the other appear, take me away, like a mother who comes looking for her child, from this worldly brilliance, from this social infatuation, let the other restore to me the religious intimacy, the gravity of the lover's world. (X once told me that love had protected him against worldliness: coteries, ambitions, advancements, interferences, alliances, secessions, roles, powers: love had made him into a social catastrophe, to his delight.)

A lifelong Methodist, he had always viewed religious excess with a certain irony, having once told a clutch of ministers that America boasted three parties: Democrats, Republicans, and Methodists.

says he 'welcomes sinners and eats with them.'14 Now, think about that. In his culture, to dine with someone meant to offer friendship. The word welcome in Greek means that he took great pleasure in them. Jesus doesn't delight in sin, but he liked being around these people, maybe because they were well aware of their depravity, unlike many of the religious folks who masked it with hypocrisy.

So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.

One night above all other nights is the most important for a Jew you and that is the religious holiday of Passover. The Passover is celebrated in memory of the deliverance from the bondage of Egypt. The Egyptian's, the original oppressors, had become the symbol of all the oppressors of all the Jews throughout the ages.

If the skulls of the people who have been killed in the name of God, Jesus, and Allah in religious wars and persecutions could be piled in one place, they would form an immense mountain. If we tallied the cost in human suffering for the belief in monotheism, we might not think of the other religions of the world as primitive.

No part of the regular school day was set aside for religious worship…. Jefferson did not permit the room belonging to the university to be used for religious purposes.

For nonsense, as Chesterton liked to tell us, is a way of looking at existence that is akin to religious humility and wonder.

In our society, marriage is not simply a governmental institution; it is a religious institution as well, today's decision might change the former, but it cannot change the latter.

All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

For [Karl] Marx it is socialist society which realizes "concretely" the religious principles of equality, brotherly love, and freedom.

Human society has dense borders - economic, religious and cultural - inculcated from an early age. We hate change.

Our society is pluralistic. We who accept the privilege of membership in that society agree to respect the people's right to live by their own religious precepts.

The solution for mankind is of a spiritual nature. It is not a political or religious solution. It's the ability to love each other. That's the only solution I see.

I Am More Spiritual Than Religious; Besides I Am Not A Fanatic

Our tolerance for forms of religious expression we disagree with is a precise barometer of our own spiritual security.

I would call myself more spiritual than religious.