Quotes about Religion

Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of KNOWING Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.

Whenever religion shows contempt or disregards the rights of persons, even under the noblest pretexts, it draws us away from reality and God.

The religion of cheerfulness, as Father Brown reminds us, is a cruel religion, and maybe the best way not to go mad is not to mind too much if you do go mad."2

The tendency in legalistic religion is to mistrust God, to mistrust others, and consequently, to mistrust ourselves.

His consistent banging on the drums of God's unconditional love sounded at a time when many of us had about "had it up to here" with religion and church and, probably most importantly, ourselves. We were the tired, poor, self-hating huddled masses yearning to be free, and along came a patchwork preacher who grinned and said, "You already are. Abba loves you. Let's go get some chocolate ice cream.

From that moment on, no Christian can ever say one form of prayer is as good as another or one religion is as good as another.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.

Instead of expanding our capacity for life, joy, and mystery, religion often contracts it. As systematic theology advances, the sense of wonder declines. The paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities of life are codified, cabined, and confined within the pages of a leather-bound book. Instead of a love story the Bible is viewed as a detailed manual of directions.

We walk through life as if we had swallowed an Easter candle, rigid and tense, always afraid that things will get out of hand. This reaction is just as harmful as open rebellion, or even more so, because it blocks our way to religious maturation.

I've yet to meet anyone who has come closer to Jesus by forsaking the church.

Is there any conflict between science and religion? There is no conflict in the mind of God, but often there is conflict in the minds of men.

The Church has much improved within a few years; but the Press is almost, without exception, corrupt. I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence, than the Church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaoer.