Writing my own novels in the '90s...I never imagined that in ten years, science and rationality would require explanation and defense in a world rocked and ruled by religious fervor.
George Bush and John Ashcroft were religious in a scary way, but the rational among us could always take heart that, deep down, the Bush administration was more cynical than messianic.
In earlier times, so many people sang much more. You know as a kid you'd go to some kind of religious training and or summer camp or whatever it was and you'd learn to sing a lot of songs.
Hamas murders not only Israelis, but also Palestinians whose political stance is different from that which its group promotes; that is, its radical religious outlook in which Islam is the solution to the world's problems.
I think it's always dangerous to make political arguments in a religiously ideological way. And it's very dangerous to treat as traitors to the American nation those who think differently.
I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.
So the history of discovery, particularly cosmic discovery, but discovery in general, scientific discovery, is one where at any given moment, there's a frontier. And there tends to be an urge for people, especially religious people, to assert that ac...
I, for one, am quite willing to join the 'forgive, forget and move on' crowd, but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the famil...
Any musical person who has never heard a Negro congregation under the spell of religious fervor sing these old songs has missed one of the most thrilling emotions which the human heart may experience.
The marriage of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored in all cultures and by every religious faith. It's in this institution that children are meant to be nurtured. We know this after thousands of years of human experience.
The cross reveals that we're called to a deeper, fuller experience of what it means to be alive and open to new dimensions of life which our religious boundaries - creeds, atonement theologies - have kept us from experiencing.
A musical, like most religions, provides the audience or followers with a sense of belonging. Religious services, on the other hand, with their staged performances, invigorating songs, popular wisdom and shared experience, are almost a form of commun...
Funny you mention my dinner parties when I have just suggested that inviting close friends over to share a meal with candlelight and wine at your table could be a form of religious experience for some people. To me it's a form of sacrament.
For me, religious festivals and celebrations have become an important way to teach my children about how we can transform living with diversity from the superficial 'I eat ethnic food', to something dignified, mutually respectful and worthwhile.
Whereas religious prayers sing of peace and harmony, religion has divided human beings through an atrocious history of enmity and bloodshed. Yet, behind the veil of superficiality and hypocrisy, I always believed in the inherent beauty of God that li...
My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of govern...
The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.
Researchers consistently find that most older volunteers, when compared to older nonvolunteers, have fewer functional and physical impairments, overall better health, higher life satisfaction and less depression. In addition, they attend religious se...
For most of American history, of course, the important religious divides were between denominations - not just between Protestants and Catholics and Jews but between Lutherans and Episcopalians and Southern Baptists and the other endlessly fine-tuned...
If you look at slavery across all human history, and you sort of strip away the packaging, whether it's racialized or religious-based, and you look at the actual core of the slavery, it's one person completely controlling another one.
I wanted to have more songs with religious backgrounds. The Christmas record has strong, traditional hymns, but it also has a song called 'Christmas in Heaven' about missing someone that you love that's passed on, and wondering what's going on up the...
