When religious groups in a conflict eliminate the personal element and perceive themselves as representatives of collectives, heir actions tend to become more "radical" and "merciless." (Ch.3, by Jaco Cilliers, p. 48)
Chastity ... has, even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage of the rarest.
When we carry out our "religious duties" we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last water comes, it may find them ready.
If you tell people you talk to God, they'll think you're religious, but if you say God talks to you, it's ten to one they'll think you're crazy.
The essence of a mature human being in religious terms is the ability to see, to be aware of others' suffering and to be touched by it.
If I replace the word God with the word nature, I am far more at ease with the whole religious enterprise.
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.
In every historical period, the religious groups that grow most rapidly are those that set believers at odds with the surrounding culture.
...and then I remembered this basic religious principle that God isn't there to take away our suffering or our pain but to fill it with his or her presence...
Not matter what your sacred or religious book is, it's not how well you know the book, it's how well you're in alignment with the author.
In every ancient religious and sacred text, faith is a verb; a thing to be demonstrated. It is in modern days that we have diluted faith from an act to a philosophy.
Old religious dogma attempts to convince you that you are on a journey to God, then makes you pay tolls along that roadway.
Like most people born into a religious tradition, my faith was as familiar to me as my skin, and just as disregardable.
Whether one believes or not, religion is as real a force in the life of the world as economics or politics, and it demands fair-minded attention. Even if you think the entire religious enterprise is at best misguided and at worst counterproductive, i...
Each voice carries a portion of value, no matter how unpalatable or distasteful that voice may be: no one person, government, ideology, transnational, or religious institution can own and dominate the whole.
The cloning procedure is similar to IVF. The only difference is that the DNA of sperm and egg would be replaced by DNA from an adult cell. What law or principle - secular, humanist, or religious - says that one combination of genetic material in a fl...
No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We're not just service providers.
I come from a strong religious background, and I had a very conservative upbringing. So I was nervous, and confused. Here I was wanting to be Whitney Houston, so why did I have to dress in lingerie to do that? I didn't get it.
I thought I was very pretty without hair. Naked, more honest somehow. No glamor, just bald old me. I seldom wore wigs or hats. But some people must have thought I was an exhibitionist or a religious fanatic.
What the printing press is to Christianity in the 16th century, that's what the Internet is doing to Islam now. It has opened up the monopoly over the interpretation of Islam that used to solely belong to the religious class.
I think that people in the Bible Belt are far less monolithically religious than many people imagine. There are lots and lots of people who are free-thinking, secularists, or atheists in the so-called Bible Belt.
