Established Religion Quotes

The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science. The thing that really does use the secular arm is Science. And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen - that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the government will really help it to persecute its heretics…I am not frightened of the word 'persecution'…It is a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof - then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Jonathan Trumbull, as Governor of Connecticut, in official proclamation: 'The examples of holy men teach us that we should seek Him with fasting and prayer, with penitent confession of our sins, and hope in His mercy through Jesus Christ the Great Redeemer." Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer, March 9, 1774'

Samuel Chase, while Chief Justice of Maryland,1799 (Runkel v Winemiller) wrote: 'By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion...'

The Pennsylvania Supreme court held (Updegraph v The Commonwealth), 1824: 'Christianity, general Christianity, is and always has been a part of the common law...not Christianity founded on any particular religious tenets; not Christianity with an established church, but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men...'

In Massachusetts, the Constitution reads: 'Any every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law: and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.'
Samuel Adams, as Governor of Massachusetts in a Proclamation for a Day of Fasting and Prayer, 1793: 'we may with one heart and voice humbly implore His gracious and free pardon through Jesus Christ, supplicating His Divine aid . . . [and] above all to cause the religion of Jesus Christ, in its true spirit, to spread far and wide till the whole ear ~ Samuel Adams

It is a terrible commentary on Christian civilization that the longest period of slave-raiding known to history was initiated by the action of Spain, Portugal, France, Holland and Britain, after the Christian faith had for more than a thousand years been the established religion of Europe. ~ H.A.L. Fisher

Neo-Darwinists ask us to believe in things not seen. We're not supposed to have an established religion in America, but we do, and it's called Darwinism . ~ Ben Stein

Established religion is like established anything else. It's easy. It offers answers you can get prepackaged and predigested, right off the shelf, and the same for everybody. No thinking required, much less hard thinking. Like a board game
you follow the rules, you go to heaven. That's why established religion gets the assholes. They aren't "good" Christians. I rather doubt they ever gave up a thing they valued for any reason or anybody. People like that aren't good anything. What they believe, they believe because it's appropriate; it's what everybody believes because it's the right thing to do
in short, it's easy. Our way isn't easy. We get assholes too, but they usually give up and get out, or get it knocked out of them. ~ Mercedes Lackey

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society. ~ Thomas Jefferson

At present there is not a single credible established religion in the world. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Without cultural indoctrination, all of us would be atheists. Or, more specifically, while many may dream up their own gods as did our ancestors, they would certainly not be 'Christian' or 'Jewish' or 'Muslim' or any other established religion. That's because, without the texts and churches and familial instruction, there are no independent evidences that any specific religion is true. Outside of the Bible, how would one hear of Jesus? The same goes for every established religion. ~ David G. McAfee

I am, perhaps, too intellectual, too modern, for my own comfort! How lovely it would be to sink into the warm comfort of established religion. ~ Lisa Tuttle

If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth? ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

There is not one single established religion that an intelligent, educated man can believe. ~ George Bernard Shaw

And so one may be without connection with any church, and even without connection with any established religion, and yet be in spirit, hence in reality, a much truer Christian than hosts of those who profess to be His most ardent followers, as indeed Jesus Himself so many times says. "By their fruits ye shall know them," said He. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." ~ Ralph Waldo Trine

By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing, and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty. ~ Samuel Chase

The signs of the antichrist spirit are clear. They emerge in this fashion: A significant minority then an actual majority, of the people in a society begin to throw off the restraints of history, then the restraints of written law, then accepted standards of morality, then established religion, and, finally God Himself. ~ Pat Robertson

The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. ~ Hugo Black

As on enquiring agnostic one seeks, not the smugness of atheism, not the blindness of idolatry - nor even the complacency of established religion - but the intelligent quest of the unknowing, in humility and with a clarity of mind ~ Andrew Ashdown

They don't understand that religion and science are there to serve different purposes. We need science to understand how everything on this planet and beyond works – us, nature, everything we see around us. That's fact – no one with a working brain can question that. But we also need religion. Not for ridiculous counter-theories about things that science can prove. We need it for something else, to fill a different kind of need. The need for meaning. It's a basic need we have, as humans. And it's a need that's beyond the realm of science. Your scientists don't understand that it's a need they can't fulfill no matter how many Hadron colliders and Hubble telescopes they build- and your preachers don'[t understand that their job is to help you discover a personal, inner sense of meaning and not behave like a bunch of zealots intent on converting the rest of the planet to their rigid, literalist view of how everyone should live their lives. ~ Raymond Khoury

Warfare is now an interlocking system of actions - political, economic,
psychological, military - that aims at the overthrow of the established
authority in a country and its replacement by another regime. ~ Roger Trinquier

Science may have alleviated the miseries of disease and drudgery and provided an array of gadgetry for our entertainment and convenience, but it has left us in a world without wonder. Our sunsets have been reduced to wavelengths and frequencies. The complexities of the universe have been shredded into mathematical equations. Even our self-worth as human beings has been destroyed. Science proclaims that Planet Earth and its inhabitants are a meaningless speck in the grand scheme. A cosmic accident. ~ Dan Brown

Abort the thought, save the baby ~ Chinonye J. Chidolue

Religion is a disease. It is born of fear; it compensates through hate in the guise of authority, revelation. Religion, enthroned in a powerful social organization, can become incredibly sadistic. No religion has been more cruel than the Christian. ~ George Amos Dorsey

He who has learnt to control his tongue has attained self-control in a great measure. When such a person speaks he will be heard with respect and attention. His words will be remembered, for they will be good and true. When one who is established in truth prays with a pure heart, then things he really needs come to him when they are really needed: he does not have to run after them. The man firmly established in truth gets the fruit of his actions without apparently doing anything. God, the source of all truth, supplies his needs and looks after his welfare. ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

I need no master to punish me in order to behave as I ought. If I did, I would be no more than a child who obeys his father's rules only because he fears the whip, and not because he actually means good. ~ Christopher Paolini

Using the confirmation bias, these people will tell you that religion was horrible for mankind by counting deaths from the Inquisition and various religious wars. But they will not show you how many people were killed by nationalism, social science, and political theory under Stalinism or during the Vietnam War. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Kim Il-sung understood the power of religion. His maternal uncle was a Protestant minister back in the pre-Communist days when Pyongyang had such a vibrant Christian community that it was called the "Jerusalem of the East." Once in power, Kim Il-sung closed the churches, banned the Bible, deported believers to the hinterlands, and appropriated Christian imagery and dogma for the purpose of self-promotion.

Broadcasters would speak of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il breathlessly, in the manner of Pentecostal preachers. North Korean newspapers carried tales of supernatural phenomena. Stormy seas were said to be calmed when sailors clinging to a sinking ship sang songs in praise of Kim Il-sung. When Kim Jong-il went to the DMZ, a mysterious fog descended to protect him from lurking South Korean snipers. He caused trees to bloom and snow to melt. If Kim Il-sung was God, then Kim Jong-il was the son of God. Like Jesus Christ, Kim Jong-il's birth was said to have been heralded by a radiant star in the sky and the appearance of a beautiful double rainbow. A swallow descended from heaven to sing of the birth of a "general who will rule the world. ~ Barbara Demick

The solitary monk who shook the world
From pagan slumber, when the gospel trump
Thunder' d its challenge from his dauntless lips
In peals of truth. ~ Robert Montgomery

For instance, if Jesus Christ had died in prison, with no one watching and with no one there to mourn or torture him, would we be saved?
With all due respect.
According to the agent, the biggest factor that makes you a saint is the amount of press coverage you get. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Won't you look down upon me Jesus, you've got to help me make a stand. You just got to see me through another day. ~ James Taylor

Keep Darwinian thinking out of cosmology, out of psychology, out of human culture, out of ethics, politics, and religion! ~ Daniel Dennett

We need to understand that a man can never lay down his religion and act as a religionless person. ~ Joseph C. Morecraft III

It seems to me that wherever religion and politics mix in one body, fascist values - and not 'family values' - rear their ugly head. ~ Christina Engela

So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ~ Jesus Christ

I try to keep my religion and politics separate. But I do prefer my stunts on Sundays. "I know you have a lot to worry about during the week, Jesus, but can you just watch over me, keep me alive, that day?" ~ Steve Trotter

Besides that, I believe one thing: there is a Lord God! And this Lord God creates the peoples. ~ Adolf Hitler

The friendship that we established early on in our marriage ... that carries you through tough times. That and a good sense of humor. ~ Barack Obama

[A translation into English of a poem Elisabeth wrote two weeks after her wedding]

Oh, had I but never left the path
That would have led me to freedom.
Oh, that on the broad avenues
Of vanity I had never strayed!

I have awakened in a dungeon,
With chains on my hands.
And my longing ever stronger-
And freedom! You, turned from me!

I have awakened from a rapture,
Which held my spirit captive,
And vainly do I curse this exchange,
In which I gambled away you -freedom!- away.

The Reluctant Empress, Chapter 2 ~ Brigitte Hamann

That's for the best. Otherwise they might realize they're in prison. It can't be helped. You women are used to harems and prisons. A person can spend his whole life between four walls. If he doesn't think or feel that he's a prisoner, then he's not a prisoner. But then there are people for whom the whole planet is a prison, who see the infinite expanse of the universe, the millions of stars and galaxies that remain forever inaccessible to them. And that awareness makes them the greatest prisoners of time and space. ~ Vladimir Bartol

Of what violences, murders, depredations, have not the epic poets, from all antiquity, been the occasion, by propagating false honor, false glory, and false religion? ~ Samuel Richardson

Perhaps God is not dead; perhaps God himself is mad. ~ R.D. Laing

To bring a New Message, not only on Social Media,
requires silence and peace.
Amen,
Religious Leader Petra Cecilia Maria Hermans
Religion of Blue Circle
October 2, 2016 ~ Petra Hermans

Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. ... In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society. ~ Antonio Gramsci

Only a very few can be learned, but all can be Christian, all can be devout, and – I shall boldly add – all can be theologians. ~ Erasmus

I am personally convinced of the great power and deep significance of Christianity, and I won't allow any other religion to be promoted. ~ Adolf Hitler

We are all human first and the human relationship regardless of race, religion or gender is one of respect. ~ Otis Teague

In the last stage of civilization, Poetry, Religion, and Philosophy will be one. ~ Henry David Thoreau

The church that does not evangelize will fossilize. ~ Oswald J. Smith

My objection to organized religion is the premature conclusion to ultimate truth that it represents ... ~ Arthur C. Clarke

God split himself into a myriad parts that he might have friends. This may not be true, but it sounds good - and is no sillier than any other theology. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

For the jungle dissolves and recreates over and over and over again, as the Hindu philosophers perceived millenniums ago and built their religion on it. All that we know of things that died more anciently than a month ago, is written in stone or brick or earthwork, or, perhaps more durable even than these, in legend. ~ John Still

I fully support President Bush's decision to strike Al Qaeda's terrorist network. Now more than ever, we must stand united as a nation and support our President and our military. It is important to remember that this carefully targeted response is not an attack on a religion, nor a nation, but an attack on terrorism. In Congress, we will continue to work with the White House to do what's needed to bring justice to those who committed the heinous and evil attacks of September 11. ~ Tom Harkin

When you consider the superstitions and the imaginings of the old Cornish country-folk up to my grandmother's day, how their lives were swaddled in them from the cradle to the grave, their daily actions in large part determined by them - so many things you would not think of doing, like starting a journey on a Friday, or looking at the moon through a pane of glass, or failing to wear something new on Whitsunday - their minds haunted by ghosts and fears, you have a fair idea of what the minds of these people in the sixteenth century were like. It was a life full of shadows that frightened them and dangers that might come home to them; how much more so in those days when their fears had the sanction, and even the corroboration, of the elect and the intelligent: when a uniform religion existed to enforce its lessons and draw the moral. However, no doubt it filled up life for them, made it more interesting and exciting, more mysterious and incalculable; it added a dimension to it, where the modern uneducated, rid of their fears and ghosts, are apt to find life empty and void of meaning. ~ A.L. Rowse

The most elementary of good manners ... at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics. ~ Laura Esquivel

The old restriction meant that only the orthodox were allowed to discuss religion. Modern liberty means that nobody is allowed to discuss it. Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Theological religion is the source of all imaginable follies and disturbances. It is the parent of fanaticism and civil discord; it is the enemy of mankind. ~ Voltaire

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. ~ D.B.C. Pierre

The Christian religion alone contemplates the conjugal union in the order of nature; it is the only religion which presents woman to man as a companion; every other abandons her to him as a slave. To religion alone do European women owe their liberty. ~ Jacques-Henri Bernardin De Saint-Pierre

Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses ... it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace. ~ Mary Wortley Montagu

But fate, as Merlin always taught us, is inexorable. Life is a jest of the Gods, Merlin liked to claim, and there is no justice. You must learn to laugh, he once told me, or else you'll just weep yourself to death. ~ Bernard Cornwell

God give me the wisdom to see the truth however contrary to my established beliefs. ~ Robert Quillen

We can't worry about meaning. Ari proposed to us that meaning is a consumer item. Some people manufacture it through religion, philosophy, nationhood, politics, and some people buy it. But an artist is not a manufacturer. ~ David Cronenberg

Why would a god sacrifice her life if she was God? Just show real power and send an army of angels and there'd be no debate. ~ Peter Tieryas

The word religion literally means, in Latin, to link or bind together; and despite the vast variation in the world's religions, Wilson shows that religions always serve to coordinate and orient people's behavior toward each other and toward the group as a whole, sometimes for the purpose of competing with other groups. ~ Jonathan Haidt

We led strange, hidden lives. We were advocating one thing: that this country rid itself of the racism that prevented some citizens from living as fully functioning men and as a result dehumanized all men. We were advocating only that this country live up to its promises to all citizens. But since racism always hides under a respectable guise - usually the guise of patriotism and religion - a great many people loathed us for knocking holes in these respectable guises. It was clear that we would have to live always under threat. ~ John Howard Griffin