I really don't know why people have so much trouble now writing about religious faith. It is true that clichés can override more interesting impulses. But the desire to find meaning, to be generous, to live well in an ethical and spiritual sense, is so widespread that it should not seem alien to people when it is expressed in the terms of traditional religion.
You don't need a passport and you don't need no visas, you don't need to designate or emigrate before you can see Jesus.
Being LGBT is not a choice. It's not about "a sexual proclivity. " It's not a "lifestyle," as you put it. It's about our identity. Pride is a time when we come together to celebrate our community and when others do, too. Just as we do for other racial, ethnic, and religious groups that are part of the "tossed salad" nature of our society.
Tolerance can be exercised only by those who have well-grounded convictions (although it will not always be exercised even by them). For such people tolerance is an act of self-abnegation; although they are convinced that those who differ from them must be wrong, they nevertheless will protect their rights.
Christians should be the boldest people in the world-not cocky and sure of ourselves, but sure of Him.
Neither theological knowledge nor social action alone is enough to keep us in love with Christ unless both are proceeded by a personal encounter with Him. Theological insights are gained not only from between two covers of a book, but from two bent knees before an altar. The Holy Hour becomes like an oxygen tank to revive the breath of the Holy Spirit in the midst of the foul and fetid atmosphere of the world
If somebody harbours delusions, I think that should disqualify them from office, regardless whether the delusions are religious. Letting someone who thinks the god Jehovah will bail him out serve in public office is like letting a man who believes in Santa Claus run a Toys 'R Us. The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
For once you rise to a level of God consciousness you will understand that you are not responsible for any other human soul, and that while it is commendable to wish every soul to live in comfort, each soul must choose - is choosing - its own destiny this instant.
I hope we will not so characterize religious people as being so narrow and so biased towards people not of their own religion that they cannot even work with them in this common cause to which you say they are committed.
The whole inspiration of our civilization springs from the teachings of Christ and the lessons of the prophets. To read the Bible for these fundamentals is a necessity of American life.
But for the first time, I had a religious identity. I had come home. And so I called myself a Zen Buddhist at the age of 18.
I just pray. And I'm not very religious at all - I was raised Catholic, but probably haven't gone to church since my Holy Communion, when I was about 6 or 7.
. . . if you repeat a thought, or say a word, over and over again-not once, not twice, but dozens, hundreds, thousands of times-do you have any idea of the creative power of that? A thought or a word expressed and expressed and expressed becomes just that-expressed. That is, pushed out. It becomes outwardly realized. It becomes your physical reality.
I just loved him and he loved me. . . He was a most humble man, the most decent man I've ever met in my life and he always looked for the best in people to find positives and he said something to me that always remained with me. He said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily and even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me.
I don't know if I would call myself a religious human.
But if you will recall the history of our civil troubles, you will see half the nation bathe itself, out of piety, in the blood of the other half, and violate the fundamental feelings of humanity in order to sustain the cause of God: as though it were necessary to cease to be a man in order to prove oneself religious!
In the experiences of a year of the Presidency, there has come to me no other such unwelcome impression as the manifest religious intolerance which exists among many of our citizens. I hold it to be a menace to the very liberties we boast and cherish.
I will say that the power of being a stranger in someone else's religious community has its own lessons, really. It is something like the power of visiting another very happy extended family and being at their table.
It goes beyond mere "acknowledgment" of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function in this context. " she wrote. "In this instance, the government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience.
I think most religious people experience just as much doubt as they do faith; they just don’t admit it. (13)