Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

James 1:27 (English Standard Version)

 
"The test of every religious, political, or educational system, is the man which it forms.
If a system injures the intelligence it is bad. If it injures the character it is vicious.
If it injures the conscience it is criminal."

Henri Frederic Amiel, Source: Journal, 17 June 1852

"It is rather ridiculous to ask a man just about to be boiled in a pot and eaten, at a purely religious feast, why he does not regard all religions as equally friendly and fraternal."

G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 1925

"We do not need more law, we need more religion. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen."

Calvin Coolidge

"Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image:science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, p. 46 (1954)

"If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?"

Benjamin Franklin

"Islam considers itself doctrinally a religion whose destiny it is to dominate and to rule the world. In the spiritual sphere it believes that it has taken over from the older Jewish and Christian religions. It considers them outdated and itself therefore entitled to the recognition of its true and superior status, and to their deference. Politically others see Islam and it sees itself as the would-be successors of the Russians and now, strangely enough, of the Americans. Let us never forget the ideological dimension of Islam."

Paul Fregosi, Jihad in the West: Muslim Conquests from the 7th to the 21st Centuries, 1998

"Your deeds are your religion." Hadith
"I didn't go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don't recommend Christianity."

C.S. Lewis

"To hold fast upon God with one hand, and open wide the other to your neighbor - that is religion."

George MacDonald in 'Paul Faber, Surgeon'

"In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things about which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight."

J. Gresham Machen

"There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt."

Niccolo Machiavelli

"It is my belief, as a friendly neutral in all such high and ghostly matters, that the body of doctrine known as Modernism is completely incompatible, not only with anything rationally describable as Christianity, but also with anything deserving to pass as religion in general. Religion, if it is to retain any genuine significance, can never be reduced to a series of sweet attitudes, possible to anyone not actually in jail for felony. It is, on the contrary, a corpus of powerful and profound convictions, many of them not open to logical analysis. . . .What the Modernists have done . . . [is] to get rid of all the logical difficulties of religion, and yet preserve a generally pious cast of mind. It is a vain enterprise. What they have left, once they have achieved their imprudent scavenging, is hardly more than a row of hollow platitudes, as empty [of] psychological force and effect as so many nursery rhymes. . . . Religion is something else again - in Henrik Ibsen's phrase, something far more deep - down - diving and mud - upbringing. Dr. Machen tried to impress that obvious fact upon his fellow adherents of the Geneva Muhammad [i.e., Calvin]. He failed - but he was undoubtedly right."

H. L. Mencken, "Dr. Fundamentalis", an obituary of Rev. J. Gresham Machen, Baltimore Evening Sun (January 18, 1937), 2nd Section, p. 15.

"Islam is in its origins an Arab religion. Everyone not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands. A convert's worldview alters. His holy places are in Arab lands; his sacred language is Arabic. His idea of history alters. He rejects his own; he becomes, whether he likes it or not, a part of the Arab story. The convert has to turn away from everything that is his. The disturbance for societies is immense, and even after a thousand years can remain unresolved; the turning away has to be done again and again. People develop fantasies about who and what they are; and in the Islam of converted countries there is an element of neurosis and nihilism. These countries can be easily set on the boil."

V.S. Naipaul

"Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion."

Richard John Neuhaus, First Things, August/September, 2000

"The problem, of course, is that neither [church nor state] is prepared to remain within its institutional boundaries. Government, if it is to be sustainable, engages beliefs and loyalties of an ultimate sort that can properly be called religious. As the impulse of the modern state is to define all public space as governmental space, so the consequence is a tendency toward "civil religion." Religion, on the other hand, if it represents a com- prehensive belief system, speaks to the human condition in all its aspects, including the right ordering (the government) of public life....Thus each institution is, in the eyes of the other, constantly bursting its bounds. Therein is the foundation of the open-ended argument between church and state. Open-ended, that is, so long as a society professes to be democratic."

Richard John Neuhaus, The Naked Public Square, 1984

"British sportsman Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832) wrote, 'The three great apostles of practical atheism that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are health, wealth, and power.' America as a whole, and many Americans individually, had them all in 2000. If we had read the Bible more, we could have been reassured by Horace Greeley's statement that 'It is impossible to enslave mentally and socially a Bible-reading people.' But even though 92 percent of American households own at least one Bible and the average household owns three, a Gallup survey showed that fewer than half of Americans knew the name of the Bible's first book."

Marvin Olasky

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."

Bertrand Russell

"Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace."

George Santayana
"Religion holds the solution to all problems of human relationship, whether they are between parents and children or nation and nation. Sooner or later, man has always had to decide whether he worships his own power or the power of God."

Arnold Toynbee, (1889-1975)

"Our religion must not alone be the concern of the emotions, but must be woven into the warp and woof of our every-day life."

Booker T. Washington

"I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't."

Alfred North Whitehead, English philosopher and mathematician (1861-1947)

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