religion on Religion as a Weapon

In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...

In this short (and humorous) excerpt, author David Zahl shares a definition of the secular: Perhaps secular warrants its own explanation, though. My most immediate association comes from the belov...

Introduction Leaning Toward the Light What does it mean to lean towards the light of Christ? What does it mean to be open to the work of God? For the Pharisee in Jesus’ time, the answer was clear: y...

AIM Commentary Introduction Leaning Toward the Light What does it mean to lean towards the light of Christ? What does it mean to be open to the work of God? For the Pharisee in Jesus’ time, the an...

I don’t think Bible verses were meant to be thrown like grenades at each other. They were meant for us to use to point each other toward love and grace and invite us into something much bigger.

Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone’s back.

Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power.

Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.

A major stumbling block for many earnest seekers is the compelling evidence throughout history that terrible things have been done in the name of religion. This applies to virtually all faiths at some...

Most men, indeed, play at religion as they play at games, religion itself being of all games the one most universally played.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.

Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging clamorous torrent of man’s consciousness with all it...

In this fictionalized pastoral counseling session, the Episcopalian Priest Robert Farrar Capon shares some eternal truths related to the nature of religion—and in conclusion, how Christianity differs....

History shows that when the church uses the tools of the world's kingdom, it becomes as ineffectual, or as tyrannical, as any other power structure. And whenever the church has intermingled with t...

Religion begat prosperity and the daughter devoured the mother.

It’s hard to be religious when certain people are not struck by lightning.

One Sunday morning a number of years ago my wife piled the children into the family car to come to Sunday school and worship. When she turned the switch to start, the engine wouldn't even grunt. T...

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Any religious movement which adopts a purely critical and negative attitude to culture is therefore a force of destruction and disintegration which mobilizes against it the healthiest and most constru...

Anti-Intellectualism has been a problem in the church for some time now. Consider the words of the 17th century English clergyman Joseph Glanvill, who had this to say about the role of reason in faith...

Brands are the new religion.

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.

If man tries to grasp at truth of himself, he tries to grasp at it a priori . But in that case he does not do what he has to do when the truth comes to him. He does not believe. If he did, he wou...

Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.

For some, faith begins with a hard shell, a rigid set of answers and platitudes that keep them safe but eventually prevent them from growing into who they could be. The system that was initially prote...

So it is that in most Western industrialized countries church and society have lost their identity, religion has become more and more a private affair, and morality has become secular. This process af...

Religion is the business of appeasing gods. In the old days, you’d take some unfortunate animal to a temple, give it to a priest, and the priest would dispatch of it for you before the watchful eyes o...

I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis observed that almost all crimes of Christian history have come about when religion is confused with p...

Yes, religion is a crutch. But it’s not my own personal crutch. It is Adam’s crutch. It’s the human race that walks (if it walks at all) with a limp. And so when Sunday morning comes around I drag old...