Sermon quotes on religion
William Barclay
Religion fails if it cannot speak to men as they are.
Karl Barth
Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
Martin Buber
I don’t like religion much, and I am glad that in the Bible the word is not to be found.
Henry Drummond
Religion is not a strange or added thing; but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world.
Timothy Keller
Jesus Christ says, ‘Kill me and in 3 days, not only this temple, but all temples in the whole world will be out of business.’ This is the most stunning thing any human being has ever said.
Blaise Pascal
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Frederick W. Robertson
Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to compare their views to find out truth. Controversy is wretched when it is only an attempt to prove another wrong. Religious controversy does only harm. It destroys humble inquiry after truth, and throws all the energies into an attempt to prove ourselves right – a spirit in which no man gets at truth.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
William Temple
Your religion is what you do with your solitude
A.W. Tozer
Most men, indeed, play at religion as they play at games, religion itself being of all games the one most universally played.
Desmond Tutu
Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone’s back.
Bill Watterson
It’s hard to be religious when certain people are not struck by lightning.
Calvin and Hobbes
Jeff Vanderstelt
This is what Jesus does. Jesus makes life better. Jesus brings the better wine. He takes empty religion and ritual, and brings it to life for everyday people. He takes what many deem holy (like the water in the ceremonial cleansing jars) and brings it to the party. He breaks down the barrier between what people This is what Jesus does. Jesus makes life better. Jesus brings the better wine. He takes empty religion and ritual, and brings it to life for everyday people. He takes what many deem holy (like the water in the ceremonial cleansing jars) and brings it to the party. He breaks down the barrier between what people might call sacred and secular. Jesus makes all things sacred—including wine at a party.
Saturate: Being Disciples of Jesus in the Everyday Stuff of Life. Crossway.
Harold Kushner
True religion goes beyond making sense. It does not offend reason, it transcends reason. People do not start to see the world differently because someone has written a book giving them good reasons for doing so. They do it because they feel they have been touched by the presence of God.
Who Needs God, Fireside
Desmond Tutu
Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone’s back.
Andrew Walls
Other major world religions are still centered in the same general geographic area from which they originated except for Christianity. Even more intriguing, the center of Christian growth continues to move. Why? This author suggests that Christian principles bring prosperity but then the prosperity brings a temptation to chase stability and respectability. Thus, Christian growth moves to an area where people are desperate enough to trust Christ alone.
G.K. Chesterton
Your religion is not the church you belong to, but the cosmos you live inside of.
Lord Acton
A false religion fears the progress of all truth; a true religion seeks and recognizes truth wherever it can be found.
Quoted in Roland Hill, Lord Acton (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 138.
Max Scheler
An essential part of the teachings and directives of the great religious and philosophical thinkers the world over has been on the meaning of pain and suffering.
Joseph Soloveitchik
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 its crises, pangs, and torments.
Halachic Man
Michael Scott (Steve Carrell)
“I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.”
The Office
Bertrand Russell (For Contrast)
Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear.
Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects”, Simon and Schuster, 1957, p.22.
Barbara Brown Taylor
The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor…Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.
Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2019)
Still Looking for inspiration?
Consider checking out our illustrations page on Religion.