[W]hile it is true that the United States of America was founded on the sacred principle of religious freedom for all, that liberty was never intended to exalt other religions to the level that Christianity holds in our country's heritage. Our Founders expected that Christianity -- and no other religion -- would receive support from the government as long as that support did not violate peoples' consciences and their right to worship. They would have found utterly incredible the idea that all religions, including paganism, be treated with equal deference. As for our Hindu priest friend, the United States is a nation that has historically honored the one true God. Woe be to us on that day when we relegate him to being merely one among countless other deities in the pantheon of theologies.
Culture Facts newsletter 9/21/2000 (commenting on a Hindu priest giving the opening prayer in the House of Representatives)
In a pluralistic society, you cannot say to people who worship another God, let’s say people who are Hindu, or let’s say people who are Buddhist, that you have to put our God above your God when you come into the courtroom, which is what the first of the Ten Commandments says [‘You shall have no other gods before me.’] I think that is religious oppression.
Quoted in: The Toledo Blade, August 2, 2003.
As currently employed, the very concept of accommodation suggests the need of the state to define that to which it is making accommodation. And accommodate to what? Who is to accommodate whom? Which demands require accommodation? Which may be legitimately denied? Would it be so simple to substitute for "it's just a little prayer" the phrase "it's just a little satan adoration"? The power to accommodate is the power to control and therefore to refuse accommodation.
Without a Prayer: Religious Expression in Public Schools, (1996)
Unique among the nations, America recognized the source of our character as being godly and eternal, not being civic and temporal. And because we have understood that our source is eternal, America has been different. We have no king but Jesus.
Commencement address given on May 8, 1999 at Bob Jones University.
The "establishment of religion" clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect "a wall of separation between Church and State."
Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 1947.
We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor Federal Government can constitutionally force a person 'to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.' Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against nonbelievers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.
Torcaso v. Watkins 367 US 488, 1961.
Should the United States be a pagan or a Christian country? …America was a Christian country. A quarter of a century ago, without prior consultation with a democratic people, without support in precedent or the Constitution, the Warren Court undertook the systematic de-Christianization of America, beginning, but not stopping, with the public schools.
The school prayer crusade, then, is the first great counteroffensive of a badly routed Christian community to recapture their occupied public schools and re-establish their beliefs as the legitimate moral foundation of American society.
San Diego Union, February 25, 1984.
The First Amendment of our Constitution secures the freedom of worship. Why should all Grand Canyon visitors be subject to only one specific religious explanation of this geological accomplishment? ...We are not removing "God" from the Grand Canyon; we are simply removing religion.
Letter to the Editor in The Arizona Republic, July 18, 2003
Clearly, the founding fathers had a belief in God. We have a unique form of government where we recognize our rights do not come from a king or a ruler but from God.
Freeholder of Warren County, New Jersey. Quoted from The Star-Ledger, July 20, 2003
The president is for everyone, American Muslims and Christians, atheists, Jews. He must not side with any one of those constituencies before, over or against another. It is a pluralistic US, in a pluralistic world. Religious language goes to the gut rather than the brain and bypasses normal political discourse. At its most benign, it separates those who identify with such language from those who don't; at worst it increases polarisation.
"Who are you calling evil?", The Guardian, August 2, 2003.
Once people get used to seeing the official state religion as something to be distrusted and questioned, then they will hopefully apply the same measures to other, more virulent versions of religious mind-viruses. And this is exactly what we need--especially when faced with more and more evangelical religion in the American mould.
"The Essential Role of the Church of England," The Secular Web. (2003)
Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.
Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 1968.
[W]e need a legal strategy which protects the rights of those of us who hold Christian convictions which will afford us the opportunity to contend once again for the mind of this culture.
ACLJ brochure "Religious Cleansing"
When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.
Benjamin Franklin , in a letter to Richard Price. October 9, 1790.
If you don't want a Christian nation, then go to one of the many nations that are heathen already, rather than perverting ours.
You're welcome to come, but leave your religions, your bibles, all your other things back where you came from.
Islam and America are opposites. They hate us. They want to kill us. I'm not anti-Jewish or anti-Catholic. I'm anti-Islam because that religion right there is anti-American.
Jeff Fugate, pastor of Clays Mill Road Baptist Church, Lexington, KY, July 3, 2002.
The legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, ... thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.
Letter, January 1, 1802, to Nehemiah Dodge and Others. From: The Portable Thomas Jefferson, p. 303, edied by Merrill D. Peterson (1975).
Religious believers argue that faith isn’t simply a private matter. It underlies the values and beliefs we bring to the public square. And they’re 100 percent right. But the shield that guards our private religious beliefs from any and every political scrutiny doesn’t follow those beliefs out into the public arena. Once our religiously rooted beliefs cross the membrane from the private to the public, they become no different from any other political beliefs. People are free to disagree with us and oppose us on that basis. That’s not bigotry. That’s democracy.
The Hill, August 6, 2003.
...the separation of church and state means separation—absolute and eternal—or it means nothing.
Out of These Roots, ch. 14 (1953).
It is not just that the Americans are God's chosen people; America itself is now perceived as a divine project. In his farewell presidential address, Ronald Reagan spoke of his country as a "shining city on a hill", a reference to the Sermon on the Mount. But what Jesus was describing was not a temporal Jerusalem, but the kingdom of heaven. Not only, in Reagan's account, was God's kingdom to be found in the United States of America, but the kingdom of hell could also now be located on earth: the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union, against which His holy warriors were pitched.
...The United States of America no longer needs to call upon God; it is God, and those who go abroad to spread the light do so in the name of a celestial domain. The flag has become as sacred as the Bible; the name of the nation as holy as the name of God. The presidency is turning into a priesthood.
So those who question George Bush's foreign policy are no longer merely critics; they are blasphemers, or "anti-Americans". Those foreign states which seek to change this policy are wasting their time: you can negotiate with politicians; you cannot negotiate with priests. The US has a divine mission, as Bush suggested in January: "to defend ... the hopes of all mankind", and woe betide those who hope for something other than the American way of life.
"America is a religion," Mail & Guardian, July 29, 2003.
Religion and morality should remain as the personal responsibility of an individual. The government should not dictate how a person prays, or practise his or her religion. A government’s duty is just to administer the country to ensure a peaceful and harmonious atmosphere throughout. ..However, it is sad nowadays to note that there are some dubious religious leaders who also double up as politicians and conversely, there are politicians who also put on religious apparel. These two figures will not allow the rest of us to privately discover the beauty of our own religion. These are the two characters who will always highlight the differences between the various religions but diligently attempt to hide their similarities.
Wiriting in the Malaysia Kini, July 17, 2003
What I'm working on now and what I find I'm passionately thinking about, has to do with the interaction of politics and religion. Certainly it's most relevant in America, as this country was founded, in its beginning at least, with the Puritans and others, who were people who were religiously motivated and saw their migration to this country as a religious act - as the people of Israel coming to the Promised Land - and of course to a land which they claimed was theirs by divine right. They were also defying the King of England and his claims to divine right, which had been worked out in a very complicated way.
Interview with Edge, July 2003
While the Constitution does protect religious freedom of worship, it's supposed to protect secularism.
Interview with Edge, July 2003
[A]ppeals to religion, like those that are currently being made by the religious right, can work in a democracy to subvert all of the values to which they give lip service. It worked brilliantly with the Roman Empire. Beliefs are overrated in Christianity. Religious traditions have to do with a lot more than beliefs.
Interview with Edge, July 2003
What fascinates me are the kinds of claims that are made by religious people for political purposes. When I became distressed and upset with the language that President Bush is using to justify war in Iraq, I was saying, as many other liberal Americans were, "Doesn't he understand about separation of religion and politics? Separation of church and state? This is the American tradition."
Later I realized that that kind of liberal outrage doesn't go deep enough, because the interaction of religion and politics - and President Bush knows this very well, and Saddam Hussein knows this very well, and many other political leaders recognize it - are inextricably and very deeply interconnected, probably because they come from the same emotional source.
Interview with Edge, July 2003
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
The Age of Reason, pt. 1, "The Author's Profession of Faith" (1794).
[The wall of separation] has caused oppression and aids the spread of crime, violence, immorality and false ideology, enslaving our society....The wall is constructed of lies, false interpretation of laws and enforcement of laws contradictory to the intent of the Constitution.
When the Berlin Wall finally came down, thousands crossed the border to freedom and the opportunity for a prosperous life. So, too, as the mythical wall of separation is removed, thousands will be able to learn of America's true Christian heritage and the principles and morals that this heritage has bestowed.
The War Cry, 1998. (Salvation Army Publication)
Just as the right to speak and the right to refrain from speaking are complementary components of a broader concept of individual freedom of mind, so also the individual’s freedom to choose his own creed is the counterpart of his right to refrain from accepting the creed established by the majority.
Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, June 4, 1985
What our Constitution indispensably protects is the freedom of each of us, be he Jew or Agnostic, Christian or Atheist, Buddhist or Freethinker, to believe or disbelieve, to worship or not worship, to pray or keep silent, according to his own conscience, uncoerced and unrestrained by government.
Abington v. Schempp 374 U.S. 203, no. 142, 1963.
We are approaching a time when Christians, especially, may have to declare the social contract between Enlightenment rationalists and Biblical believers - which formed the basis of the constitution written at our nation's founding - null and void.
Washington Times, October 23, 1996
It is, I hope, hardly necessary to add, as we try to understand and deal wisely with the problems of religious freedom, that the freedom and dignity of the nonbeliever - the agnostic or the atheist - is as precious and as much to be protected as that of the believer. Earlier, we would have called ourselves a 'Christian nation.' More recently the phrase is a 'religious nation.' Someday, we may come to think of ourselves as a spiritual nation, deeply involved in the quest for truth about the nature of the universe and man's place in it.
The Supreme Court on Church and State, (1962)
The word God does not appear in the Constitution. It grants neither the president nor the Congress any religious powers. ...The framers of the Constitution had learned the importance of protecting religious freedom. The colonies had a long history of intolerance and persecution enforced by the state. Although they came to America to escape persecution, the settlers reversed roles and became persecutors themselves.
Column in the Kansas City Star, July 19, 2003
This site serves as an archive of quotations dealing with religion and philosophy. Specific topics covered include, but are not limited to: God, faith, reason, skepticism, atheism, agnosticism, fundamentalism, extremism. The quotes are chosen on the basis of my finding them interesting - regardless of whether I agree with them or not. This is by no means an exhaustive collection, although it does grow as I add quotes regularly.
Suggestions? Feel free to email me with quotations you think could be added. I can't guarantee that I will respond to each message and, please, be sure to include a full citation with each quote. There are a lot of sites out there that have many quotes without citations, thus preventing readers from being able to trace the authorship. I have very few of those and don't want any more, if I can help it.
Copyright © 2003 - 2004 by Austin Reed Cline