Interfaith Quotes & Sayings

I strongly feel that it is only when there is a deep understanding of one's own religious beliefs and commitments that progress can be made in achieving true understanding and respect for the religious values and beliefs of others. Engaging in interfaith dialogue does not in any way mean undermining one's own faith or religious tradition. Indeed, interfaith dialogue is constructive only when people become firmly grounded in their own religious traditions and through that process gain a willingness to listen and respect the beliefs of other religions. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 48-49) — David R. Smock

History has taught us that when understanding and tolerance are fostered, people of different faiths can live together in harmony. Regrettably, history has also taught us the opposite, that such states of equilibrium can quickly degenerate and succumb to rhetoric of anger and fear, sometimes leading to violence and even war. A balance of mutual respect and tolerance needs to be maintained through good works. Interrelations need continual nurturing. — Gudjon Bergmann

. . . absoluteness is a quality of the transcendent that comes to expression in revelation, but not necessarily of the symbols, myths, propositions or doctrines formulated to represent or communicate it. . . . the most precious thing we have to offer each other in interfaith encounters is our honest, unexaggerated and nonpossessive sharing of what we take to be the moments of absoluteness in the particuilar faith traditions in which we live as committed participants. — James W. Fowler

The Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing sustaining and powerful movement whose interest is to prove that religion has a healing side as well as a killing side, and that democracy is the consequence of conscience — Bill Moyers

When I speak at my local church, which I try to do 35 to 40 times a year, I try in every lesson to take the Old Testament text or New Testament text and apply them to what is happening to me or how that applies to the audience that I'm teaching in a modern, fast-changing, technological world. I use headlines, interfaith and that sort of thing. — Jimmy Carter

I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being
neither white, black, brown, or red; and when you are dealing with humanity as a family there's no question of integration or intermarriage. It's just one human being marrying another human being or one human being living around and with another human being. — Malcolm X

We do not always appreciate the role the Queen has played in one of the most significant changes in the past 60 years: the transformation of Britain into a multi-ethnic, multi-faith society. No one does interfaith better than the Royal family, and it starts with the Queen herself. — Jonathan Sacks

Love is the most complex of all human phenomena. It exists on a spectrum from tolerance and kindness to romantic love and self-sacrifice, reaching its pinnacle in altruism, a love that needs nothing in return. — Gudjon Bergmann

On the surface, we are all different. We ascribe to a variety of belief systems, attain our identity from various stories, get our customs from diverse cultures, and so on. And, rightly or wrongly, we generally define ourselves by these differences - there is no denying that. However, when we look beneath the surface, we discover certain universal elements. — Gudjon Bergmann

In the context of interfaith encounter, we need to bring to the surface how our actual beliefs shape what we do - not simply to agree that kindness is better than cruelty. — Rowan Williams

I would like the church to be a place where the questions of people are honored rather than a place where we have all the answers. The church has to get out of propaganda. The future will involve us in more interfaith dialogue ... We cannot say we have the only truth. — John Shelby Spong

When studying the world's religions, there appear to be two primary paths available to those who want to practice their faith. One path is internal and contemplative in nature. The other is emotional, external, and actionable in nature. I have identified these as the paths of oneness and goodness. — Gudjon Bergmann

The upside of approaching spiritual practices like an experiment is that there can be no failure, only different outcomes. Whatever happens, you will learn about yourself and your relationship with the divine along the way. — Gudjon Bergmann

Chances of the Jews and Palestinians uniting to build the first interfaith space station are roughly equal. — Stephen King

What Does It Matter What We Believe, as long as we treat others the way we want to be treated? — Jeffrey A. White

One of the biggest challenges for people involved in interfaith dialogue is to break down the stereotypes of the "other" that exist within their own religious traditions and groups. Religious groups need to first acknowledge and confess their own role in fostering and contributing to injustice and conflict. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 49) — David R. Smock

It can be helpful to think of humanity like a pearl necklace. Each human being is a pearl with distinct characteristics, but underneath there is a string that ties us all together, invisible to the naked eye. — Gudjon Bergmann

I don't think anyone could really know her, just as the peak of her struggle blooms, she again appearered to have held it all together when the whole world; would have thought, she'd fall Apart. — Nikki Rowe

If you are able to show goodness to yourself, your family, friends, and maybe to some in your community, you are doing better than most. In fact, it can be harder to show goodness to those who stand close to you than to those who are in faraway places. If more people tended to their own gardens, all of society would flourish as a result. — Gudjon Bergmann

I set out to really build this universe of interfaith connectedness, where people could see that other people in different parts of the world are very much like them. — Oprah Winfrey

At the end of the day, developing goodness comes down to a simple question: Will this emotion, thought or action, increase or decrease my capacity for goodness? — Gudjon Bergmann

Peace among religions is a precondition for world peace. — Agnivesh

This notion of shared experience is important. A hiker, for example, has much more in common with other hikers who have walked paths foreign to him than with sedentary people who have never hiked anywhere but have read books about the hiker's favorite path. If someone has hiked several mountains in Switzerland, for instance, he or she is likely to have more in common with those who have hiked in the Rocky Mountains than with those who have never hiked at all. The terrain may be different, but the act of hiking is similar. The same is true about spirituality. The acts of praying, meditating, fasting, contemplating deeply, and having other direct forms of experience, all influence practitioners differently than mere reading or listening. Moreover, because we all have the same tools to work with - body, mind, and spirit - practitioners from different faiths will have more in common than they realize. — Gudjon Bergmann

Many of the traditional approaches to interfaith dialogue have assumed that it can be successful only if agreements are reached about amorphous concepts and themes that various traditions may have in common. These approaches have also assumed that participants have to "weaken" or "compromise" elements of their own faith ... this is not necessarily constructive for engaging in interfaith understanding and dialogue. It is only when participants have a deep understanding of their own religious traditions and are willing to learn and recognize the richness of other religious traditions that constructive cooperation can take place between groups from different faiths. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 57-58) — David R. Smock

There's power in believing there's a God in each of us because if we are made in His/Her/Their image, aren't we all like good horcruxes for God? Because a piece of them is in us? — Luvvie Ajayi

God's love supersedes all religions and it is the core of all religions. — Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

Any person who, with all the sincerity of heart, is in search for God, on land or in the sea, is worthy of respect. — Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi

More than any religious figure that I can think of, Dalai Lama goes out of his way to attend interfaith conferences; religious harmony is one of his urgent priorities in life. — Pico Iyer

The process of reconciliation implies that people who want to engage in interfaith cooperation should be prepared to reflect critically on their own religious tradition. They should also contemplate what place their own religious tradition assigns to people of other faith traditions. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 52) — David R. Smock

Abraham had eight sons
not one. All eight sons bring something to the table. Abraham loved all of his sons. He was a good father who made sure all his sons were literate, of good character and shared a common ideology with their father, Abraham. Abraham did good. Where did we go wrong?
pg 54 — Michael Ben Zehabe

Ever since the Enlightenment era in the 17th and 18th Centuries - which, among other things, gave birth to the U.S. Constitution and the de facto motto E Pluribus Unum (out of the many, one) - interfaith tolerance has been sown into the fabric of Western society. The rules of one religion are not made into law for all citizens because of a simple social agreement. For you to believe what you want, you must allow me to do the same, even if we disagree. — Gudjon Bergmann

Believers fight each other over the correct interpretation and even kill members of their own faiths in battles over doctrine. Civilization has been immensely retarded by such arcane interfaith quarrels and could now be destroyed by their modern versions. — Christopher Hitchens

With experience as their guiding light, Christian monks and nuns could, for example, come together with Sufis and Yogis to pray and meditate, then discuss their experiences by talking about how silence and inner peace have changed their lives, instead of talking about the content of their prayers or focusing on theology. Hindus, Christians, and Muslims, who tread the path of goodness, could come together and do good works. Doing good side by side would show them that they are not as different as previously thought and that their various beliefs can lead to similar outcomes. — Gudjon Bergmann

We live in a time when we have a communal duty to receive and broadcast love. We must set aside our repeating arguments and get a handle on our destructive depressions.
pg vi — Michael Ben Zehabe

When we lose the contemplative mind, or non-dual consciousness, we invariably create violent people. The dualistic mind is endlessly argumentative, and we created an argumentative continent, which we also exported to North and South America. We see it in our politics; we see it in our Church's inability to create any sincere interfaith dialogue - or even intra-faith dialogue. The Baptists are still fighting the Anglicans as "lost" and the Evangelicals are dismissing the Catholics as the "Whore of Babylon," and we Catholics are demeaning everybody else as heretics, and each of us is hiding in our small, smug circles. What a waste of time and good God-energy, while the world suffers and declines. We have divided Jesus. — Richard Rohr

I was proud to witness American Jewish organizations found the Save Darfur Coalition in June 2004 to mobilize a coordinated interfaith response to the ongoing humanitarian disaster. — Jan Schakowsky

I put people before gods. I respect believers of all kinds and work to promote interfaith dialogue, but my whole life I've seen religion used as a weapon, and I'm putting all weapons down. — Zak Ebrahim

It seems to rise again when the crisis times come, and this is a time of most severe crisis, as we all know, not just for the history of the United States and the survival indeed of our democracy, but for the future peace of the world. And never before probably has the need for interfaith commitment been nearly as great as it is at this very moment. — Walter Cronkite

Interfaith dialogue is a must today, and the first step in establishing it is forgetting the past, ignoring polemical arguments, and giving precedence to common points, which far outnumber polemical ones. — Fethullah Gulen

The fact that religions, which usually have at their core a promotion of tolerance and peace, have been exploited to carry out violence clearly indicates that individuals and groups have not discovered the true "peace message" that is inherent in almost every religion. (by Cilliers, Ch. 3, p. 55) — David R. Smock