Langdon Gilkey Quotes & Sayings

Enforced religion breeds precisely what it most fears: rebellion against religion, cynicism about religion, skepticism about its claims, and, as a consequence, indifference at best or outright antipathy at worst. — Langdon Brown Gilkey

Kierkegaard was once asked, 'What is a poet?' He answered that a poet was an unhappy man whose moans and cries of anguish were transformed into ravishing music. — Langdon Brown Gilkey

Art pierces opaque subjectivity, the not seeing of conventional life, and discloses reality. — Langdon Brown Gilkey

The First Amendment is important not only to guarantee the rights of alternative religions and of nonreligious persons in society; it is also important in setting the only possible legal and social condition for the creative health of serious religion itself. — Langdon Brown Gilkey

Art has a prophetic role, denouncing the culture it lays bare. — Langdon Brown Gilkey

Religion is not the place where the problem of man's egotism is automatically solved. Rather, it is there that the ultimate battle between human pride and God's grace takes place. Human pride may win the battle, and then religion can and does become one more instrument of human sin. But if there the self does meet God and His grace, and so surrenders to something beyond its self-interest, then Christian faith can prove to be the needed and rare release from human self-concern. — Langdon Brown Gilkey