Prothero On Christianity Quotes & Sayings

Widespread criticisms of jihad in Islam and the so-called sword verses in the Quran have unearthed for fair-minded Christians difficult questions about Christianity's own traditions of holy war and 'texts of terror.' Like Hinduism's Mahabharata epic, the Bible devotes entire books to war and rumors thereof. Unlike the Quran, however, it contains hardly any rules for how to conduct a just war. — Stephen R. Prothero

Strength and independence are always something that I'm drawn to in all my characters, no matter how different they are from one another — Amber Heard

You can't just stick with something that doesn't work. — Howard Graham Buffett

If religion is about the sacred as opposed to the profane, the spirit as opposed to matter, the Creator as opposed to the created, Confucianism plainly does not qualify. But perhaps what we are to learn from this tradition is not that Confucianism is not a religion but that not all religious people parse the sacred and the secular the way Christians do. — Stephen R. Prothero

Brother," wrote one Cherokee chief, "we give up to our white brothers all the land we could any how spare, and have but little left...and we hope you won't let any people take any more from us without our consent. We are neither birds nor fish; we can neither fly in the air nor live under water.... We are made by the same hand and in the same shape as yourselves. — Joseph J. Ellis

I haven't accepted anyone telling me what is or isn't possible and have just kept moving along toward my goals. — Donny Robinson

On the ethics of war the Quran and the New Testament are worlds apart. Whereas Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek, the Quran tells us, 'Whoso commits aggression against you, do you commit aggression against him' (2:194). The New Testament says nothing about how to wage war. The Quran, by contrast, is filled with just-war precepts. Here war is allowed in self-defense (2:190; 22:39), but hell is the punishment for killing other Muslims (4:93), and the execution of prisoners of war is explicitly condemned (47:4). Whether in the abstract is is better to rely on a scripture that regulates war or a scripture that hopes war away is an open question, but no Muslim-majority country has yet dropped an atomic bomb in war. — Stephen R. Prothero

If even half of what we heard was true, this was a bitter, tormented soul, a sinner who mocked both gods and men. He served, but found no pride in service. He fought, but took no joy in victory. He drank, to drown his pain in a sea of wine. He did not love, nor was he loved himself. It was hate that drove him. Though he committed many sins, he never sought forgiveness. — George R R Martin

Like all religious people, Christians repress, remember, and retell their core stories selectively. They emphasize this episode at the expense of that episode, in keeping with their own biases and the preoccupations of their times. — Stephen R. Prothero

I fear that I am not made for rough touch — Sai Marie Johnson