Religion Division Quotes & Sayings

It is not our diversity which divides us; it is not our ethnicity, or religion or culture that divides us. Since we have achieved our freedom, there can only be one division amongst us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not. — Nelson Mandela

Christians could agree or argue about God as much as we wanted, but it was all essentially chatter. What bound that driver and me together was the obvious thing, so plain and dumb between us we could almost ignore it: the rough wooden pallet of onions that organized our days. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, visit prisoners. We fed people. — Sara Miles

The Way is not a religion: Christianity is the end of religion. 'Religion' means here the division between sacred and secular concerns, other-worldliness, man's reaching toward God in a way which projects his own thoughts. — David Kirk

The division in human religion has always been between those who see the fall of man as a fall into freedom and those who see it as an act of defiance against the tyranny of an all-powerful father. But Adam and Eve were never in heaven; they were in the mud, and had to leave the only home they had ever known behind. And why? For choosing love and freedom over perpetual infancy and slavery of the will. Their sin was moral responsibility. Their reward is clear: "They have becomes gods
knowing good and evil." And for that, they were condemned to live in a world of discovery and choices. — R. Joseph Hoffmann

Sometimes religion becomes yet another source for more division and even open conflict. Because of that situation, I feel the different religious traditions have a great responsibility to provide peace of mind and a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among humanity. — Dalai Lama

Religion poses a danger of creating division or intolerance between groups of people. However, the gospel of Jesus lead us to three things: humble service, reconciling behavior that is neither patronizing nor self-righteous, and a love toward people who hold different beliefs than we do. — Timothy Keller

It was then that my religious consciousness emerged to flower years afterward into definite forms of religious dancing in which there is no sense of division between spirit and flesh, religion and art. — Ruth St. Denis

There is a single truth, it filters through different stories and languages because people come from different cultures and speak different languages. And this truth has manifested itself through millennia, in multiple ways. Different people belong to different manifestations of truth. Some people take those manifestations and turn them into religions, or into gathering places or into a system. Others take those manifestations and allow that light to illuminate the paths on their inward journeys. All in all, the only reason why there is strife or hatred in any way, is because of the strife and hatred and intolerance inside of people. Truth does not call for any division or any hatred or intolerance of any kind. In order to love one thing, this does not mean we need to put down another one. — C. JoyBell C.

Religion forbids us from assuming a God-like character. This is especially true in politics and government, where limiting the power of the state, division of powers, and the doctrine of checks and balances are established in order to prevent accumulation of power that might lead to such Godly claims. — Abdolkarim Soroush

Richard Rohr states in one of my favorite books The Naked Now: Wisdom is not the gathering of more facts and information, as if that would eventually coalesce into truth. Wisdom is precisely a different way of seeing and knowing those ten thousand things. I suggest that wisdom is precisely the freedom to be present. Wise people always know how to be present, but it is much more then that. Presence is wisdom! People who are fully present know how to see fully, rightfully, and truthfully. Presence is the one thing necessary, and in many ways, the hardest thing of all. Just try to keep your heart open, your mind without division or resistance, and your body not somewhere else. Presence is the practical, daily task of all mature religion and all spiritual disciplines.47 — Mark Votava

It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world which divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things which unite people. It doesn't matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine, it's still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word 'love' has the same meaning for everybody. Or 'fear', or 'suffering'. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That's why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it; religion was a hobby which some people professed and others did not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was the province of 'complexes' and 'inhibitions'
catchwords of the decade
and of the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries. — Evelyn Waugh

There was no division I could see between the essential teaching of all Prophets and wise men of religion. — Cat Stevens

Everybody is always touting the division between religion and science ... That division is based on a false premise. It simply doesn't exist. The first sciences developed from a desire to prove the existence of God. In that sense, science and religion have been hand in hand from the very beginning. — A.J. Kazinski

The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division it were better to be without it ... — Abdu'l- Baha

The very problem of mind and body suggests division; I do not know of anything so disastrously affected by the habit of division as this particular theme. In its discussion are reflected the splitting off from each other of religion, morals and science; the divorce of philosophy from science and of both from the arts of conduct. The evils which we suffer in education, in religion, in the materialism of business and the aloofness of "intellectuals" from life, in the whole separation of knowledge and practice
all testify to the necessity of seeing mind-body as an integral whole. — John Dewey

We are a people of many races, many faiths, creeds, and religions. I do not think that the men who made the Constitution forbade the establishment of a State church because they were opposed to religion. They knew that the introduction of religious differences into American life would undermine the democratic foundations of this country. What holds for adults holds even more for children, sensitive and conscious of differences. I certainly hope that the Board of Education will think very, very seriously before it introduces this division and antagonism in our public schools. — John Dewey

England had decidedly turned its back on any expressions of what we might call serious Christian belief. Having led to so much division and violence, religion was now in full-scale retreat. The churches of mid-eighteenth-century England all but abandoned orthodox, historical Christianity and now preached a tepid kind of moralism that seemed to present civility and the preservation of the status quo as the summum bonnum. — Eric Metaxas

The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of America shame our faith, our party and our country. — John McCain

In Western lands there is a distinct division between the religious and the secular life. There is one rule of conduct for laymen and another for clergymen. This distinction has never found its place in the life of the people of India. There, all of life is included in the word 'religion.' — Virchand Gandhi

Far more serious still is the division between the Church of Rome and evangelical Protestantism in all its forms. Yet how great is the common heritage which unites the Roman Catholic Church, with its maintenance of the authority of Holy Scripture and with its acceptance of the great early creeds, to devout Protestants today!
We would not indeed obscure the difference which divides us from Rome. The gulf is indeed profound. But profound as it is, it seems almost trifling compared to the abyss which stands between us and many ministers of our own Church. The Church of Rome may represent a perversion of the Christian religion; but naturalistic liberalism is not Christianity at all. — J. Gresham Machen

From the first day we have been fighting the wrong enemy; our common enemy is religion which dictates upon us division and partition. — M.F. Moonzajer

Religion divides us, while it is our human characteristics that bind us to each other. — Hermann Bondi

Religion has never befriended the cause of humaneness. Its monstrous doctrine of eternal punishment and the torture of the damned underlies much of the barbarity with which man has treated man; and the deep division imagined by the Church between the human being, with his immortal soul, and the soulless "beasts", has been responsible for an incalculable sum of cruelty. — Henry Stephens Salt

In addition to this there is the pluralization of the world in which we live through the division between public and private spheres, and also the plurality of institutions within the public sphere. Each of them forms a world in itself, so that individuals have to move to and fro between different worlds. The integration of this plurality of aspects of the world, which used to be achieved by religion, no longer takes place in the public world of secular culture but has to be achieved by the individual. The basis of this is meant to be the private sphere of life, the world of the family. But in many cases this cannot stand up to the burdens imposed by modern life. The growth of urban living has contributed to an increase of pluralization in the private sphere also, making the task of integration increasingly difficult. — Wolfhart Pannenberg

Separate religion from morality, and you have the true energy for evil within man, the terrible, cruel, devastating, and inhuman principle which naturally lies in his spirit. Here the division of the indivisible punishes itself most awfully. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Religion should unite all hearts and cause wars and disputes to vanish from the face of the earth; it should give birth to spirituality, and bring light and life to every soul. If religion becomes a cause of dislike, hatred and division, it would be better to be without it ... Any religion which is not a cause of love and unity is no religion. — Abdu'l- Baha

The division between faith and reason is a half-measure, till it is frankly admitted that faith has to do with fiction, and reason with fact. — Leslie Stephen

The problem is that faith based upon twisted information is nothing more than delusion - and delusion leads to division. It divided humanity, taking us into endless wars - separating us by race, religion, and politics. — R. Brown

Whilst on the subject of the spread of Buddhism in the West, I want to say that I have noticed some tendency towards sectarianism amongst new practitioners. This is absolutely wrong. Religion should never become a source of conflict, a further factor of division within the human community. — Dalai Lama XIV

Religion should be a basis for overcoming division, not for creating it. — Julia Suryakusuma

Even a child could see the division between what the Galileans [i.e., Christians] say they believe and what, in fact, they do believe, as demonstrated by their actions. A religion of brotherhood and mildness which daily murders those who disagree with its doctrines can only be thought hypocrite, or worse. — Gore Vidal

Mithorden said it well," she said finally. "It's worshipping death. They say they follow light. But, in the end, they're really following desolation, division, the end of things. You should hear their prophecies
war, destruction, only special chosen people are spared." She felt sad and angry. Worse, she wondered to what ends people who believed these things would go to assert their views. — Robert Fanney

Men have, for the most part, done with lamenting their lost faith. Sentimental tears over the happy, simple Christendom of their fathers are a thing of the past. They are proclaiming now their contempt for Christ's character, and their disgust at the very name of love. Scorn and hatred, difference and division, must be more than ever our lot, if we would be the followers of Christ in these days. Conventional religion and polite unbelief are gone forever. — Neville Figgis