Religious Retreat Quotes & Sayings

What can my enemies do to me?
I have in my breast both my Heaven and my Garden.
If I travel they are with me, and they never leave me.
Imprisonment for me is a religious retreat [khalwa].
To be slain for me is martyrdom [shahada]
And to be exiled from my land is a spiritual journey [siyaha]. — Ibn Taymiyyah

Faith doesn't mean that you don't have doubts ... [you] still experience the same greed, resentment, lust, and anger that everyone else experienced ... the lines between sinner and saved [are] more fluid; the sins of those who come to church are not so different from the sins of those who don't ... You [need] to come to church precisely because you [are] of this world, not apart from it; rich, poor, sinner, saved you [need] to embrace Christ precisely because you had sins to wash away ... that religious commitment did not require me to suspend critical thinking, disengage from the battle for economic and social justice, or otherwise retreat from the world ... — Barack Obama

In the last generation, with public Christianity in headlong retreat, we have caught our first, distant view of a de-Christianized world , and it is not encouraging. — Paul Johnson

One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. — Steven Weinberg

The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions ... We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic. — Barry Goldwater

This book aims, in part, to help reverse the lamentable public retreat of religious liberals in recent decades. Yet, religious liberalism on the whole in the United States is by no means diminishing. Recent studies indicate that approximately one in four Americans describe themselves as religious liberals, roughly the same number as those who describe themselves as religious conservatives - and some suggest that the number of religious liberals may be even higher. To make sense of the numbers, we need to define religious liberal. While there are many — Paul B. Rasor