I'm really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.
My dad's family were political and he was always a theatrical creature, whereas my mum is really musical and her father was the touring pianist with Nat King Cole. My family was an explosive mixture of politics, religion and music - no wonder I turned out how I did.
From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.
President Obama's respect for the Constitution does not extend to freedom of religion - his administration has forced religious businessowners to pay for insurance plans that cover activities in violation of religious precepts.
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
If one group of people can exterminate another in the name of so-called religion, the world has no hope.
The biggest danger of this terrorism and extremism is the tarnishing of the reputation of our beloved religion... We will not allow this to happen.
You're always going to have extremists in every religion.
The difference between a cult and a religion, of course, lies in extremity.
Since all power from the seventh century on was only legitimated by religion, political forces and economic interests pushed for the fabrication of false traditions.
It's a bit odd that nobody seems to be using the correct technical term to describe organized Islamic terrorists. They are not a faction of a religion or a social movement. They are a cult. A suicide cult.
I've had trouble now and again in Nigeria because I have spoken up about the mistreatment of factions in the country because of difference in religion. These are things we should put behind us.
I found myself facing a Christian Science Reading Room. My God! It had been eight years. There had never been any renunciation of religion on my part, but like so many people, it was a gradual fading away.
I think we need to do some deep soul searching about what's important in our lives and renew our spirit and our spiritual thinking, whether it's through faith-based religion or just through loving nature or helping your fellow man.
To fall in love is to create a religion that has a fallible god.
In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
Marxism, Freudianism, global warming. These are proof - of which history offers so many examples - that people can be suckers on a grand scale. To their fanatical followers they are a substitute for religion. Global warming, in particular, is a creed, a faith, a dogma that has little to do with science.
I don't think the 9/11 attacks taught us anything we didn't already know about religion. It has long been obvious - even to the deeply religious - that religious fanaticism is an extremely dangerous deranger of otherwise sane and goodhearted people.
Fascism is a religion. The twentieth century will be known in history as the century of Fascism.
Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.
