Religion Quotes

I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference.

~ Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism emphasizes and is grounded in a _singular relationality between and among people

~ Namsoon Kang

The time and space in which I have been working on this cosmopolitan project have convinced me that the disparity between the ideal of cosmopolitan theology and the current sociopolitical configuration of hospitality, welcoming others, unconditional forgiveness, is itself a _prophetic call_ to which we all have to respond––as humans, as person of faith. The _real_ is always about calculation and conditionality, whereas the _ideal_ of cosmopolitan theology is about incalculability, unconditionality, and planetarity of the _world-as-it-ought-to-be_. Therefore, the disparity between the reality and the ideality is not a space for despair but a space where one's sense of prophetic call_ and passion for _the impossible_ must come in.

~ Namsoon Kang

I believe theology should be about one's way of life, a kind of gaze into onesself and others, and a mode of one's profound existence in the world.

~ Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan discourse...provides one with a _public gaze_ with which one can relate oneself to others in a different way.

~ Namsoon Kang

The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves.

~ Namsoon Kang

I want to affirm that thinking and living, knowing and doing, theory and practice intersect.

~ Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism has offered me an ethical perspective and a conceptual framework with which to read the _signs of our times_ as a theologian and intellectual who has a public responsibility for constantly offering a way to engage in this rapidly changing public world.

~ Namsoon Kang

Theological discourse can be, in and of itself, a form of identity and solidarity.

~ Namsoon Kang

How can one maintain a theological confidence in what one claims to be _true_ while acknowledging the existence of multiple religions that also claim to be _true_?

~ Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism starts from the _singular_ individual rather than the _faceless_ collective

~ Namsoon Kang

I believe _cosmopolitanism_ can be an effective discourse with which to advocate a politics of _transidentity_ of overlapping interests and heterogeneous or hybrid subjects in order to challenge conventional notions of exclusive belonging, identity and citizenship.

~ Namsoon Kang

Religion is about hospitality and responsibility, and about neighbor/enemy-love-as-self-love in a Christian term that requires one to turn a new _gaze_ onto others––what I call a _cosmopolitan gaze_.

~ Namsoon Kang

The politics of trans-identity seeks to move from the _politics of singular identity_ to the _politics of multiple solidarities_ across various identities without abandoning one's personal attachments and commitments to the group that one finds significant.

~ Namsoon Kang

For what ends does one claim cosmopolitanism? _Whose interest_ does it serve?

~ Namsoon Kang

Religion is about hospitality, solidarity, and responsibility or it is nothing at all.

~ Namsoon Kang

the overall theme of theology can be twofold: the search for meaning and the responsibility one has to the others.

~ Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan discourse emphasizes the _cosmic belonging_ of all individual human beings as the ground of our hospitality, solidarity, justice and neighbor-love. Cosmopolitan discourse is about turning a _compassionate gaze_ onto others regardless of one's nationality and citizenship, origin of birth, religion, gender; race and ethnicity, sexuality, or ability

~ Namsoon Kang

the cosmopolitan gaze of planetary love and hospitality _is_ what constitutes being _religious_.

~ Namsoon Kang

One should regard one's religious or denominational affiliation as a point of departure, a point of entry, not the point of arrival because on cannot confine God to a particular religion or faith tradition, and therefore should not claim one's exclusive ownership of God. Regarding one's religious or denominational affiliation as _accidentality_; not as _inevitability_, is important in religious discourse and practice because such a sense of _accidentality_ of one's affiliation allows a space of _alterity_ of reciprocal contestation and challenge, and a space of planetary gaze that sees others as fellow human beings, _regardless_.

~ Namsoon Kang

Theological discourses function in various ways as sites of contestation and resistance, of forming new religious and personal identities, and of building solidarities. Theological discourses that theologians produce, disseminate, and teach in academia are not simply objective interpretations and neutral reflections on the world and the church in it. Instead theological discourses are productions of and for the world and the church that we live in

~ Namsoon Kang

I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.

~ Igor Stravinsky

To understand our faith -- to theologize in the Catholic tradition -- we need philosophy. We must use the philosophical language of God, person, creation, relationship, identity, natural law, virtues, conscience, moral norms if we are to think about religion and defend it. Theology has some terms and methods of its own, but its fundamental tools are borrowed from philosophy.The growth of religious fundamentalism and the collapse of religious education mean theology is more urgently needed in universities -- especially Catholic ones -- than ever before.

~ George Cardinal Pell

Peruse all the sermons of Jesus and you will be sure to find parables, and sometimes allegory. What you will always find, however, is something of keeping our hearts in order.

~ Jerome Strong

[E]very heresy is due to an overemphasis upon some truth, without allowing other truths to qualify and balance it.

~ John R.w. Stott

A theology that endangers life rather than giving life is one that cannot accept the title of being adequately Christian.

~ Michael Joseph Brown

To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from the childlike to the commonplace—the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us.

~ George Macdonald

Immortal beings have been compared to stars, these are existences that linger on long after the death of the thing itself.

~ Zeena Schreck

The more rigid and exclusive one makes the border between philosophy and theology, the more that distinction itself has to fall on the side of theology, and the more inaccessible that very distinction becomes to philosophy

~ Gregory B. Sadler

Ye know, doan't ye, what it feels like when ye burn yer hand in takin' a cake out of the oven or wi'a match when ye're lightin' one of they godless cigarettes? Ay. It stings wi' a fearful pain, doan't it? And ye run away to clap a bit o' butter on it to take the pain away. Ah, but' (an impressive pause) 'there'll be no butter in hell!

~ Stella Gibbons

Any religion which uses the words such as hell, fire, curse, burning, amputating can never be a religion of love because a religion of love must only use the language of love, must only use only the sweet words of affection, not the words of darkness and torture!

~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

In the religion these words ‘save me’ were created to suppress the truth of the human life. These words ‘save me’, indicates that you are sinner and so you are uttering these words. But see how wonderful the human life is! Yes, I am Universal. Upanishad is saying ‘Amritasya Putrah’ (Sons of Amrita or Immortal self). What a wonderful version! And in that case they are crying ‘save me’! Upanishads created heaven by saying ‘Sons of Immortal self’ and on the contrary they have created hell by uttering the words ‘Save me’.

~ Sri Jibankrishna Or Diamond

Why did God do it? or is there really a Devil who led to the Fall? Souls in Heaven said We want to try mortal existence, O God, Lucifer said it's great!—Bang, down we fall, to this, to concentration camps, gas ovens, barbed wire, atom bombs, television murders, Bolivian starvation, thieves in silk, thieves in neckties, thieves in office, paper shufflers, bureaucrats, insult, rage, dismay, horror, terrified nightmares, secret death of hangovers, cancer, ulcers, strangulation, pus, old age, old age homes, canes, puffed flesh, dropped teeth, stink, tears, and goodbye. Somebody else write it, I dont know how.

~ Jack Kerouac

I had a lot of Hell that God needed to squeeze out of me, and believe me, sometimes when the Hell leaves you it screams at God on the way out. And when the pain from your past leaves you, sometimes you have to feel it again on the way out. There's nothing we can say or do that can separate us from God's love.

~ Brian Welch

She had seen him once, smiling a little through another friar’s sermon about Hell, saying after the other left that fear of Hell is one of many paths to it. Forget Hell and love one another. That is all He wants of you.

~ Christopher Buehlman

I’m Christian, but if God is truly a God of love, then why would he have a private torture chamber where he put people that he was supposed to love and forgive to be punished forever? If you actually read the Bible, the idea of hell like in the movies and most books was invented by a writer. Dante’s Inferno was ripped off by the Church to give people something to be afraid of, to literally scare people into being Christian.

~ Laurell K. Hamilton

I'd rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is much so more tolerable when returning is an option.

~ Deborah Feldman

You have a perfect right to consign us all to hell, rector, but you must allow us the choice of how we get

~ Angus Wilson

Even with all their threats of eternal damnation and soul roasting, Christian missionaries have run across some who were not so quick to swallow their drivel. Pleasure and pain, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. So, when missionaries ventured to Alaska and warned the Eskimos of the horrors of Hell and the blazing lake of fire awaiting transgressors, they eagerly asked: How do we get there?!

~ Anton Szandor Lavey

I am the most pious person in the room. Even though I have no pie - I have pizza, and what can be more virtuous than eating all by yourself?

~ Will Advise