A Muslim fanatic and a Christian fanatic, a Jewish fanatic, a secular fanatic, an atheist fanatic, a communist fanatic – all of them are the same. The thinking that, ‘If you don’t think like me, that if you are not with me, then you are against me;’ this is something to condemn.
Before progressives were apocalyptic about climate change they were apocalyptic about nuclear energy. Then, after the Cold War ended, and the threat of nuclear war declined radically, they found a new vehicle for their secular apocalypse in the form of climate change.
Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world – Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves.
You look at a surgeon as you would a secular priest, almost, if it’s your child, if it’s your sister on the operating table. That was an idea that very much has interested me and I’ve wanted to explore for some time.
I realised that the idea of enforcing sharia is not consistent with Islam as it’s been practised from the beginning. In other words, Islam has always been secular, and I had been totally ignorant of the fact.
Though it is perhaps expected for the bishop of Rome to warn against the idolatry of money, what is striking is how Francis suggests that not only God but also secular politics must outrank economic imperatives.
The Catholic teaching against murder, for example, is largely the same as our secular laws. But as a law, it obviously has a secular rationale at least as strong as its religious rationale.
The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists.
It is unfair to label me anti-Islam. I am an atheist and a secular humanist.
My father was a Pentecostal minister; that’s how I was brought up. So I never thought of having a secular career.
Everybody has values. Now, you know it may be formed in a secular setting, it may be formed in an intellectual setting, but everybody comes forward with values.
A lot of the Jews I met in Israel, almost all of them are secular. They get turned off by their religion, in the same way that Americans get turned off Christianity by people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robinson.
It’s always been a subtext of our secular optimism that you solve the economic problem, and all other things sort of take care of themselves. Well, we seem to be doing well on the economic side – we are doing very well – and the other things are not solving – they’re compounding.
I came to America at the age of 17 as an exchange student, and a year later, I was a student at Dartmouth. I would say that the rather weak foundation of my Christianity was effectively battered at Dartmouth. I’ve had mostly a secular career. But I became intellectually interested in Christianity again in my mid-30s.
I think that the practice of religion allows one to discover emotional and psychological truth of a kind not available in the secular world.
Sports are the ultimate secular religion. Instead of being worried about whether your kids will be okay or how your job is going, you have your team, and you can focus all of your angst and your hopes and dreams on your team. I am in no way saying it always relieves any of this!
I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.
Some people seem to gravitate from one fundamentalism to another, from some kind of secular fundamentalism into a religious fundamentalism or the other way around, which is not very helpful.
A secular worldview hostile to biblical values has overrun our culture and permeated our government.
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.’
This history of a secular state doesn’t exist, no. The state is Christian, and those who are against it can leave.
I love reading religious authors. Especially in the sort of circle I move in, people tend to be more secular, and I love reading books by just really smart people of religious faith. It’s always a really cool perspective.
I decided to take God and organized religion seriously, and to reject the secular life which in my teens had looked attractive because it allowed me to act in any way that I wanted.
Religion features more now in my life than it did when I was a kid – my dad rejected the Catholic church as a young man. I had no religious upbringing, but certainly, Dad was a kind of secular humanist. I don’t know if he was an atheist or agnostic. I regret I didn’t talk to him about it.
India is a secular nation and believers of all religions and atheists have a place in this country.
Islam cannot have a significant presence in Australia if we are to live in an open, secular, and cohesive society. We have seen the destruction it is causing around the world.
I would like the secular world to know that the Scriptures are about the things that we wrestle with every day. The Scriptures are not ignorant. Life is really hard. We know that things don’t always go well and that our hearts don’t naturally obey God.
Of the secular mysteries to which I wake with fresh and sometimes angry amazement every day, the queue is the second-most baffling. The first is the fan.
Secular intellectuals may wax eloquent about ‘true Islam’ being humane and peaceful, on TV programmes, but it is clear that they have not read any authoritative translations of the Koran, the Sira, and the Hadith.
When ‘Christians’ cite the Bible as the basis for secular policies, they must explain why they believe Muslims in the Middle East are evil for doing the same with the Koran.
Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs to the small Alawite sect and is therefore considered a heretic by many Sunnis; al-Assad runs a secular regime, and therefore he is considered by Sunni militants to be an apostate, and he is inflicting a total war on his Sunni population.
We need to agree on common values for all religions as soon as possible, a kind of secular Ten Commandments on which we will build the world of tomorrow.
People in the Middle East, people everywhere, want peace. But unfortunately too many fail to recognize that that lasting peace can only be found with pluralistic, secular government.
Bear in mind how valuable a secular Turkey is for the world.
I sometimes think that Thomas Cook should be numbered among the secular saints. He took travel from the privileged and gave it to the people.
The conflict between secular Zionism and the settler movement did not appear overnight following Israel’s conquests in the 1967 war, for there was an argument that bridged the gap: security.
Environmentalism, apocalyptic environmentalism in particular, has become the dominant religion of supposedly secular people in the West.
The concept of neutrality can lead to a brooding and pervasive devotion to the secular and a passive, or even active, hostility to the religious. Such results are not only not compelled by the Constitution, but, it seems to me, are prohibited by it.
The requirement for military force is clear when looking at the first of the nine points agreed in Vienna, which states that ‘Syria’s unity, independence, territorial integrity and secular character are fundamental.’
The co-existence of religious values in the lives of individuals and secular rules in the governance of the state should be clearly defined.
In all God’s plans for human redemption, He proposes that men pray. The men are to pray in every place, in the church, in the closet, in the home, on sacred days and on secular days.
All people, even secular people, are seeing books on the market like The End of History.
A lot of us were worried that the secular fabric of the country was under threat and it was time that citizens begin to speak out. Hence we called ourselves Citizen Speak India.
I am a secular rationalist Nationalist proud Indian who is inconvenient to both Hindu and Muslim communalists.
I see little difference in the attitudes of those who consider themselves Christian and those who are openly secular and agnostic. Most Christian citizenship appears to be clearly right here – on this little bit of very unreal estate.
American business needs more conscience, not less, whether from religious motivation like Hobby Lobby or from secular intentions.
I believe that the appearance of God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, in 1820 to Joseph Smith unlocked the heavens not only to the great spiritual knowledge revealed in this dispensation but also to secular knowledge.
Politics in America is the binding secular religion.
We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don’t want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.
