Religious extremism

“ When, in the name of God, he resists education and science, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he robs, tortures, and kills those who differ from him, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he opposes the equal rights of all, he blasphemes. When, in the name of God, he preaches content to the poor and oppressed, flatters the rich and powerful, and makes religious tyranny the handmaiden of political privilege, he blasphemes. ”

“ What astonishes one throughout this long, sickening story of shame and crime is the religious faith of the sufferers. It envelops them like a Nessus’ shirt, aggravating their agonies by the fear it inspires that they must have offended in some inexplicable way the omnipotent God who created them. ”

“ Those who forged the blade of this counterfeit jihad could not temper it in the flame of religious fervour, and it shattered against the shield of religious tolerance and good faith: we make mistakes, but can honestly claim those two virtues. ”

“ One of the forms of prejudice which afflict the world of mankind is religious bigotry and fanaticism. When this hatred burns in human hearts, it becomes the cause of revolution, destruction, abasement of humankind and deprivation of the mercy of God. For the holy Manifestations and divine Founders of religion Themselves were completely unified in love and agreement, whereas Their followers are characterized by bitter antagonism and attitudes of hostility toward each other. ”

“ The first grand defection indeed from an established and universal faith, creates a shock and is assailed with a violence proportioned to the firmness with which the parent-belief has been rooted in the public mind: but the subsequent ramification of different schisms and modes of faith from the first enormous heresy, tires out and neutralises the spirit of both persecution and fanaticism. Religious controversy is a war of words, and no longer a war of extermination. ”

“ If infidels have often attacked religion without apparent effect, it is because the best reasons become useless against the blindness of a superstition sustained by the public authority, or against the torrent of opinion and custom which sways the minds of most men. With regard to the persecutions which the church suffered on the part of the pagans, he is but slightly acquainted with the effects of fanaticism and religious obstinacy who does not perceive that tyranny is calculated to excite and extend what it persecutes most violently. ”

“ Their religious fanaticism is grounded in an intense, unshakable belief in the fact and the necessity of a divine revelation; and he who in the heat of a ferocious bigotry will kill his neighbor is willing, if need be, to die himself for the faith, whether it be in open warfare or by the tortures of a slow martyrdom. ”

“ Because, it will destroy that moderation and harmony which the forbearance of our laws to intermeddle with Religion, has produced amongst its several sects. Torrents of blood have been spilt in the old world, by vain attempts of the secular arm to extinguish Religious discord, by proscribing all difference in Religious opinions. Time has at length revealed the true remedy. ”

“ Religious persecution springs from a due admixture of love towards God and hatred towards man.
The terrible religious wars that inundated the world with blood tended at least to bring all religion into disgrace and hatred. Thoughtful people began to question the divine origin of a religion that made its believers hold the rights of others in absolute contempt. ”

“ Even religious intolerance, suspended for a time, has reawakened and, while its blinded votaries are struggling for tactical advantage, Paganism runs rampant with poisonous fangs aimed at the heart of all religion. Races, too, are stirred again to selfish rivalries. ”

“ Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists. ”

“ In most countries of Europe, where the war against religion is much more open and widespread than in America, the Socialists are frank in confessing that their movement is atheistic and anti-religious. ”

“ We must be prepared to do battle for our religious system in every other sphere as well as in that of doctrine. Theological error affects men's ideas on all other subjects, and we cannot accept in politics the consequences of a system which is hateful to us in its religious aspect. ”

“ Nor are intolerance and persecution to be laid exclusively at the door of any one religion. In Protestant countries, in England and Scotland, the persecution and torture of alleged witches is one of the most painful instances of the cruelties into which men can be led by loyalty to their religious convictions. And Mohammedanism vividly taught men how a faith might be spread by fire and sword. ”

“ All Christendom knows what they are suffering yet not a Christian power has said in words like solid shot: “These persecutions must cease.” Identity of ideals, aspirations and religious faith give this unfortunate but heroic people strong claims on the sympathy of the English-speaking peoples, for our ancestors whatever the form of their religious creed never hesitated to die for it, and whenever the breath of God swept over them breasted the hurricane of persecution. ”

“ Notwithstanding the fact that infidels in all ages have battled for the rights of man, and have at all times been the fearless advocates of liberty and justice, we are constantly charged by the church with tearing down without building again. The church should by this time know that it is utterly impossible to rob men of their opinions. The history of religious persecution fully establishes the fact that the mind necessarily resists and defies every attempt to control it by violence. The mind necessarily clings to old ideas until prepared for the new. ”

“ It should be the fervent prayer of all good men that the evil spirit of religious hatred and intolerance, which on the one hand prompted the gunpowder plot, and which on the other has ever since made it the occasion of reproach and persecution of an entire sect of professing Christians, may be no longer perpetuated. In the matter of exclusiveness and intolerance, none of the older sects can safely reproach each other ”

“ Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won because people have ceased to consider religion so important as it was once thought to be. But in politics and economics, which have taken the place formerly occupied by religion, there is a growing tendency to persecution, which is not by any means confined to one party. ”

“ Yet so natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care about, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realised, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale. ”

“ And what we need to understand is, is that there are extremist organizations – whether Muslim or any other faith in the past – that will use faith as a justification for violence. We cannot paint with a broad brush a faith as a consequence of the violence that is done in that faith's name. ”

“ Cut up as the population is into so many little communities, it is the very home of religious fanaticism. The mutual repulsions existing among these sections are terribly strong, each believing itself to be the true and only conservator of God’s truth, and all others, in slightly varying degrees of blackness, simply children of the devil. ”

“ A somewhat careful study of the rise and progress of all religions, and of all religious sects, convinces us that bigotry, intolerance, and persecution are alike common to all whenever they hold absolute power, and that in this respect the Catholics are no worse than others. ”

“ Every person in the least conversant with the history of mankind, knows what dreadful mischiefs have been committed by religious persecution. Under the color of religious tests, the utmost cruelties have been exercised. ”

“ Could they be more tolerant toward their adversaries than the Church and the kings of France had been toward heretics?
We are forced to believe that terror is a method which all believers regard as a necessity, since from the beginning of the ages religious codes have always been based upon terror. To force men to observe their prescriptions, believers have sought to terrify them with threats of an eternal hell of torments. ”

“ Freedom of religion, however, still has enemies. In America in recent years, churches and synagogues have been destroyed by arson and people have been attacked because of their religious affiliation. Across the globe, many people still live in countries where the right of religious freedom is restricted or even prohibited. Some totalitarian and authoritarian regimes actively persecute those who seek to practice their religion, imprisoning, torturing, and even killing men and women because of their faith. ”

“ Intolerance and fanaticism are the necessary accompaniments of the religious sentiment. They are inevitably displayed by those who believe themselves in the possession of the secret of earthly or eternal happiness. These two characteristics are to be found in all men grouped together when they are inspired by a conviction of any kind. The Jacobins of the Reign of Terror were at bottom as religious as the Catholics of the Inquisition, and their cruel ardour proceeded from the same source. ”

“ Their passions are not repressed, but on the contrary are often thus rendered more fierce and more calculated to disturb society. Masked under the veil of religion, they generally produce more terrible effects. It is then that ambition, vengeance, cruelty, anger, calumny, envy, and persecution, covered by the deceptive name of zeal, cause the greatest ravages, range without bounds, and even delude those who are transported by these dangerous passions. Religion does not annihilate these violent agitations of the mind in the hearts of its devotees, but often excites and justifies them ”

“ The latter part of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century are crowded with controversies and bloodshed; that violence and those animosities which are found so terribly to prevail where religious zeal has been abused for the purposes of intolerance. ”

“ Every one knows how easy it is to work through the agency of a religious sentiment, and a very large class of people, habituated to the belief in spiritual revelations as inculcated by the spiritualists, receiving impressions in that way, would be hard to believe otherwise than as the spurious spirits asserted. Crime would thus become more dramatic, and the consequences of such interference on the part of a religious organization might lead to the overthrow of all the purposes and powers of civil authority. ”

“ Those, then, who try to depreciate the influence of the clergy, and to bring their teaching into contempt, or to set themselves up as independent judges of the morality and right of all questions relating to politics and society, are false prophets, boasting of their liberty, appealing to pride, worshipping themselves in place of God, and flattering the passions of others. They are ravening wolves, destroying the spirit of religion and the souls of men, and leading their victims to anarchy, riot, and bloodshed. ”

“ And yet no religion is preferable to a cruel religion; a religion that curses and oppresses toleration, which is a principle inseparable from Christianity; a religion which buries the Bible, or burns it, and all that read it, and damns all meekness and mercy; a religion that defaces the Creation, cheats, impoverishes, oppresses, and exhausts the human race, and arms its apostles with jails, tortures, gibbets, impostures, and a bloody knife.
Every other complaint of the conspirators might with the same facility and truth be turned upon them. ”

“ They are Heaven's maledictions upon the fearful crime of false religions, which, while they defy God, degrade and dishonor men—cursing their conditions by poverty, miserable homes, and wretched compensation for their toil; wasting their revenues, sinking them in ignorance, destroying their morals, depriving them of liberty, and ruining their souls; till at length, when they have filled up their measure of iniquity, it turns the very centers and cradles of their faiths into the abodes of material or moral ruin, “the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” ”

“ As a natural consequence, missionaries have to play up to this combatant instinct, and so we read in their books and reports remarks calculated to engender religious intolerance on both sides, and which do not conform with the shrewd and kindly work in the field of those devoted and often scholarly men. ”

“ Too often has it been raised by those whose minds were guided by an evil and interested policy, fatal to the effects which it sought to accomplish, and who lifted to Heaven, hands stained with the blood of those, to whom they had been sent to preach the religion of peace, of love, and of salvation; for even the zeal of religion, when animated by human passions, may become fatal in its excess, and that daring fanaticism, which gives force and activity to the courage of the man, may render merciless and atrocious, the zeal of the bigot. ”

“ This can be realized only through the influence of that higher light which the Bible is now pouring into the recesses of every sectarian shrine. Even our own Protestant altars are now visited by rays which have long been shut out, or permitted to fall in only faint fragments. The spirit of intolerance which has pervaded our churches, has been a source of vast moral mischief. The road to heaven is covered with the footprints of thousands, who have been won to it by the accents of Christian love. ”