Religious minority

“ Here we have such a small minority entertaining in good faith a religious belief, which is such a departure from the usual course of human conduct, that most persons are disposed to regard it with little toleration or concern. ”

“ It is this inevitable consequence which impels many among liberal Protestants to reject all external worship, nay, all external religious community, and makes them advocate what they call, individual religion. ”

“ The opinion has already been started among them, that men may make such progress in religion, that nothing they can do will be sinful, even should it be the murder of those whom they are now required to serve and obey! The present state of the country presents a prospect truly alarming; and when the rapid growth of our population both black and white is considered, it requires a man of a stout heart indeed, to view the scene without dismay. It is appalling, when such a mighty power as that afforded by the religious principle, is wielded by ignorant and fanatical men. ”

“ But the crime that is now sought to be perpetrated on more than fifty millions of people comes neither from the camp of a conqueror, the hand of a foreigner, nor the altar of an idolator. But it comes from those in whose veins runs the blood of the common ancestry, who were born under the same skies, speak the same language, reared in the same institutions, and nurtured in the principles of the same religious faith. ”

“ Where there exists such discrimination against any religious sect, or where any one sect is favored or sustained by the government, there of course is no religious equality, although there may be religious freedom. Progress in this direction, then, has consisted in the growth of a really tolerant spirit, which has led to the removal from Catholics, Protestant dissenters, and Jews all civil disabilities, and the placing of all sects on an absolute equality before the law. ”

“ We already have an example of religious equality in our colonies. 'In the colonies,' says The Times, ’we see religious communities unfettered by State-control, and the State relieved from one of the most troublesome and irritating responsibilities.' But America is the great example alleged by those who are against establishments for religion. Our topic at this moment is the influence of religious establishments on culture ”

“ There are, indeed, some kinds of measures which stir up race antagonism. But the keenest of these have happily been eliminated. More intense than any other source of discord is religious belief. Religious differences in America are not so much theological as racial in character. The Judaism of the Jew, the Protestantism of the British and colonial American, the Lutheranism of the German, the Roman Catholicism of the Irish, Italian, and Slav, the Greek Catholicism of other Slavs, all testify to the history and psychology of races. ”

“ In past centuries the nations of the world have imagined that the law of God demanded blind imitation of ancestral forms of belief and worship. For example, the Jews were captives of hereditary racial religious observances. The Muslims, likewise, have been held in the bondage of traditionary forms and ceremonials. ”

“ Conclude, then, with me, Madam, that the revelation of a religion to only a single tribe or nation sets forth a God neither good, impartial, nor equitable, but an unjust and capricious tyrant, who, though he may show kindness and preference to some of his creatures, at any rate acts with the greatest cruelty towards all the others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is plain that of two regions alike in other respects, the one that insists on race distinctions in the worship of the one God and Father of us all, and will not allow men of different races to stand side by side in doing Christian work, must maintain its religious institutions at greater cost and with less efficiency because of this race separation.
"The region that treats all men impartially in its churches will have the advantage in religion and morals. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Religious freedom is one of the founding principles of our democracy, and the black church has historically been the center of worship, self-help, and community life for millions of families in our country. ”

“ The decline of the Christian religion, particularly in our rural communities, is a marked feature of the times, and steps should be taken to remedy it. No matter what our belief may be in religious matters, every good citizen knows that when the restraining influences of religion are withdrawn from a community, its decay, moral, mental and financial, is swift and sure. ”

“ Working for the Removal of Religious Prejudice. "O unitarians, make firm the girdle of endeavor, that perchance religious strife and conflict may be removed from amongst the people of the world and be annulled. ”

“ The Negro may be wrong, in many respects, as to what constitutes the ideal Christian, but he certainly will not get much light on the subject from the men who cannot keep their prejudice in abeyance through one religious service. ”

“ If we are to defend religious freedom, we must remember that when any religious group is targeted, we all have a responsibility to speak up. At times when some try to divide us along religious lines, it is imperative that we recall the common humanity we share—and reject a politics that seeks to manipulate, prejudice, or bias, and that targets people because of religion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They went everywhere, on their individual initiative, with no general organization, were persecuted wherever intolerance ruled, and generally despised by their more conventional and respectable neighbors, chiefly because they insisted that religion was a purely voluntary matter, that Christian, Turk, Jew, or atheist should be allowed to follow his own convictions about faith and worship, and that the state had nothing to do with it. ”

“ And seeing this, they would allow and encourage the utmost freedom of thought and inquiry on religious or doctrinal questions, not deprecating but cordially welcoming whatever diversity might result from such freedom. Prejudice against new ideas, or against writings said to contain them, would everywhere be condemned and frowned upon as a hindrance to religious progress. ”

“ This shows that racial differences are much more potent than religious beliefs; and yet, in considering the problems of the world to-day, it would be vain to leave religious affairs out of the question, worse than vain—foolish. ”

“ So far from it, if we consider the aggregate of the various countries of Europe, and that at the latest statistical period, it is easy to perceive that, where religious toleration has made more way, minorities begin to approximate the general average of their religion, the moral coercion of which Legoyt speaks is fast disappearing, and the unmixed influence of religion begins to tell with full force. ”

“ Where this common faith is not, the mere will of the majority means permanent instability and the oppression of the rest; "without God, you can coerce, but you cannot persuade; you may be tyrants in your turn, but you cannot be educators or apostles."
Without religion, then,—deep, heartfelt, vitalising religion,—there can be no true community. ”

“ Modern civilized communities are believed capable of existing without an official religion; the citizens being free to form themselves into self-governed religious bodies, as various as the prevailing modes of religious belief. ”

“ This total absence of religion, or rather of all religious belief, is spreading fast, and, no longer confined to young men of fashion as their exclusive prerogative, is descending to the lower classes of the community, who, discontented and repining, and debarred from all means of enlightenment, look upon the blended temporal and spiritual system of their Government with the same hostility and mistrust. ”

“ They are naturally a religious people and this principle, which seems to be strong within them, under the guidance of an earnest enlightened ministry, might prove to be the key to the race problem find open up a social and political reformation, unequalled in modern times. ”

“ The demand for a statement of a candidate's religious belief can have no meaning except that there may be discrimination for or against him because of that belief. Discrimination against the holder of one faith means retaliatory discrimination against men of other faiths. The inevitable result of entering upon such a practice would be an abandonment of our real freedom of conscience and a reversion to the dreadful conditions of religious dissensions which in so many lands have proved fatal to true liberty, to true religion, and to all advance in civilization. ”

“ For while the question of a religious establishment proved one of the most exciting issues in politics, influences more truly religious suffered a natural degradation and diminution through their over-close association with secular affairs. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Needless to say, when entering the area of religious freedom, we must be fully cognizant of the particular protection that the Constitution has accorded it. Abhorrence of religious persecution and intolerance is a basic part of our heritage. But we are a cosmopolitan nation made up of people of almost every conceivable religious preference. ”

“ When, after the colossal Congress of Religions, bigotry and intolerance were laid in their graves and kindness and charity began to draw warring sects together, many thought the millennium had arrived, at least in the new world which after all is a world by itself. ”

“ It was the proud prerogative of Christianity first to proclaim this great truth, to break down the distinctions of race and the prejudices of nationalities, in order to erect upon their ruins that catholic temple of universal brotherhood which excludes no man as a stranger or an alien. ”

“ At the risk of shocking the supersensitive, it must be admitted that most individuals get their religious leanings from external sources—parents, teachers, ministers, friends and especially by the accident of being born in a certain country, among a certain sect or within a certain community. ”

“ Our Nation's profound commitment to religious freedom reminds us that many people around the world lack the safeguard of law to protect them from prejudice and persecution. We deplore the religious intolerance that too often tears neighbor from neighbor, and we must remain an international advocate for the ideal of human brotherhood and sisterhood and for the basic rights that sustain human dignity and personal freedom. ”

“ Borne a deep burthen for the negro's wrong,
'Till the church freed her at her Master's will,
In southern states love's purpose to fulfil.
With gospel power for Truth and right she spoke,
'Till slumbering consciences to feeling woke,
Oppressors' hearts with justice learned to beat,
While bondmen's shackles fell beneath their feet. ”

“ Divers questions which were not connected either with belief as a whole or with the principle of belief [283] combined to make the Protestant minority by far more moral than the Catholic majority. Perhaps the social disadvantage attached to Protestantism was the strongest reason for its superiority. When a practically powerless minority is surrounded and kept under surveillance by a powerful majority, unless pride and vanity have blinded its prudence the minority keeps careful watch of its actions. ”

“ Well, my friends, God grant that you may all believe it in spirit and in truth. But you must remember that if so, you are in the minority; that the majority of civilized men, like the majority of mere savages, do not pray, whatever the women may do; and that prayer among thinking and civilized white men has been becoming, for the last 100 years at least, more and more unfashionable ”

“ The priest addressed himself to the Major: "You ask how we are to protect the negro in the South. I will tell you—by teaching him that except in the Catholic Church he cannot hope to find perfect equality. Our communion knows no color—save red, and that is the blood of Christ. Our religion is the only true democracy, but a democracy which teaches that a man must respect himself before he should expect others to respect him. But, my dear Major, I am not here to convince you, but to convince the negro. ”

“ No State Church can long subsist in modern society which professes the religion of the minority. Whilst the want of a definite system of doctrine, allowing every clergyman to be the mouthpiece, not of a church, but of a party, drives an increasing portion of the people to join the sects which have a fixed [Pg 336] doctrine and allow less independence to their preachers, the great danger which menaces the Church comes from the State itself. ”

“ All this has to do with organized religion. But back of all this and behind the half childish theology of formal religion there has run in the heart of black folk the greatest of human achievements, love and sympathy, even for their enemies, for those who despised them and hurt them and did them nameless ill. ”