Michael Lerner Quotes

We are stronger because we recognize that government isn't the sole answer to the most important questions, and we welcome community and faith based organizations as partners to serve the needs of Florida families.

I spent a lot of time in churches. If you go to a synagogue, someone is always asking if you're alone, if you're married. In a church, in a hundred years no one would ask.

The church has given me balance.

Church gives people a sense of community, a sense of how to behave... social support when times get tough. In a world where white working class folks are going to church less and less, they're losing that when they might really need it.

With increasing poverty, welfare dependency and violence in the United States, religion and religious organizations have an important role to play combating societal problems.

Religious people are simply following major core practices of happy people. For example, one benefits from the guaranteed social support that can be found in a church, synagogue, or mosque.

I am thankful that the church exists, thankful that it has done such great things, giving us laws, for instance - 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not', and established Goodness and Evil. That's what all religions do, and as soon as we try to replace them, worldly religions like fascism and communism take over.

I am not the least bit religious, but at least I stick up for the good work of religion and the cascade of benefits that come from religion.

And some needs and hurts are so deep they will only respond to a mentor's touch or a pastor's prayer. Church and charity, synagogue and mosque, lend our communities their humanity, and they will have an honored place in our plans and laws.

I grew up in a very religious family and it is the motivating force to every thing I do. I am fortunate to have had adults all around me who really lived their faith, in helping other people and doing the best you can do. The world wasn't so wonderful back then, with segregated rule in the South. But we were never hopeless and we never despaired because we had adults out there struggling with us, being there for us, and buffering us.

The fact that institutional churches have gone into decline doesn't mean that we're going to enter some purely secular age. Secular people need to be aware of that.

Religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind.

My dear, be a good man be virtuous be religious be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here. ...God bless you all.

Save me from this road I'm on, Jesus take the wheel.

May every Church and Christian community be a place of mercy amid so much indifference.

The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.

I don't build no heathen temples, where the Lord has done laid a hand. There's a well on the hill, let it be.

To be religious is to have one's attention fixed on God and on one's neighbour in relation to God.

If there is no silence beyond and within the many words of doctrine, there is no religion, only a religious ideology. For religion goes beyond words and actions, and attains to the ultimate Truth only in silence and Love.

Whenever I hear somebody go, "I feel so religious right now!" I'm like, "Well, you're tying yourself up in knots, are you?" There's no spiritual connotation to that word whatsoever. And while it binds you to a rope, because it's about belonging, it alienates you to others. That can't be part of God's plan, if there is a God.

Grandma's on the front porch with a Bible in her hand, sometimes I hear her singing take me to the promised land.

Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses...

I think one of the things the church service means is hope.

Now, at the end of my visit to the Philippines, I commend you to Him, to Jesus who came among us as a child. May He enable all the beloved people of this country to work together, protecting one another, beginning with your families and communities, in building a world of justice, integrity and peace.