Robert N. Bellah Quotes

Religion comes from the word 're' or again and 'ligare' meaning to bind or tie back. The purpose of religion is to unite the self with God or the creative force. Music, sacred spaces, and meaningful icons are the way we conjoin our minds with the transcendental.

When I see Tiffany windows in churches across the United States, I get a sense of spiritual upliftment from that.

Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?

This universe was made for you and me.

Human beings were put on the planet to depend upon their Creator and to worship their Creator at every point in every sphere of culture.

Prayer is aligning ourselves with the purposes of God.

People need a sacred narrative. They must have a sense of larger purpose, in one form or another, however intellectualized. They will find a way to keep ancestral spirits alive.

The cosmos is a gigantic fly-wheel making 10,000 revolutions a minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it. Religion is the theory that the wheel was designed and set spinning to give him a ride.

Freedom of worship is of no use to a man who has lost his God.

Faith is trust in ultimate meaning.

When I visit any cathedral, it reminds me of being with my grandparents. They weren't particularly religious, but my grandfather was obsessed with architecture.

Religion is only in the service of the people; it is not in the rosary and the prayer-carpet.

Everything we see in a Catholic church is there for a single purpose: to tell a love story.

One of the great purposes of religion itself is being hindered by an exclusive-ism that doesn't take into account the common elements and values that we actually share.

Man, made in the image of God, has a purpose - to be in relationship to God, who is there. Man forgets his purpose and thus he forgets who he is and what life means.

What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.

The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not? That is the telling question of his life.

Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant to bind them.

Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion.

Religions sprang up among men to deal with the sometimes terrifying aspects of existence, to make sense out of the senseless, to explain things we find inexplicable.

Somebody somewhere on this planet, back about 600 B.C. found some pieces of R6, and I don't know how they found it, either by watching madman or something. But since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity. The man on the cross. There was no Christ. But the man on the cross is shown as Everyman. So of course each person seeing a crucified man, has an immediate feeling of sympathy for this man. Therefore you get many PCs who says they are Christ. Now, there's two reasons for that, one is the Roman Empire was prone to crucify people, so a person can have been crucified, but in R6 he is shown as crucified.

Sacred religion! mother of form and fear.

Man is the nearest approach to Brahman.

If both Church and fairy-tale belong to humanity, they may occasionally cross circles, without injury to either.

Sex is not some sort of pristine, reverent ritual. You want reverent and pristine, go to church.