D. B. Sweeney Quotes

I'm not really any religion. I still study with Jehovah's Witnesses, so I say I'm Apostolic Pentecostal Jehovah's Witness Seventh-Day Adventist Jew.

Yesterday I had a Shaker visitor, and today a Catholic; and the more I see and hear, the less do I care about church doctrines.

I grew up as a kind of nondenominational Christian. I have two uncles who are Baptist ministers. I went to a Samoan church when I was younger. I went to a Catholic school, so I was actually able to experience a lot of different religions. Mormonism, as well. My father in-law, who I'm very close with, is a Muslim.

I was raised in a Baptist tradition, but then I went to an Episcopalian high school, and they were very accepting of people of all faiths.

I've spent the last 50 years or so steeping myself in the world's religions, and I've done my homework. I've gone to each of the world's eight great religions and sought out the most profound scholars I could find, and I've apprenticed myself to them and actually practiced each faith.

However, ironically, I was baptized Presbyterian, and went to a Quaker school for twelve years.

My first memories of religion were being taken to Episcopal church. My father was Catholic, but my mother, I believe, was Episcopal. So I sort of veered off into the watered-down version of Catholicism.

I don't really go down one path. I wouldn't call myself a Buddhist, or a Catholic or a Christian or a Muslim, or Jewish. I couldn't put myself into any organized faith.

I am a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament and fluency in Biblical Greek, who has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades, who also happens to be Muslim.

In my family, we were on again off again Unitarians, partly because my father, raised Roman Catholic, had had enough of church.

For me, the great problem growing up in England was that I had a very narrow concept of what God can be, and it was damn close to an old man with a beard.

Because I was suspicious of the traditional Christian church, I tended to tar them all with the same brush. That was a mistake, because there are righteous people working in a whole rainbow of belief systems - from Hasidic Jews to right-wing Bible Belters to charismatic Catholics.

Yes, I'm Catholic; I'm proud of it. But I had lots of Protestant friends.

I'll watch things on OWN like 'Belief,' which is about faith.

I'm a cultural Christian in the same way many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims.

I was a curious child. I'd debate with anyone who came to the door - people from the Islamic community... Jehovah's Witnesses... anyone.

I am a believer in god, but I have not restricted myself to one religion. I have experienced many religions.

Religions are so subtle, so complicated, so intelligent in many ways that they're not fit to be abandoned to the religious alone; they're for all of us.

I love Christianity, Islam and many other faiths - through Hinduism.

Of publishing a book on religion, my dear sir, I never had an idea. I should as soon think of writing for the reformation of Bedlam, as of the world of religious sects. Of these there must be, at least, ten thousand, every individual of every one of which believes all wrong but his own.

You may be Catholic or Protestant or Buddhist or Baptist or Muslim or Mormon or Jewish or Jain, or you have no religion at all. I'm not interested in your religious background. Because God did not create the universe for us to have religion. He came for us to have a relationship with him.

I've always paid attention to religion because I grew up in a religious background, but I've never felt a part of any of them. I think there's something to be drawn from most of them - other than goat sacrificing.

I like the fact that people come together who have shared values, but I don't believe that a man died 2,000 years ago and was crucified on a cross to save me from my original sin.

As you know, I am neither Roman Catholic, Protestant Episcopalian, nor Presbyterian, nor am I an Irishman.

I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on, but if they reject atheism, I would rather they became modern-day Catholics or Jews than that they became Muslims.