faith adaptation Quotes

I suppose my approach to religion is like my approach to music - I take what I want and leave the rest.

I believe in Buddhism. Not every aspect, but most of it. So I take bits and pieces.

You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.

One form of religion perpetually gives way to another; if religion did not change it would be dead. ... Each time the new ideas appear they are seen at first as a deadly foe threatening to make religion perish from the earth; but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices gone.

We should be asking: How do we respond to a post-Christian society?

Each generation has to create the image of God that works for it.

If there's good, strong evidence from science that such and such is the case and this is contrary to Buddhism, then we will change.

It's the 21st century, and somebody has to rise from within this faith tradition and retranslate it for the post-modern world... The Earth is not the center of the universe, therefore, God is not a being who lives above the sky, who splits the Red Sea from time to time, or creates a miracle, or whatever.

As for the status of Western Christianity, we are in a place where our task is to redefine the primary symbols of our faith or tradition in a more human direction. That's the thing I spend my time doing.

I now attend non-orthodox synagogues, and study little during the secular week.

Throughout the ages, Christians have adapted John of Patmos's visions to changing times, reading their own social, political and religious conflicts into the cosmic war he so powerfully evokes. Yet his Book of Revelation appeals not only to fear and desires for vengeance but also to hope.

So I taught Sunday school and brought dishes to all manner of potlucks and tried to adjust the things I heard from the pulpit to my increasingly incongruent faith.

Indigenous people have discovered that Christianity is not inherently Western but universal - 'translatable' into any cultural idiom.

When I look back at the Christian faith, I see that we have had to retranslate, almost reinvent ourselves a number of times.

It is ironic to watch the churches, including large sections of my own religion, surrendering to the spirit of modernity at the very moment when modernity itself is undergoing a kind of spiritual collapse.