Spiritual Autonomy Quotes

Religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

I never was in the Nation of Islam... I mean, what I call myself is a natural Muslim, 'cause it's just me and God.

I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together

Faith comes not by compulsion, but it is a matter of free choice; therefore, no one has the authority to compel anyone else in such matters, nor to coerce him with new laws

I am able to love my God because He gives me freedom to deny Him.

The settled opinion here is, that religion is essentially distinct from civil Government, and exempt from its cognizance; that a connection between them is injurious to both.

To think that a Catholic bishop must answer to a civil authority over matters of faith is abominable. It is abhorrent to me, to other Catholics, and to every member of every faith community.

There is no greater mindlessness and absurdity than to force conscience and the spirit with external power.

When the congregation becomes the norm by which sermons are measured, a minister has put a mortgage on his soul.

The state authorities have no place in the church of God, no right to control and persecute the conscience.

God's Spirit moves through us and the world at a pace that can never be constricted by any one religious paradigm. I love that.

Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

As liberty and intelligence have increased the people have more and more revolted against the theological dogmas that contradict common sense and wound the tenderest sensibilities of the soul.

It is no wonder that advocates of Obamacare blindly push forward with their agenda to force religious Americans to violate their own precepts: in the war between the state and the individual, religion is on the side of the individual and his or her relationship with God. That is why symbolic prayer matters. It is symbolic.

You cannot drag a man's conscience before any tribunal, and no one is answerable for his religious opinions to any power on earth.

I can't imagine a God who would ever need to intercede in the daily travails of my life.

I am persuaded, you will permit me to observe, that the path of true piety is so plain as to require but little political direction.

Once you have somebody that is telling you, 'We are interpreting God for you,' it seems like you either agree or you don't. You either say, like Martin Luther, 'I'm going to have a direct relationship with the word of God,' or I'm going to go through a conduit of God on Earth,' which would be the Pope.

God wanted us to choose to love him.

No one can take away the freedom of a man's soul.

I'm a great admirer of secularism. At its best, I think it's one of the best things that we have. I don't believe in insinuating religion into conversation. I don't believe in excluding it from conversation. I enjoy the fact that people's innermost thoughts are their own.

No one can appropriate God, goodness, the Bible or Jesus. It just seems that way.

None of us should sit in judgment in the way that anyone else practices his religion.

I have always felt that a man's religion was his personal and private affair.

The notions of consumer choice and local control have stormed the religious realm.