This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Many people are turning to religion as they would to a benign sedative, to soothe their nerves and to settle their minds.
Strange inconsistency! to persecute in the name of religion those who had given the religion.
Protestant philosophers of religion have been concerned above all with the “meaning of God in human experience,” “religious values,” and “the source of human good.” Their thinking has been value-centered rather than God-centered.
Experience | God | Good | Meaning | Religion | Thinking | God |
Toleration… is not true liberty when it is only a gracious concession by the state to the individual. Gracious concessions are incompatible with liberty of religion which is not something that a state, or an absolutist church offers, but that which the citizen claims and the law protects.
Church | Individual | Law | Liberty | Religion | Toleration |
Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?
Age | Circumstances | Faith | Parents | Position | Religion | Rights | World |
True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgment; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.
It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civic Virtue... it is a Weakness in Religion and Government where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since... Liberty is always the Price of it.
Compliance | Conformity | Conscience | Government | Liberty | Nature | Price | Religion | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Government |
Organized religion is too respectable, too much at home in America, and so too much inclined to abdicate its responsibility as a judge of society.
Religion | Responsibility | Society |
We miss the true spirit of religion if we recommend it on account of its secular advantages.
It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Authority | Blame | Compassion | Creed | Discipline | Faith | Habit | Love | Past | Philosophy | Religion | Science | Society | Worship | Crisis |
A study of comparative religion gives insight into the values of the various faiths, values which transcend different symbols and creeds and in transcending penetrate to the depths of the spiritual consciousness where the symbols and formulas shrink into insignificance.
Consciousness | Insight | Insignificance | Religion | Study |
You say that you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to His mind; and, if we do not take hold of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. You say that you are right and we are lost. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us, as well as you, whey has not the Great Spirit given to tus, and not only to us, but what did He not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of understanding it rightly? We only know what you tell us about it. How shall we know when to believe, being so often deceived by the white people? Brother, you say there is but one way to worship and serve the Great Spirit. If there is but one religion, why do you white people differ so much about it? Why not all agreed, as you can all read the book?
Knowledge | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Right | Spirit | Teach | Understanding | Worship | Understand |
The grand premise of religion is that man is able to surpass himself; that man who is apart of this world may enter into a relationship with Him who is greater than the world.
Man | Relationship | Religion | World |
When organized religion is completely accepted by the mass as no more than a pleasing and fashionable facet of culture, then it falls prey to the mass-produced platitude.
We are told that your religion was given to your forefathers and has been handed down from father to son. We also have a religion which was given to our forefathers and has been handed down to us, their children. We worship in that way. It teaches us to be thankful for all the favors we receive, to love each other, and to be united. We never quarrel about religion.
True religion is a revolutionary force: it is an inveterate enemy of oppression, privilege, and injustice.
Enemy | Force | Injustice | Injustice | Oppression | Religion |