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Cultural elites in countries that dominate peoples have adapted subject people’s religion for their own purposes.

— Richard A. Horsley Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003)

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Religion

More quotes by Richard A. Horsley

Since God himself is just and commands justice, the Muslim community (umma) cannot tolerate a tyrannical law or a tyrannical ruler.

Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003)

Islamic revival sought the reunification of the spiritual with the social-political, and of contemporary life with cultural traditions, against the western imperialism that was forcing their separation.

Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003)

Khomeini ... was a paradigm of asceticism, which in Islam was not a withdrawal from worldly affairs but a refusal to be seduced by materialism. He was incorruptible.

Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003)

Intensive measures of repression taken by the Shah to enforce his westernizing development program nearly eliminated effective political parties and forms of civil society other than activities in the mosques.

Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003)

A key factor in [the revival of Shiite Islam in Iran] was the Iranians’ refusal to accept the western reduction of religion to individual faith, which would have enabled an easier imposition of a global capitalist political economy.

Religion and Empire: People, Power, and the Life of the Spirit (2003)

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All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

The Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.

Thomas Babington Macaulay History of England (1849)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Richard A. Horsley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.