#secular

Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas. ↗

— Ronald Reagan

#secular #separation-of-church-and-state #teacher

In a secular age, an authentic miracle must purport to be a hoax, in order to gain credit in the world. ↗

— Angela Carter

#authentic #credit #gain #hoax #miracle

I decided to take God and organized religion seriously, and to reject the secular life which in my teens had looked attractive because it allowed me to act in any way that I wanted. ↗

— Luke Ford

#allowed #any #attractive #because #decided

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

— Luke Ford

#during #i #little #now #secular

Two people have been really liberating in my mind; one is Wittgenstein and the other is Burke. I read Burke before he was a secular saint, before everyone was reading him. ↗

— Clifford Geertz

#before #everyone #him #i #liberating

The public school has become the established church of secular society. ↗

— Ivan Illich

#church #established #public #public school #school

The theories of the major philosophers of the 18th century secular enlightenment were biblical and theological in spite of themselves. ↗

— M. H. Abrams

#century #enlightenment #major #philosophers #secular

It is possible that our present-day discussion about needs might be framed more by secular psychological theories than by Scripture. If this is so, we should be careful about saying, "Jesus meets all our needs." At first, this has a plausible biblical ring to it. Christ _is_a friend; God _is_ a loving Father; Christians _do_ experience a sense of meaningfulness and confidence in knowing God's love. It makes Christ the answer to our problems. Yet if our use of the term "needs" is ambiguous, and its range of meaning extends all the way to selfish desires, then there will be some situations where we should say that Jesus does not intend to meet our needs, but that he intends to change our needs. ↗

— Edward T. Welch

#needs #scripture #secular-psychology #selfishness #change

وإذ تتحول التجربة إلى «أصل» فإنها تُثْقِل على كل التاريخ اللاحق، وذلك من حيث تغدو موضوعاً للامتثال والتكرار، بدل أن تكون ساحة للتمثُّل والحوار. وإذن، فإن «الأطلقة» - وليس سواها - هي ما يُحيل تجارب البشر من «تاريخ حي» إلى «نصٍ أو أصلٍ جامد» يقف خارجه؛ على النحو الذى يكون معه أشبه بالشاهد المصمت المُعلق على قبر صاحبه، والذي لا يعرف الخَلَف اللاحق إلا التعبُّد في ظلاله. وتلك هي جوهر الممارسة السلفية؛ على أن يكون معلوماً أن هذه الممارسة لا تقف عند حدود من يُقال أنهم سلفيو هذا الزمان، بل تتجاوزهم إلى من يُقال أنهم حداثيوه أيضاً. و سواء مورست هذه «الأطلقة»، تحت يافطة الدين أو العلمانية، فإنها تمثل خطراً داهماً على الدولة ↗

— علي مبروك

#religion #secularism #religion

The road to the sacred leads through the secular. ↗

— Abraham Joshua Heschel

#road #sacred #secular #through