Quotes About Religion

"Your religion now cannot be a religion of one world alone or for one people alone. It will have to be a Greater Community religion - God of the Universe, a spirituality of the Universe."

“Do not think that religion in this world is a big mistake. It is actually the only thing that humanity has to offer the Greater Community at this point.”

"All the religions have been initiated by God and changed by man."

"Knowledge is what created all the world’s religions, and Knowledge is what unites them still, despite all of the separation and conflict that exist between them. For these are a human invention and not a Divine invention."

Directives

"This message is destined to reach people who have a greater spiritual affinity. Therefore, it is necessary that we elaborate on this subject. We advocate a spirituality that is taught in the Greater Community, not the spirituality that is governed by nations, governments or political alliances, but a natural spirituality - the ability to know, to see and to act."

Many Pathways of Redemption

"The New Message has been sent to teach that all the religions were initiated by God, that all religions were changed by people, that God has created many pathways of redemption to meet the different needs and temperaments of people living at different times and in different cultures and that humanity should never assume God’s will or proclaim that their religion alone is the only religion. For God has created many pathways of redemption."

“Thinking that your religion is the one true religion will stand in the way of your redemption. Condemning other nations, peoples and religions will prevent you from receiving this redemption. Being self-righteous and the defender of your faith will blind you, and you will turn your back to God.”

"You must learn to climb up the other side, using the ladders that God has dropped down. And God has dropped down more than one ladder because God knows that not everyone will follow one ladder alone. God knows that not everyone will follow one Teaching or Teacher alone. And God knows that every great Revelation brought to the world will be corrupted by people over time, and so there must be further Revelations to bring clarification and correction to all the errors that humanity has made with the previous Revelations."

Reformation of Religion

"The New Message from God transcends ideology. This transcends the controversies regarding these things because this is a new message from God for the redemption and preparation of the whole world for a reality and a future that will be very different from the past. Only God can provide such a thing, for even at this moment religions are divided even within themselves. They are contentions, unable to address adequately the great, rising global problems that will overtake humanity in the future if it is unprepared. Arguing over who has the best religion or the most astounding founder can only harm humanity now. It is divisive and exclusive to do this. It adds to the dilemma and the fracturing of the human family. God knows better and the one chosen to bring the Revelation is the perfect one."

"Religion is not going to the church or the mosque or the temple or the holy site and going through the motions of what religious authorities have established as practice and custom. It is not forcing yourself to believe things that you hardly understand. That is not religion. Religion is the great engagement within you, between your thinking mind and the deeper mind of Knowledge within yourself."

“Here you must realize that God has initiated all the world’s religions, and they have all been changed by people, even radically changed. To correct the errors of the past, to renew the true faith and to bring forth the great truth of the ancient religions in their pure form, God has sent a New Revelation into the world, not to replace the religions of the world, but to clarify them and to give them new strength and power and a greater unity with one another."

The lifeblood of religion

"Keeping religion alive in the world, despite its errors, took tremendous giving. You see, religion dies the minute after it is born. It is something that spoils very quickly and must be reborn every minute. If it is allowed to die, it becomes merely another thought system, a constraint now and not an apparatus for freedom. It must be renewed. What renews religion in the world is Knowledge, this quality of giving where individuals render their lives naturally. They infuse so much life into the idea of God that God comes alive. Without this infusion, God is dead. When people say, 'God is dead,' they say that because God has become merely an idea. The life of God is dissipated. Then someone comes along and gives his or her life and that is God. And you say, 'Oh, my. That is God!'"

“The Way of Knowledge, which is at the heart of all the world’s religions, must become its essential teaching, instead of a focus for clerics and monastics and exceptional individuals only. This is the challenge before you, or religion will be part of the problem for humanity and not its essential means of reconciliation, inspiration and a high ethical awareness. Let this be your understanding.”

“God does not need your belief. God does not need your worship. God does not need to be celebrated. God needs to be followed. You follow God most profoundly, most purely, not by believing in the edicts of religion necessarily, but by building your connection to Knowledge. If religion is functioning correctly, it is helping you to build a bridge to Knowledge, to your own conscience and to live responsibly, ethically and beneficially, both for yourself and for others.”

“Whether you are religious or not, whether you believe in a religious teaching and adhere to that teaching, or whether you claim to have no religious affiliation, your progress is entirely dependent upon your connection to Knowledge.”

“The deeper recognition happens beyond the realm of the intellect. You may create ideas and evaluations of these experiences to your benefit, perhaps, but the experience itself is happening at a deeper level. It is getting to this deeper level that represents the focus of religion and spiritual practice in all of its forms.”

"God has planted Knowledge within every person as the seed and source of their redemption. Redemption will not occur because you believe in a great saint or a great Messenger. Redemption will not even occur if you believe in God or practice a religion faithfully, for you are still lost in the mind, the worldly mind. Your attempt at religion is an escape from the world, a desperate attempt to have purpose and meaning in your life that transcends the hard realities that you see all around you."

"There is a great difference between the manifestation of religion—and all of its great edifices and pronouncements, its admonitions, its ideology, its cosmology, its theology—and the Mystery that lives within each person, waiting to be discovered."

Quotes About the True Purpose of Religion

• see here

Quotes About the Abuse of Religion

• see here

The end of provincial religion

"You cannot claim your religion is the only religion or the great religion or the last religion or the final religion, for this is to claim that you know God’s Plan and Purpose now and into the future, and no one on Earth, no one in the physical universe, can make such a claim."

"The theologies and philosophies upon which each religion is built must be adaptable and responsive to a growing panorama of life and to a changing set of circumstances that represent the evolution of a race."

Lifespans of Religions

"Old religions will have to expand and adapt or they will die out."

"Religions have life spans. This is true throughout the Greater Community. Religions have life spans because they serve eras of development. Then they are either replaced or they change and expand in order to adapt. If they cannot adapt, they will be replaced because the reality of life will make their teaching and their emphasis less and less relevant and meaningful. In the Greater Community, religions are initiated, they reach a maturity and then they enter old age where they die off. Out of their old age a new impetus, a new meaning and a new message can be given to restore and to renew the race’s spiritual vitality and to give this vitality an immediate relevancy to life as it is expanding and developing."

Religious leadership and education

"What essentially is the role of religious leaders in nearly all situations is to be providers and maintainers."

"Even amongst the religious, there are few who know the power and presence that God has placed within them, and that is why the saints and the mystics throughout time have been persecuted by the clerics—those who are people of the word and the law, but not people of the Spirit and the Mystery."

Quotes About Religion and the Intervention

"This Group Mind process of course is being used throughout the world in leadership circles in government and religion and commerce, but rarely is Knowledge their guide, and rarely do they employ seers. Humanity just has not reached this level of sophistication yet. So regarding your position in the Greater Community, humanity is at a disadvantage here. Its strength, your strength, is that religion has been kept alive in the world. The recognition of God’s power and presence is honored and recognized by many, whereas in most nations in this region of space, religion has either become worship of the state or has disappeared altogether. Here you have an advantage because even the ancient pathways of religion offer the experience of Knowledge. Perhaps this is not emphasized. Perhaps this is not specified in the Teachings, but the individual is encouraged to have a relationship with the Divine and to be responsive to the Divine in most situations."

"Having no religion of their own, [the Intervention] will use yours to engender their own values."

Religion and the Greater Community

"How can you have a personal religion, like you have in the world, without God being localized? In the Greater Community, then, God is Knowledge."

"You see, religion and spirituality are different. Spirituality is the essence and the substance. Religion is the method and the means. In the Greater Community, because of the diversity of life, there is never just one way."

"God does not care what religion you belong to. God is not attached to the theology of any religion, for in the universe there are countless religions. God will respond to the turning of your life, to the opening of your heart, to the emerging need of the soul, the deepest need you have, which is the need to fulfill your purpose as the means of reconciliation".

"Here a Christian must become a Christian with a Greater Community awareness. A Muslim becomes a Muslim with a Greater Community awareness. A Buddhist and a Jew gain a greater panorama of life to which their religious teachings must become relevant. If religion in the world is to educate and to enlighten, it must have this greater capacity and awareness."

"The free nations in this part of the universe seek to promote freedom wherever they can. They view your world as showing great promise because spirituality and religion have not been destroyed or forgotten here. They see that the power of Knowledge, the greater spiritual power, is still alive in individuals, despite humanity’s grave mistakes and foolish activities."

References

Greater Community Spirituality, the New Message book of theology.

See also

Is this a new religion?

The world's religions

Separation of Church and State

The purpose of religion

Evolution of religion

Further Study

• Greater Community Spirituality, Chapter 19: What is Religion?

• The Pure Religion, Chapter 1: The Pure Religion

• The Pure Religion, Chapter 9: Heaven and Hell