Kirby Page on Religion

"The bareness and cruelty and misery of this generation now cry aloud for God-saturated and Jesus-challenged deliverers."

"Live to-day as if the ideal society has already come to pass. The Kingdom of God is within you. It is all about you."

"Communists have nothing but contempt for religion and for pacifism. They use the united front as a means of boring from within."

"The religion of Jesus can best be described in terms of the home: God Is Father, men are brothers, all life is a domestic affair."

"The more popular a religion becomes, the less likely its adherents are to practise its highest precepts."

"We must take the time to be alone with God, to enjoy his companionship, to listen to his voice."

"The religion and the ethics of Jesus are utterly inseparable."

"The Bible is a progressive revelation of God, and war must be judged by the higher revelation of Jesus and the New Testament, rather than by the former conception of David and the Old Testament."

"When the Lord's Prayer is prayed with insight it becomes a petition for the abolition of capitalism and the supplanting of the existing economic order with a society which is consistent with the religion of Jesus."

"If reverence for personality, the principle of mutuality, active goodwill, and love toward God and man constitute the essence of high religion, then in many situations, in an imperfect world, compulsion becomes a religious obligation."

"By his own experience of God and his estimate of man, by his emphasis upon and practice of brotherhood, by his repudiation of hatred and violence, while attacking with audacity deeply entrenched inequities, and by his vicarious suffering on the cross, Jesus awakens, challenges and inspires us to take up the cross and follow in his sacrificially redemptive steps. Thus we are saved and thus society must be redeemed."

"Non-resistance in the sense of rejecting all forms of coercion is not always a legitimate expression of love toward man and love toward God. ...the refusal under some circumstances to exercise forcible restraint is a betrayal of love and therefore a betrayal of higher religion."

"Anything that deprives a man of real life is an enemy to that man. If real life is relationship, the dwelling on friendly and affectionate terms with God and man, then anything that separates us from God, from our better selves, and from our fellows, is an enemy. Another name for this enemy is sin. It is sin that wrecks the characters of men and deprives them of their spiritual heritage. Sin is the most subtle, treacherous, and deadly of all foes. It is the destroyer of real life."

"Was Tolstoy justified in interpreting the Sermon on the Mount in anarchistic terms? The answer cannot be found in isolated texts or combinations thereof, but rather in consideration of the basic elements which together constitute the religion of Jesus. ...The Golden Rule of conduct was phrased in terms of mutuality: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The true criterion of every thought and deed must, therefore, be found in its effects upon human personality, human relations, and communion between man and God."