Quotes

“Religions bind people to one another and to God. They form communities…”

“Religions may create communities which are hierarchical or egalitarian, organic or covenantal. But at their heart is a vision of a unity, an entity, a whole. That is what sets them apart from our mainstream understanding of politics. Difference is where politics lives; but it is what religion transcends. Religion binds. Politics mediates. That is why what, in politics, may be necessary virtues – compromise, ambiguity, diplomacy, coexistence – are, from the point of view of religion, usually seen as vices.”

“Religion and politics speak to different aspects of the human condition: the one binding people together in communities, the other mediating peaceably between their differences.”

“The great tragedies of the twentieth century came when politics was turned into a religion, when the nation (in the case of fascism) or system (communism) was absolutised and turned into a god. The single greatest risk of the twenty-first century is that the opposite may occur: not when politics is religionised but when religion is politicised.”

The Dignity of Difference, p. 36