Gretta Vosper > Quotes

“It is time for humanists and atheists, skeptics and agnostics to see they share a common future with the many who are still comforted by their religious beliefs.”
― Gretta Vosper, With Or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe

“Will the very real consolation we have known disappear when we accept that its source is imaginary?”
― Gretta Vosper, Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief

“Religion is a communal way of reimagining and remaking the self and the world. It is what we are to live by and what we are to live for. … [W]e need religion as much as ever. We need it as human, value-creating activity.”
― Gretta Vosper, Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief

“Our language has folded us in half for most of our existence. We need language that will challenge us to get up from our knees, hand us back our dignity, ignite our compassion, and help us find all those crucial ways we need to live love into the world. Language that reinforces a system of belief that can drive someone back down to his knees, remove his dignity, hold him to a standard he can never meet, and silence his objection to the way things are with the promise of something no one has the right to promise unless she also has the power to bring it about is repugnant.”
― Gretta Vosper, Amen: what prayer can mean in a world beyond belief

“The church the future needs is one of people gathering to share and recommit themselves to loving relationships with themselves, their families, the wider community, and the planet. Such a church need not fear the discoveries of science, history, archaeology, psychology, or literature; it will only be enhanced by such discoveries. Such a church need not avoid the implications of critical thinking for its message; it will only become more effective. Such a church need not cling to and justify a particular source for its authority; it will draw on the wisdom of the ages and challenge divisive and destructive barriers.”
― Gretta Vosper, With Or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe

“Now, personally, I don’t really get the “tell me you love me or I’ll send you to hell” message such preaching promotes. If demonstrations of love to my husband were the result of threats he’d made to my well-being, I’d recognize him as an abusive brute and also be thinking he was some sort of twisted if he really thought the “love” he got through such intimidation was of any value or meaning. If we believed in a benevolent Creator of the Universe, we would be even more surprised at such behaviour, yet it continues, to this day, to be a significant characteristic of the Christian deity.”
― Gretta Vosper, Amen: what prayer can mean in a world beyond belief

“The future of any discipline does not survive wrapped in the trappings of the past; it can come about only when the carapace is cracked and something new, related to but distinct from what went before, is freed and allowed to thrive.”
― Gretta Vosper, With Or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important Than What We Believe

“The worst implication of all is that God made that catastrophe happen as part of a grand, unrevealed plan, using a child and a woman as pawns in order to teach someone else about the strength of his power. When we tell these stories as if God were looking out for the woman and not for the child, we reinforce our personal sense of security. One person has God’s blessing; another doesn”
― Gretta Vosper, Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief

“The cliché “dodged the bullet” allows us to share the relief we feel when we are lucky enough to avoid a fate we certainly wouldn’t choose. “There but for the grace of God go I” seems to say the same thing, but in stark contrast to the camaraderie of the bullet remark, the implication here is that the other person has not merited grace, has offended God, is deserving of affliction. It is Job’s friends come to needle him into acknowledging his guilt, the reason for the death of his livestock, the demise of his children, the destruction of his world. In essence, the approved, acknowledged, acceptable state to be in is a state of grace; God has noticed us and bestowed grace upon us.”
― Gretta Vosper, Amen: What Prayer Can Mean in a World Beyond Belief

“[Sociologist T.R. Young] sees all life imbued with what he calls the holy. Our responsibility is to lift up that holiness. To identify that as our work is to create god....This, then, is the work that is demanded of the church in the postmodern world--to identify that which is holy, to uphold those values that would preserve it, and to challenge us to live according to them in a way that ensures holiness remains in our lives and in our world.”
― Gretta Vosper, With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe – Radical Reform and Compassionate Spirituality for the Modern Church