Rick Snedeker > Quotes

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.” — James Madison (1751–1836), American founding father, fourth president of the United States, and the recognized “founder of the Constitution”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Christianity has perpetually permeated our culture, a few of which weren’t stealthily stitched into public life until well into the twentieth century”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Jefferson memorably argued that “it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Article VI specified that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“This is my religion… joy and exaltation in my own existence… so go ahead and snarl… bite… howl, you Calvinistic divines and all you who say I am no Christian. I say you are not Christian.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Not a single word of the Declaration of Independence refers to the outward manifestations of personal prosperity and success (or of a personal God).”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“We generally believe in chimera, it turns out, just because we simply absorb what those around us already believe, not because we have defensible reasons.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Roger Williams’ in Rhode Island. Williams’ colony, uniquely, formally codified church-state separation.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Amendment XI of the 1797 peace and friendship Treaty of Tripoli, written by Adams and approved by Washington, noted that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” 92”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Voltaire bemoaned, “superstition is, after the plague, the most horrible flail that can infect mankind…. The church has always condemned magic but has always believed in it. Magic rose in the East and then became enshrined in Christianity”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“the siren song of Christian faith appears to be steadily losing its appeal for Americans, as it has long since largely faded away in Western Europe.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“the last two popes—Benedict XVI in 2007,1 and Francis I in 2013 2—publicly assured the faithful that not only non-Catholics but even godless atheists might enter the pearly gates by personifying true goodness during their lives.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“It only proves that a whole lot of people in the nation, as throughout the world—billions of adherents, in fact—really, really believe it.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“The deity of Deists spun existence in motion and then virtually disappeared to let the created but self-governing forces of the universe do what they naturally would.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“This erosion of faith in Europe has been ongoing since early in the twentieth century, when Europe was home to a majority of the world’s Christians—66 percent—and North America was then a far second at 15 percent. By 2010, Europeans comprised only 25.5 percent of Christians internationally. North America, 12.3 percent. Those figures are projected to drop further by 2050: to, respectively, 15.6 percent and 9.8 percent.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“Barack Obama placed his hand on two bibles when he was sworn in to his second term in 2013: the one used by sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln in 1861, (the first time it had been used for the purpose since Lincoln’s inauguration), and assassinated civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “traveling Bible.”141”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“In 1947 Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black invoked Jefferson’s phrase in the landmark Everson vs. Board of Education case, arguing that the “wall of separation” must be kept “high and impregnable.”10 It was the first case to rule that the Bill of Rights’ “establishment” clause applied to states as well as the federal government.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream

“First American President George Washington joined Adams, Jefferson, and Madison among founders zealously opposing religious tyranny of any kind in America.”
― Rick Snedeker, Holy Smoke: How Christianity Smothered the American Dream