Religious Feeling Quotes

“There are many who occasionally attend church and who are trying experimentally to be Christians, yet are unable to identify well or define accurately the central truths of Christian teaching. The knowledge they have of the Christian tradition may have come chiefly through hymns. Their strong and sincere feelings are not matched with serious biblical or historical reflection on those feelings. Religious feelings are, indeed, crucial to the deeper learning of Christian truth, but they easily become superficial and narcissistic if the mind of Christ is not a mentor to natural religious impulse. The loss of center in Christian education is arguably due to a serious default of pastoral leadership; when the teaching elder does not teach, the effect is felt throughout the entire Christian congregation.”
― Thomas C. Oden, Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry

“In volition, it was said, we grasp ourselves directly as power in action. It seems that once man has this idea, he needed only to extend it to things to create the concept of force”
― Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

“Einstein wrote that “science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind,” but we have to remember that Einstein talks about the “cosmic religious feeling,” which is very different from the religious feeling exercised within the official religions. He explains, “[h]ow can a cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, art and science's most important function is to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.” … “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.” … “A contemporary has said, not unjustly, that in this materialistic age of ours, the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.” … “You will hardly find one among the profounder sort of scientific mind without a religious feeling of his own. But it is different from the religiosity of the naïve man.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, ABSOLUTE