Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and, now, evolutionary biology.

Religion survives because it answers three questions that every reflective person must ask. Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live?

Religion creates community, community creates altruism and altruism turns us away from self and towards the common good... There is something about the tenor of relationships within a religious community that makes it the best tutorial in citizenship and good neighborliness.

In thinking about religion and society in the 21st century, we should broaden the conversation about faith from doctrinal debates to the larger question of how it might inspire us to strengthen the bonds of belonging that redeem us from our solitude, helping us to construct together a gracious and generous social order.

Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.

There are some forms of religion that are bad, just as there's bad cooking or bad art or bad sex, you have bad religion too.

Compassion is not a popular virtue. Very often when I talk to religious people, and mention how important it is that compassion is the key, that it's the sine-qua-non of religion, people look kind of balked, and stubborn sometimes, as much to say, what's the point of having religion if you can't disapprove of other people?

Religion brings to man an inner strength, spiritual light, and ineffable peace.

There are fundamentalist psychopaths in every religion in the world. Every single one.

As long as I don't write about the government, religion, politics, and other institutions, I am free to print anything.