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Quote by Thomas A Tweed

“Some adherents think of a religion as having a core that does not really change, as if it were a mango with a leathery outer skin and inner pit covering a single seed. That misses something crucial about religious traditions: they are constantly changing and being changed.”

Quote by Thomas A Tweed

Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction
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Religion: A Very Short Introduction

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Thomas A Tweed

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“Sometimes religion fails to serve its meaning-making function at moments of catastrophic disruption or cultural change. For example, many elite and middle class Christian adherents were shaken by a Victorian spiritual crisis as intellectual challenges converged. Between 1840 and 1900 some lost faith in the face of Darwinian biology and the new geology, which challenged biblical claims about the origin and age of the universe; the new historical and literary study of the Bible, called Higher Criticism, which challenged the claim that scripture was divinely inspired; and the new comparative study of religions, which challenged the uniqueness and superiority of Christianity. Those doubters now looked out on a different ocean, as does the narrator in Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach," who once found comfort as waves in "the sea of faith" drew near, but who now hears only "its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.”

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Book:Religion: A Very Short Introduction
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“The only problem was that you can’t force someone to repent. You can’t force someone to change their heart and mind about something. You can force them to change their actions and even their behavior, but if their beliefs remain the same, they will only get angry with you for it.”

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Book:Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
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“I needed to stop blaming others for my emptiness and shortcomings; I needed to stop hoping the emptiness would change without me changing. If drugs, partying, and relationships kept me continually feeling insecure while at the center of my being, then they needed to be surmounted and something else positioned in their place. I could not expect change to occur without changing what was at the center of my life or the purpose for which I was living.”

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Book:Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose
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