Quickly my literal faith in God unraveled. My faith in the Church as a community, however, continued

Quickly my literal faith in God unraveled. My faith in the Church as a community, however, continued. People from my grandparents' church helped us through the difficult time: they visited our house frequently to make sure we had enough food while my depressed mother spent most of her days in bed. Once she was back on her feet and began to work double shifts to support us, they often invited me to their homes for dinner, so that I wouldn't be alone for too long with sad thoughts in my head.

...

I wondered if marriage to ordinary people was what religion was like to me after my father's departure: a companionship they abided by, out of habit and loyalty, which, even after the absolute faith and passion had long gone, would continue to offer support and consolation. A constant that was satisfactory, if not thrilling. Not a bad thing at all to live by, I used to think.

M. Lee, 8 lives of a century-old trickster (2023), 162-3

I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion

'Supposing there is no life everlasting? Think what it means if death is really the end of all things? They've [the nuns] given it all up for nothing. They've been cheated. They're dupes.'

Waddington reflected fir a little while.

'I wonder. I wonder if it matters that what they have aimed at is illusion. Their lives are in themselves beautiful. I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, an the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.'

W.S. Maugham, The painted veil (1925), 169-70 

But one had been brought up an Anglican, and the process of change would have been a great bother

In fact, Laura had often thought that she would have liked to be a Catholic; she had always felt an affinity with those big busy cool churches abroad, the smell of incense, obsequious priests, candles. Even the ghastly statues and pictures. But one had been brought up an Anglican, and the process of change would have been a great bother, and anyway one didn't feel all that strongly about it.

 P. Lively, Treasures of time (1979), 114

He detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelism of the professional atheists

He called himself an 'agnostic' instead of an 'atheist' only because he detested the street-bawling, tract-peddling evangelism of the professional atheists.

S. Lewis, It can't happen here (1935), 35-36

Church attendance in all industrialized societies is the best predictor of right-leaning political ideology

As with the decline in trust, however, the alignment of right-leaning political parties with churchgoing wasn't something made only in America. It happened everywhere. The most religious people in every industrialized country have come to support the party of the right. It seemed to come as a surprise to Americans after the 2000 election that those who attended church once a week were overwhelmingly Republican. But there wasn't anything unusual about that relationship. A survey of thirty-two countries in the late 1990s found that seven out of ten of those of who attended church once a week voted for the political party on the right. In fact, church attendance in all industrialized societies is the best predictor of right-leaning political ideology.

B. Bishop, The big sort (2008), 127

Hunting can't be justified ... yet they are all good things

in July 1997 he [Runciman] fell into conversation with James Lees-Milne on the subject of the recently elected New Labour administration: 'We  agreed that  hunting can't be justified, any more than hereditary peers, or for that matter religion - yet they are all good things.'

M. Dinshaw, Outlandish knight: the Byzantine life of Steven Runciman (2016), 416, footnote

They really wanted freedom from error

Although the Puritans are often depicted as seeking freedom of conscience, that is misleading. They really wanted freedom from error - in other words liberty from false religion imposed by Charles and his advisers in order to foster true religion according to their Calvinist standards. Not only Catholics but also Anglicans were excluded from the colony: two of the first settlers, the Browne brothers, were shipped back home because they wanted to worship according to the Book of Common Prayer.

D. Reynolds, America: Empire of Liberty (2009), 34

It is religious belongingness that matters for neighbourliness, not religious believing

Common sense would tell you that the more time and money people give to their religious groups, the less they have left over for everything else. But common sense turns out to be wrong. Putnam and Campbell found that the more frequently people attend religious services, the more generous and charitable they become across the board. 

...

beliefs and practices turned out to matter very little. Whether you believe in hell, whether you pray daily, whether you are a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, or  Mormon .... none of these things correlated with generosity.The only thing that was reliably and powerfully associated with the moral benefits of religion was [author's italics] how enmeshed people were in relationships with their co-religionists.

It is religious belongingness that matters for neighbourliness, not religious believing.

J, Haidt, The righteous mind (2012), 310-311

Place a ladder, Acesius, and climb alone into heaven

When, therefore, the emperor further asked him, ‘For what reason then do you separate yourself from communion with the rest of the Church?’ he related what had taken place during the persecution under Decius; and referred to the rigidness of that austere canon which declares, that it is not right persons who after baptism have committed a sin, which the sacred Scriptures denominate ‘a sin unto death’ to be considered worthy of participation in the sacraments: that they should indeed be exhorted to repentance, but were not to expect remission from the priest, but from God, who is able and has authority to forgive sins. When Acesius had thus spoken, the emperor said to him, ‘Place a ladder, Acesius, and climb alone into heaven.'

Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History I.10

Around the middle of the seventh century, the future seemed easy to read. Christianity was on the march across Asia.

Around the middle of the seventh century, the future seemed easy to read. Christianity was on the march across Asia, making inroads at the expense of Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Buddhism. Religions have always played off against each other in this region and learnt that they had to compete for attention. The most competitive and successful, however, turned out to be a religion born in the little town of Bethlehem. Given the progress that had been made over the centuries that followed the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of Pontius Pilate, it should only have been a matter of time before the tentacles of Christianity reached the Pacific, linking the great ocean with the Atlantic in the west.

P. Frankopan,, The Silk Roads (2015), 62

They went to the Church with a world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with power and prestige behind it

But what do you achieve, after all, by getting rid of such primal things as patriotism and religion? You have not necessarily got rid of the need for something to believe in. There had been a sort of false dawn a few years earlier when numbers of young intellectuals, including several quite gifted writers (Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Hollis, and others), had fled into the Catholic Church. It is significant that these people went almost invariably to the Roman Church and not, for instance, to the C. of E., the Greek Church, or the Protestants sects. They went, that is, to the Church with a world-wide organization, the one with a rigid discipline, the one with power and prestige behind it. Perhaps it is even worth noticing that the only latter-day convert of really first-rate gifts, Eliot, has embraced not Romanism but Anglo-Catholicism, the ecclesiastical equivalent of Trotskyism. But I do not think one need look farther than this for the reason why the young writers of the thirties flocked into or towards the Communist Party. It was simply something to believe in. Here was a Church, an army, an orthodoxy, a discipline. Here was a Fatherland and — at any rate since 1935 or thereabouts — a Fuehrer.

G. Orwell, 'Inside the Whale' (1940), in Essays (1984), 121-2

I think 'Inside the Whale' is my favourite of all of Orwell's essays, certainly of the political ones. To be honest people should just read the whole thing. 

The parochial organisation should always be attacked

Surely you know that if a man can't be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that 'suits' him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches.

The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organisation should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the Enemy [God] desires. The congregational principle, on the other hand, makes each church into a kind of club, and finally, if all goes well, into a coterie or faction.

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape letters (1942), 81

Because these were people she knew, she refrained from calling them "degenerates" or "infidels"

When some rich Muslim families in Şişli and Nişantaşı began buying pine trees to decorate and display in windows the way Christians did in films, I remember that even my mother felt uneasy, but because these were people she knew, she refrained from calling them "degenerates" or "infidels" as the religious press would, dismissing them rather as "harebrained."

O. Pamuk, The museum of Innocence (2009), 446