Herman Melville on Christianity

Heaven have mercy on us all⁠—Presbyterians and Pagans alike⁠—for we are all dreadfully cracked about the head and desperately in need of mending.

Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay, but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.

The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges…

The Bible is not my book, and Christianity is not my religion. I could never give assent to the long, complicated statements of Christian dogma.

Abraham Lincoln1809–1865

• Anti-Religion

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963“Is Theology Poetry?” (1945)

It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.