Quotes about Coercion

It is certainly no part of religion to compel religion.

Forcing people to "freely" believe is a contradiction in terms. God is love (1 John 4:16), and love cannot work coercively — only persuasively.

The bird that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing, they say,' grumbled Tackleton.

Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.

Because there is one God, all people are related to that one God on equal terms. The central command of that one God is to love neighbors—to treat others as we would like them to treat us, as expressed in the Golden Rule. We cannot claim any rights for ourselves and our group that we are not willing to give to others. Whether as a stance of the heart or as outward practice, religion cannot be coerced.[217]

Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word Jesus Christ, so that it should read a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion. The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination.

Reason and experiment have been indulged, and error has fled before them. It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors? Fallible men; men governed by bad passions, by private as well as public reasons. And why subject it to coercion? To produce uniformity. But is uniformity of opinion desirable? No more than of face and stature.

Coercion from outside, strong temperamental inclinations and passions within ourselves, do nothing to effect the essence of our freedom. They simply define its action by imposing certain limits on it.

Trying to do good to people without God's help is no easier than making the sun shine at midnight. You discover that you've got to abandon all your own preferences, your own bright ideas, and guide souls along the road our Lord has marked out for them. You mustn't coerce them into some path of your own choosing.

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.

When you force a man to act against his own choice and judgment, it's his thinking that you want him to suspend.

When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others, either putting or keeping them "in their place." The history of such religious manipulation and coercion is long and tedious. It is little wonder that people who have only known religion on such terms experience release or escape from it as freedom. The problem is that the freedom turns out to be short-lived.