Vine Deloria Jr.: Quotes about religion

Vine Deloria Jr. was American writer. Explore interesting quotes on religion.

Vine Deloria Jr.: 22 quotes2 likes

“Religion is for people who’re afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who’ve already been there.”

Commonly attributed to Deloria on the internet, or sometimes to a few others, but without legitimate sourcing, the earliest variant of this yet located is a single quotation in Awakened India Vo. 99 (1994) p. 327, ascribed to Fr. Patrick Collins, University of Notre Dame, USA:
Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who know they have been there — perhaps through involvement with religion.
The next variant located is ascribed to an anonymous member of Alcoholics Anonymous in Illuminating the Heart: Steps Toward a More Spiritual Marriage (1996) by Barbara G. Markway, p. 28:
Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.
A variant also occurs in The Higher Power of the Twelve-Step Program: For Believers & Non-Believers (2001), by Glenn F. Chesnut, Ch. 1 : Discovering a Higher Power:
Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell; twelvestep spirituality is for those who've been there.
Misattributed

“The very conception of a Chosen People implies a lost religious ethnicity. Most likely religions do not in fact cross national and ethnic lines without losing their power and identity. It is probably more in the nature of things to have different groups with different religions”

Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 293

“Besides the importance of land and religion, the existence of a specific religion among a distinct group of people is probably a fundamental element of human experience.”

Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 293

“The idea that religion was conceived as originally designed for a particular people relating to a specific god falls well within the experiences of the rest of humankind and may conceivably be considered a basic factor in the existence of religion.”

Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 204

“Most tribal religions make no pretense as to their universality.”

Vine Deloria Jr.

Source: God Is Red (1973), p. 210