No, I saw the bible as a literary masterpiece, but literature all the same; and Christianity owed its rules and regulations to politics more than anything else, while filling pews with uncertainty and fear. Substitute the Torah, the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple, for all the above and the formula worked perfectly. All of the bloodletting and chaos, the devotion and beauty, martyrdom, and even charity could be reduced to a simple formula of politics and fear.

Gloria Naylor, Mama Day (1988)

[White folks] is the reason fences was invented. I mean, take before they come here with all they bibles, do you think the Injuns had done hogged propity from one another? No ma'am, they hadn't. They didn't mind letting folks use the grass and the good earth like the lawd intended it should be. Those people over there, you give 'em a chance, they try to take our land, never mind it belong to us. They been that was since hist'ry.

Grange zu Ruth, in: Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970)