The Sermon on the Mount site.

Perceptions of the Sermon on the Mount

Voicing opinions

The significance of the Sermon on the Mount is readily apparent from the things that people say about it. Down the years a selection of the famous and the powerful have commented on it and here is a selection of what they had to say.

The biblical scholar Joachim Jeremias once observed that the question, “What is the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount,” affects “the very roots of our existence.” 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (American Physician, Poet, Writer, Humorist and Professor at Harvard, 1809-1894) observed that “most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer.”  Harry S. Truman (33rd President of the United States), or possibly Franklin D. Roosevelt (the quotation seems to be attributed to both) said optimistically,  “I do not believe there is a problem in this country or the world today which could not be settled if approached through the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.” A similar stance was held by Hindu leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, who, in conversation with the former British Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin, suggested “when your country and mine shall get together on the teachings laid down by Christ in this Sermon on the Mount, we shall have solved the problems not only of our countries but those of the whole world.” In a similar vein, General Omar N. Bradley (1893-1981, commander of US ground forces during the Normandy invasion in World War II) lamented that “we have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.”

The writer Frederick Scott Oliver was more pessimistic about the Sermon’s practicality, suggesting that “no politician has ever yet been able to rule his country, nor has any country ever yet been able to face the world, upon the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.” Sir Robert Menzies, former Australian Prime Minister hinted at the reason, when he stated astutely, “to a practising politician, I know of no document more disturbing than The Ten Commandments - unless it be The Sermon on the Mount.”

The Sermon continues to challenge both those who desire a better world and those who fear one. Find out more about it in this simple introduction.

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