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Who really said it

God has no religion

Not Gandhi — the line is Henry Whitney Bellows’s (1860) Henry Whitney Bellows 1814–1882 · American Unitarian minister & author
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

The three-word line circulates on hundreds of quote sites under Gandhi’s name, yet it appears in none of his writings — not the Collected Works, Young India, or Harijan — and it is absent even from Wikiquote’s Gandhi entry. The phrase is in fact a documented line from the American Unitarian minister Henry Whitney Bellows, who wrote “God has no religion” in his sermon “The Kingdom of God” (Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine, D. Appleton, 1860, p. 149) — decades before it was ever pinned on Gandhi.

Last verified 8 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“God has no religion” Widely attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but the exact phrase "God has no religion" appears in none of his writings — it comes from Henry Whitney Bellows's 1860 sermon "The Kingdom of God."

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Mahatma Gandhi. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the world of Henry Whitney Bellows — American Unitarian minister & author. Theme: "God has no religion". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "God has no religion". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What the record shows

Popularly credited
Mahatma Gandhi
Primary source
Henry W. Bellows, Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine (1860)
Genuine parallel
“All religions … proceed from the same God” (Young India, 29 May 1924)
Status
Genuine Bellows line, misattributed to Gandhi

“God has no religion.”

Reproduced on quote sites under Gandhi’s name with no date, work, or page — but the wording is traceable: it comes from Bellows’s 1860 sermon ‘The Kingdom of God’, where it means that religion is a human relation to God, not an attribute of God himself.

Bellows, Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine (1860) — full text

How we verified this

The wording is tied to a datable, identifiable work — Bellows’s Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine (D. Appleton, 1860). As a pre-1931 publication it is firmly in the public domain. Gandhi’s genuine parallel statements from the 1920s–30s are separately under the stewardship of the Navajivan Trust / Gandhi Heritage Portal.

Fact-check

The real author isn’t Gandhi — it’s Bellows

The line is one of the internet’s most-shared “Gandhi” quotes, but the trail doesn’t end at the aggregator sites: the exact wording was published decades earlier by the American Unitarian minister Henry Whitney Bellows.

Mahatma Gandhi misattributed

Repeated across Goodreads, AZQuotes, and QuoteFancy with no work, date, or page — and absent from Wikiquote and from his Collected Works.

Henry Whitney Bellows (1814–1882) verified

The exact phrase appears verbatim in the Unitarian minister’s Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine (D. Appleton, 1860): “… religion would have no occasion, and could have no existence. God has no religion. He worships no one; obeys no one” — from the sermon ‘The Kingdom of God’ (p. 149). Goodreads even tags the line ‘misattributed-to-gandhi’.

What Gandhi actually taught was that faiths are “different roads converging to the same point” and that all religions “proceed from the same God” (Young India, 29 May 1924) — a kindred sentiment, but not the source of this three-word line, which is Bellows’s.

Context

Why it sticks to Gandhi

The sentiment fits Gandhi so well that few readers pause to source it. His life’s work argued that no single creed monopolizes the divine — a message that compresses neatly into “God has no religion.” That very fit is what lets a line Gandhi never wrote pass as one of his.

But fit is not evidence. Under Gandhi’s name the phrase surfaces only on modern quote sites with no date or work — while its true home is an 1860 sermon by Henry Whitney Bellows, and Gandhi’s own formulations of the kindred idea are longer, dated, and printed in Young India and Hind Swaraj.

The idea is Gandhi’s; the exact words are Henry Whitney Bellows’s.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Truth

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhien.wikiquote.org

Sourced, disputed, and misattributed Gandhi quotations — the phrase appears in none of them.
Gandhi on all religions leading to Godmkgandhi.org

His genuine, citation-bearing statements on religious pluralism (Young India 1924; Hind Swaraj).
Goodreads: quote credited to Henry Whitney Bellowsgoodreads.com

The genuine source of the line, tagged ‘misattributed-to-gandhi’ — Bellows’s Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine.
The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi (full text)thetedkarchive.com

The standard Prabhu & Rao anthology of Gandhi’s thought — the phrase does not occur in it.
Gandhi Heritage Portalgandhiheritageportal.org

Authoritative archive of the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi for primary-source checking.
Goodreads: quote credited to Gandhi (uncited)goodreads.com

Typical aggregator listing — the Gandhi credit with no source of any kind.

The author

About Henry Whitney Bellows

Henry Whitney Bellows

1814–1882 · American Unitarian minister & author

Henry Whitney Bellows (1814–1882) was an American Unitarian clergyman and author. The line “God has no religion” appears in his 1860 book Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine, in the sermon “The Kingdom of God” (p. 149) — long before it was ever credited to Mahatma Gandhi, whose own documented view was a religious pluralism that all faiths are imperfect human roads to the same God.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Original source

Henry W. Bellows, “The Kingdom of God,” in Re-Statements of Christian Doctrine, in Twenty-Five Sermons (New York: D. Appleton, 1860), p. 149. The exact line reads “God has no religion. He worships no one; obeys no one.” Long misattributed to Gandhi, whose nearest genuine statement is “all religions … proceed from the same God” (Young India, 29 May 1924).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘God has no religion’?” Last verified 8 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/god-has-no-religion

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