They (theological liberals)seemed to know what the answer was supposed to be and weren't much concerned with how to get there. They knew only that whatever answers the Fundamentalists came up with must be wrong.

The 'success' of the sermon is utterly dependent on the God who breaks through and 'grasps' us, or we cannot be 'grasped.

The more science learns, the clearer it is that although we are here, we shouldn't be. Once we begin considering the details of it all, the towering odds against our existence begin to become a bit unsettling. When we come to see the superlatively extreme precariousness of our existence, and begin to understand how by any accounting, we ought not to exist, what are we to think or feel? Our existence seems to be not merely a virtually impossible miracle but the most outrageous miracle conceivable, one that makes previously amazing miracles seem like almost nothing.

When the Chinese government tells its citizens that they can worship in a certain building on a certain day, but once they leave that building they must bow to the secular orthodoxy of the state, you have a cynical lie at work. They’ve substituted a toothless ‘freedom of worship’ for ‘freedom of religion’.

It was not apathy or passiveness. For him, prayer was a display of the strongest possible activity.

Bonhoeffer knew that twisting the Truth to sell it more effectively was inexcusable. For Bonhoeffer the challenge was to present the Truth as purely as possible without attempting to help it along or dress it up.

Ever heard of anyone executed for distributing copies of Grimm's fairy tales? Imagine people trying to smuggle copies of Hans Christian Andersen's works into China? The Bible, which has been called a mere collection of myths has suffered all of these fates: even today, copies of the Bible are banned and burned. There's something about this ancient book that threatens and frightens those in power.