Man must now assume the responsibility for his world. He can no longer shove it off on religious power.

I am dead against trying to keep religious conservatives out of the political debate. The tactic of exclusion is self-defeating.

Your reach should always exceed your grasp.

Sermons remain one of the last forms of public discourse where it is culturally forbidden to talk back.

Somewhere deep down we know that in the final analysis, we do decide things and that even our decisions to let someone else decide are really our decisions, however pusillanimous.

"Religion" can no more be equated with what goes on in churches than "education" can be reduced to what happens in schools or "health care" restricted to what doctors do to patients in clinics. The vast majority of healing and learning goes on among parents and children and families and friends, far from the portals of any school or hospital. The same is true for religion. It is going on around us all the time. Religion is larger and more pervasive than churches.

God laughs, it seems, because God knows how it all turns out in the end.