Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet would cost about $20 billion. Let's just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.

So when the only domestic social policy is tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans, we say, 'Where is faith being put into action here?'

When evangelical leaders can persuade the president to be concerned about what's happening in Sudan, or sex trafficking around the world, or HIV-AIDS, that's a very good thing. I am completely supportive of that.

At times I think the truest image of God today is a black inner-city grandmother in the United States or a mother of the disappeared in Argentina or the women who wake up early to make tortillas in refugee camps. They all weep for their children, and in their compassionate tears arises the political action that changes the world. The mothers show us that it is the experience of touching the pain of others that is the key to change.

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

Spirituality becomes a commodity to be bought and sold. So spirituality has to be disciplined by social justice.

But when one believes that you've been appointed by God for a particular mission in history, you have to be very careful about that, how you speak about that. Where is the self-reflection in that? Where is the humility in that?