Faith can cut in so many ways. If you're penitent and not triumphal, it can move us to repentance and accountability and help us reach for something higher than ourselves. That can be a powerful thing, a thing that moves us beyond politics as usual, like Martin Luther King did. But when it's designed to certify our righteousness - that can be a dangerous thing. Then it pushes self criticism aside. There's no reflection.

Hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change.

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?

To dig our heels in and say no to a present madness is a good thing, but to walk a new path and say yes is a better thing.

The Christian doctrine is one that is both about individual spirituality and a parallel commitment to social justice.

The people who have more money and goods than any people in the history of the world spend most of their time worrying about not having enough.

Hope unbelieved is always considered nonsense. But hope believed is history in the process of being changed.