Our calling is not only to pull people out of the river, but to go upstream to find out what or who is pushing them in.

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.

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.

Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that's wrong . . . . The answer to bad religion is better religion--prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and based on values as opposed to ideology.

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

What is my calling? What am I supposed to do? I think running for office, public office, can be a divine calling. I mean, Ive wrestled with that very question myself.

You can't be evangelical and associate yourself with Jesus and what he says about the poor and just have no other domestic concerns than tax cuts for wealthy people.