Some parts of the Bible are dreadful. In fact, my working title for The Sins of Scripture was "The Terrible Text of The Bible."

So who is God? No one can finally say. That is not within human competence. All we can ever say is how we believe we have experienced God, doing our best to dispel our human delusions. Let me try to do just that. I experience God as the source of life calling me to live fully and thus to respect life in every form as embodying the holy.

Human wholeness can never be found in the denigration of another

I think Jesus is a fact of history. I think a man named Jesus of Nazareth lived and was crucified. I think his death interpreted his life in a fantastic way, because if you study that life carefully underneath an overlay of theology and mythology, you'll find that the power of that life was that he was constantly giving himself away. He was constantly calling people to be all that they could be.

[Charles] Darwin, for example, is the one who made us face the fact that the primary way we tell the Christ story doesn't work anymore.

My hope is that a religious consciousness will begin to rise, one based on enhancing humanity, grasping life in all of its complex wonder, having the courage to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that each of us can be and that it will express itself in our national life in more earth centered, justice enhancing and humane ways.

Was Judas Iscariot a figure of history? I do not think so. There is no mention of him in any source before the 8th decade.