In the private arena, you can do whatever you wish, and people do. These crazy evangelical preachers get on the radio and TV and say incredible things.

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.

[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.

The thing that intrigues me about Matthew is that I don't believe anybody would read it if they aren't Jewish and understand it. And so to say that publicly as a Christian is kind of interesting.

Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.

Matthew is the only gospel that uses the Sermon on the Mount, for example, because that's the new Moses making a new interpretation of the law on a new mountain. So then you begin to put all these things together, and I don't know how you can make sense out of that book if you don't know the Jewish background.