Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

The great danger... in believing yourself especially chosen is that it becomes easy to view those who are not your people as God's especially unchosen.

Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. I don't think that's the case.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

Another [book on Matthew] is Amy-Jill Levine, who is a Jewish woman who teaches New Testament at the Vanderbilt School of Religion. It's a group of essays by mostly womanly scholars looking at Matthew's gospel through feminists' eyes - very exciting. It opens up all sorts of things that I've never thought about.

I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people.

The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person.