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.

I experience God as the power of life, the power of love and the ground of being. I don't say that's what God is; I say that's my experience of God.

If you want to be a Roman Catholic scholar and write, you've got to write in such a way that nobody understands what you're saying, and then you're thought to be profound.

I don't make that decision [what next book will be] until I've read enough to know that I've got something different to say and I know how to say it.

I think the story of the Christian faith is how you can become more deeply and fully human, not how you can become religious. And I don't see any indication that being religious makes you more moral.

Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history.

Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, says, "From the rising of the sun to its setting, God's name shall be great among the Gentiles." This encompasses the whole world. Suddenly it's not the Jews against the Gentiles, or my tribe against your tribe.