Hysterical fundamentalism is not the way into the future; it is the last gasp of the past.

I believe that God is very real.

Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state.

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.

I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

There's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance.