...our societies appear to be intent on immediate consumption rather than on investment for the future. We are piling up enormous debts and exploiting the natural environment in a manner which suggests that we have no real sense of any worthwhile future. Just as a society which believes in the future saves in the present in order to invest in the future, so a society without belief spends everything now and piles up debts for future generations to settle. "Spend now and someone else will pay later."

The gospel is not just the illustration (even the best illustration) of an idea. It is the story of actions by which the human situation is irreversibly changed.

Congregational life wherein each member has his opportunity to contribute to the life of the whole body, those gifts with which the Spirit endows him, is as much of the essence of the Church as are ministry and sacraments.

Likewise, the world of action, of politics, is reduced to a conflict of views about how to keep the cycle of production and consumption going. Questions of ultimate purpose are excluded from the public world.

The victory of the Church over the power which was embodied in the Roman imperial system was not won by seizing the levers of power: it was won when the victims knelt down in the Colosseum and prayed in the name of Jesus for the Emperor.

The missionary calling has sometimes been interpreted as a calling to stem this fearful cataract of souls going to eternal perdition. But I do not find this in the center of the New Testament representation of the missionary calling.

It is less important to ask a Christian what he or she believes about the Bible than it is to inquire what he or she does with it.