On sensitive issues, talk isn't cheap - it takes real courage to pry open topics nailed shut.

Many American Muslims are peaceful and define jihad primarily as an internal struggle to improve.

We do not increase compassion by expanding it to cover anything. Instead, we kill a good word by making it mean too much, and nothing.

[The disestablishment of religion] may not have been such a good idea.

Biblical social scientists have an advantage because they know truths about human nature. Those who dismiss the Bible and create surveys that don't measure crucial factors are the ones who have closed minds. Sometimes the Bible gives us clear answers and sometimes it doesn't, but it always helps us to ask the right questions.

Passover and Easter are the only Jewish and Christian holidays that move in sync, like the ice skating pairs we saw during the winter Olympics.

The holy land was supposed to be spotless, a serious equivalent of Disneyland in which not a single candy wrapper is to stay on the ground for more than a few minutes.