I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.

Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.

Bigotry is surely an exportable American commodity, especially when it comes to race.

No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members.

I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.'

The language of faith is crucial because it affords human beings the privilege of intimacy with the ultimate.

Mrs. James, my fifth-grade teacher, introduced us to some of the great literature of African American culture. I won my first blue ribbon reciting the vernacular poems of Paul Lawrence Dunbar, in particular "Little Brown Baby."