Herein lies a riddle: How can a people so gifted by God become so seduced by naked power, so greedy for money, so addicted to violence, so slavish before mediocre and treacherous leadership, so paranoid, deluded, lunatic?

The church is a major bureaucracy, and major bureaucracies are disobedient to the gospel.

Herein lies a riddle: How can a people so gifted by God become so seduced by naked power, so greedy for money, so addicted to violence, so slavish before mediocre and treacherous leadership, so paranoid, deluded, lunatic?

The Pentagon is, admissibly, the most powerful institution in history.

The poor tell us who we are, the prophets tell us who we could be, so we hide the poor, and kill the prophets.

Lying and war are always associated. Listen closely when you hear a war-maker try to defend his current war: If he moves his lips he's lying.

[ To break the law] would still be an imperative. I guess we do it for both reasons. You try to be a Christian, you try to come from that tradition of the Jewish prophets and then Christ and everything since. That becomes your handbook. "Witness" is the key word. You witness against the injustice, against the atrocity, against the heavy-handedness, and all the rest. We try to make a statement to other people, and we try to say it's your responsibility, too.