You might get rid of the Bishop and get to the local Ku Klux Klan leader. That, on the whole, has been the fate of certain types of Protestantism. They get under the control of a White Citizens Council while the Catholic Church has an authoritarian system, yes, in which the Bishop expresses the conscience of the whole Christian community and they say there are some things that you can't do on this matter.

One of the fundamental points about religious humility is you say you don't know about the ultimate judgment. It's beyond your judgment. And if you equate God's judgment with your judgment, you have a wrong religion.

Ultimately freedom is necessary for a society, because every despotic society - for instance, the Russian society - lives on the basis of a rather implausible dogma - the Marxist dogma of world redemption through Communism.

The Communists do have a god, the Dialectic of History, which guarantees everything that they're going to do and guarantees them victory; that's why they're fanatic.

All social cooperation on a larger scale than the most intimate social group requires a measure of coercion.

Civilization depends upon the vigorous pursuit of the highest values by people who are intelligent enough to know that their values are qualified by their interests and corrupted by their prejudices.

A wise architect observed that you could break the laws of architec75tural art provided you had mastered them first. That would apply to religion as well as to art. Ignorance of the past does not guarantee freedom from its imperfections.