The future of the church is also about looking back and looking at where we see these wonderful renewals and what we can learn from the early church. I think it is a really exciting time where Phyllis Tickle said every few hundred years the church needs a rummage sale where we can get rid of some of the clutter.

With the early Christians you couldn't have God as your father unless you have the church as your mother. This isn't accepting the church as a perfect thing.

Someday war and poverty will be crazy and we will wonder how the world allowed such things to exist.

If we believe terrorists are past redemption, we should just rip up like 1/2 the New Testament because it was written by one.

Philadelphia caught my attention in 1995 when a group of homeless families were living in an abandoned cathedral. Even from the beginning they connected theology with what they were doing. They put a banner on the front of the cathedral that said, "How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday."

What is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life--especially one's politics?

Whenever folks say radical Christianity is "a phase" of youth, I tell them they need to meet our 80-year-old nun or my friend Tony Campolo.