Karl Barth said it well: "We have to read the Bible in one hand... and the newspaper in the other." Our faith should not cause us to escape this world but to engage it.

It's unilaterally true that it costs more to maintain the death penalty than the alternatives to it, and we can leverage more resources to victims families. We can do all sorts of creative ways of healing the pain that people have done by channeling the energy and resources to other more redemptive forms of justice.

There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of.

We have been mentored from the very beginning by Catholic folks who are invigorating the best of the monastic spirit.

Governments can do lots of things, but there are a lot of things they cannot do. A government can provide good housing, but folks can have a house without having a home. We can keep people breathing with good health care, but they still may not really be alive.

There are some Christians who totally disengage from politics and set their minds on heaven so much that their faith is so heavenly minded that it is no earthly good.

I think of the Catholic worker movement and Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin and others.