Advent is patience it's how God has made us a people of promise, in a world of impatience.

Civil religion is the attempt to empower religion, not for the good of religion, but for the creation of the citizen.

Another hallmark of Christianity is that salvation is not individualistic-it's not something one person receives for himself or herself. Salvation is the reign of God. It is a political alternative to the way the world is constituted. That's a very important part of the story that has been lost to accounts of salvation that are centered in the individual. But without an understanding that salvation is the reign of God, the need for the church to mediate salvation makes no sense at all.

Whenever a people are bound together in loyalty to a story that includes something as strange as the Sermon on the Mount, we are put at odds with the world.

Christianity is not a set of beliefs or doctrines one believes in order to be a Christian, but rather Christianity is to have one's body shaped, one's habits determined, in such a way that the worship of God is unavoidable.

The courageous have fears that cowards never know.

Never think that you need to protect God. Because anytime you think you need to protect God, you can be sure that you are worshipping an idol.