Consider the problem of taking showers with Christians. They are, after all, constantly going on about the business of witnessing in the hopes of making converts to their God and church. Would you want to shower with such people? You never know when they might try to baptize you.

It’s hard to remember that Jesus did not come to make us safe, but rather to make us disciples, citizens of God’s new age, a kingdom of surprise.

The church doesn’t have a social strategy, the church is a social strategy.

The lives of the saints are the hermeneutical key to Scripture.

In the Crusades, getting the Holy Land back was the goal, and any means could be used to achieve it. World War II was a crusade. The firebombing of Tokyo by Doolittle and the carpet bombing in Germany, especially by the British, showed that.

Saints cannot exist without a community, as they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of God.

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