In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them.

Teasing out the way the world might look through another's eyes is what makes the creative process so fascinating and enjoyable.

The very aspect of religions that many of their critics most fear - that the religiously devout, in the name of their faith, take positions that differ from approved state policy - is one of their strengths.

Love is a gift we deliver when we would rather not.

To be black and an intellectual in America is to live in a box. On the box is a label, not of my own choosing.

In contemporary American culture, the religions are more and more treated as just passing beliefs - almost as fads - rather than as the fundaments upon which the devout build their lives.

There is much depressing evidence that the religious voice is required to stay out of the public square only when it is pressed in a conservative cause.