Today, some of the most spiritual people I know claim to be without religion.

The real problem that I think those of us who are evangelicals and Democrats have to face up to is that the political right controls the religious media.

I’ve got to push everything out of mind save the name of Jesus. I say His name over and over again, for as long as fifteen minutes, until I find my soul suspended in what the ancient Celtic Christians called a “thin place”–a state where the boundary between heaven and earth, divine and human, dissolves. You could say that I use the name of Jesus as my koan.

Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected.

There are 2,000 verses of Scripture that tell us we must be committed to protecting the poor and the oppressed... There is no concern of Scripture that is addressed so often and so powerfully as reaching out to the poor.

When leading evangelicals say terrible things about Islam, evil things about Islam, terrible things about Muhammad, they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I'm not convinced that Jesus only lives in Christians.