Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A pastor friend of mine said, "Our problem is that we no longer have martyrs. We only have celebrities.
Mother Theresa always said, "Calcuttas are everywhere if only we have eyes to see. Find your Calcutta."
I learned more about God from the tears of homeless mothers than any systematic theology ever taught me.
Little movements of communities of ordinary radicals are committed to doing small things with great love.
There is extreme poverty in Appalachia, where I was, and increasingly poverty is not just an urban thing.
Money has power. And so withholding money has power too, especially when a bunch of people do it together.
Somehow Jesus's reputation has survived all the embarrassing things that Christians have done in his name.
There is a certain power when old and young come together - we can do more together than we can on our own.
I think in the end, God's justice is redemptive, it's restorative, it's about giving life, not taking life.
As my friend said that when people say the church is full of hypocrites, he says we always have room for more.
[Jesus] said that they will know we are Christians - not by our bumper stickers and T-shirts - but by our love.
We're not church planters. We are community planters and, as we work in our communities, we join local churches.
Rather than finding the devil "out there," we battle the devil within us. The revolution starts inside each of us.
I wondered if there were other restless people asking the question with me: What if Jesus meant the stuff he said?.
Jesus taught us a prayer of community and reconciliation, belonging to a new people who have left the land of 'me'.
If every Christian family brought in a child who needed a family we would put the foster care system out of business.
We have been mentored from the very beginning by Catholic folks who are invigorating the best of the monastic spirit.
We have to use our discontentment to engage rather than disengage - our hope has to be more powerful than our cynicism.
The greatest sin of political imagination: Thinking there is no other way except the filthy rotten system we have today.
I say let's be idealists. "Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not yet see" (Hebrews 11:1).
I'm just not convinced that Jesus is going to say, "When I was hungry, you gave a check to the United Way and they fed me.
It is the church's job, as Dr. [Martin Luther] King says, to be the conscience of the state, not the chaplain of the state.
If we believe terrorists are past redemption, we should just rip up like 1/2 the New Testament because it was written by one.
What is the point in calling anything God if it does not also hold sway in every part of one's life--especially one's politics?
We can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.
When we truly discover how to love our neighbor as our self, Capitalism will not be possible and Marxism will not be necessary.
It is the church's responsibility, the government's responsibility, and the personal responsibility of every one of us to love.
If you have two coats you have stolen one. We have no right to have more than we need when someone else has less than they need.
Perhaps there is no more dangerous place for a Christian to be than in safety and comfort, detached from the suffering of others.
I engage with local politics because it affects people I love. And I engage in national politics because it affects people I love.
One thing that's clear in the Scriptures is that the nations do not lead people to peace; rather, people lead the nations to peace.
There is an innocence or purity that we see in renewals and in the Mennonite church and a new an invigorated civil rights movement.
We are faithful not to the triumphant golden eagle (ironically, also an imperial symbol of power in Rome) but to the slaughtered Lamb.
Because you can poke someone's eye out legally doesn't mean you should and that it's right. The Bible teaches us a more perfect justice.
The question for me is not are we political, but how are we political? We need to be politically engaged, but peculiar in how we engage.
In fact, the Gospel shows us change comes from the bottom rather than the top, from an old rugged cross rather than a gold royal throne.
And since we are people of expectation, we are so convinced that another world is coming that we start living as if it were already here.
I think a lot of people view the death penalty as a debate class or something. The cost and what's at stake is really, really a big deal.
Prayer is not so much about convincing God to do what we want God to do as it is about convincing ourselves to do what God wants us to do.
Let's keep refusing to accept the world as it is and insisting on building the world we dream of. Don't let the haters have the last word.
Whenever folks say radical Christianity is "a phase" of youth, I tell them they need to meet our 80-year-old nun or my friend Tony Campolo.
That is the power of the Eucharist. At the communion table you have rich and poor together in the early church and they were being challenged.
If those of us who believe in God do not believe God's grace is big enough to save the whole world... well, we should at least pray that it is.
The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.
We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it.
As Christians, we should be the best collaborators in the world. We should be quick to find unlikely allies and subversive friends, like Jesus did.
The Christian icon is not the Stars and Stripes but a cross-flag, and its emblem is not a donkey, an elephant, or an eagle, but a slaughtered lamb.
The more I travel, the more I see how important it is to each population to see that their history of the good and the bad is remembered by others.
It is a dangerous day when we can take the cross out of the church more easily than the flag. No wonder it is hard for seekers to find God nowadays.
When it comes to the big issues like immigration, everyone has a role. The government has a role. The church has a role. Every Christian has a role.