Quotes

It happens often among us that praise is either escapist fantasy, or it is a bland affirmation of the status quo. In fact, doxology is a daring political, polemical act that serves to dismiss certain loyalties and to embrace and legitimate other loyalties, and other shapes of reality. — Walter Brueggemann

[T]he economy of undeserved grace has primacy over the economy of moral deserts. — Miroslav Volf

[T]he difference between being at peace and being complacent is one of the most basic lessons saints can teach us. — Charles Mathewes

The greatest threat to children in modern liberal societies is not that they will believe in something too deeply, but that they will believe in nothing very deeply at all. — William Galston

Those who believe they believe in God, but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God, not in God himself. — Miguel de Unamuno

If Christian worship had revolved around feet-washing instead of bread-sharing, it is intriguing and depressing to think that now we would be involved in theological disputes about whether the feet should be sprinkled or totally immersed, whether the right or left feet should come first, who was authorized to wash feet, whether women’s feet could be washed, and, even more serious, whether women could wash feet! — Kenneth Leech

The theme of good news for the poor, the anawim, the little people, is crucial to Christianity. . . . So the test of spirituality is a practical test, and particularly the test of attitude to the poor. — Kenneth Leech

The question of “race is like a bone stuck in our throat, refusing both digestion and explusion, endangering our life.” It is “the unmistakable need and desire of our nation to deal with its terrifying and compelling history, to exorcise the demons of our racial past and present, perhaps even to discover the healing possibilities that reside in our many-hued and wounded variations on the human theme.” — Vincent Harding

For it is likely that there can be no resurrections by proxy. Each person and each generation may be called to stand anew—but not alone—at the river. — Vincent Harding

Is it really possible that certain kinds of power come to us only as we let go of things rather than accumulate them? — Vincent Harding