When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority...
Christmas reminds us that God didn’t become an emperor controlling an empire. God didn’t become a general commanding legions. God didn’t become a creed, a Bible, or a set of doctrines to be imposed. God became a helpless baby born to a poor family desperately in need...
It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull,...
God's Word teaches a very hard, disturbing truth. Those who neglect the poor and the oppressed are really not God's people at all--no matter how frequently they practice their religious rituals or how orthodox are their creeds and confessions.
There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.
I think Jesus would have said, "It's not about me." During his lifetime, he deflected attention from himself. In an illuminating passage in our earliest gospel, when a man addressed him as "Good Teacher," Jesus responded with, "Why do you call me good? No one is good...
Faith is far more than the sum total of beliefs. Beliefs are merely pointers; faith is profound trust in the actuality to which beliefs point. The Creed mentions beliefs, but it is a statement of faith, not of beliefs. There are many beliefs, but there is ultimately...
The Spirit was present at creation and abided in Jesus of Nazareth and in every other being who has ever lived and ever will. Because it is life itself, it infuses all life. It need not be asked into our lives, for it is already there. While this Spirit dwells in us,...