The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor—spending and being spent—to enrich their fellow humans, giving...
When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
The great problem with dominant white theologians, especially white men, is their tendency to speak as if they and they alone can set the rules for thinking about God. That is why they seldom turn to the cultures of the poor, especially people of color, for resources...
Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
Jesus never says to the poor: "come, find the church," but he says to those of us in the church: "go into the world and find the poor, hungry, homeless, imprisoned."
When wealth is passed off as merit, bad luck is seen as bad character. This is how ideologues justify punishing the sick and the poor. But poverty is neither a crime nor a character flaw. Stigmatize those who let people die, not those who struggle to live.
When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.
Where is God? God is where we are weak, vulnerable, small, and dependent. God is where the poor are, the hungry, the handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, the powerless. How can we come to know God when our focus is elsewhere, on success, influence, and power?
Your "yes" to God requires your "no" to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor.
Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed. from Poor Man's Pudding and Rich Man's Crumbs