To show you … how out of evil there can come good, in those five years I read every book in the black school library. I read all the books I could get from the white school library. I memorized James Weldon Johnson, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Countee Cullen and Langston...
[Written in 1948] How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: ‘Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land...
While I gained much from conversations about faith from my fellow travelers through the landscape of the Christian faith, I have found that my personal faith is now enriched and deepened mainly by reading books. from Mere Discipleship
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don't open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instument. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
We may take the task of reading the Scriptures and attending to the reading of Scriptures in worship lightly, failing to discern what God is up to with us in that effort. A faithful, that is, a full-of-faith rendering of the Scriptural word in terms of both denotation...
The root meaning of the word “martyr” is “witness.” The implication is that when people die for what they believe, they have said something important that we need to hear. In a strange way, believing that there are values greater than our own life and coming to terms...
I love the Bible. I have spent more than half of my life reading it, studying it, teaching and preaching it. While I do not find every word of it as inspiring (or inspired) as some of my fellow Christians do, I encounter God in it reliably enough to commit myself on a...
Frequently when they attacked me for being involved in politics, I used to say, I wish I knew which Bible they were reading! Because the Bible I read was quite clear: God revealed God to the children of Israel, not in a sanctuary, but by carrying out a political...
I have come to regard with some suspicion those who claim that the Bible never troubles them. I can only assume this means they haven’t actually read it.
And I learn faith, I deepen my faith, not only by exercising it but by reading Scripture, and contemplating the mighty acts of God…by being near people of faith, for faith is beautifully contagious.