Quotes
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“There was never a time when God was against us.”
From her chapter on the atonement motif of blood sacrifice in The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge writes, God is not divided against himself. When we see Jesus, we see the Father (John 14:7). The Father did not look at Jesus on the cross and suddenly have a change of heart. The purpose of the atonement was…
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“…hypocrisy has been inescapable because our opposition to violence has been selective or merely fashionable.”
In our century of almost universal violence of humans against fellow humans and against our natural and cultural commonwealth, hypocrisy has been inescapable because our opposition to violence has been selective or merely fashionable. Some of us who approve of our monstrous military budget and our peacekeeping wars nonetheless deplore ‘domestic violence’ and think that…
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“And for the first time I felt my nakedness.”
For several years I lived in what seems to me now to have been a very general way. My major aim was to keep writing, and I had done so by taking advantage of random opportunities, traveling here and there, living a year or two in one place and a year or two in another. And…
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“But why is it so hard for us to admit that as human beings and moral agents, Americans are just like everyone else?”
For over a century, the United States has wielded extraordinary economic and military power. That power has shaped the world, and us. Abroad, it has often been used in ways that reveal our most undemocratic, exploitative, racist tendencies. But that we have betrayed our principles and hoarded our liberties does not make them empty—they are…
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“There is no more important calling for the church in our time than claiming the self-identification of the God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
A fundamental problem is that it is not at all clear exactly who God is. We have not become a secular society so much as we have become a generically religious one. Undifferentiated spiritual objects, therapies, and programs are widely marketed. Popular religion in America tends to be an amalgam of whatever presents itself. Discerning observers…
David W. Swanson 