“There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being.”

“In the same breath, one might add that the atheist is surely as religious as the Christian, in that he has adopted a set of beliefs to which he chooses to rigorously adhere. While it’s temptingly clever to make that claim, it is a nonsensical statement; no more logical than to say that a Christian is a type of atheist. Having a set of beliefs about religion is not the same as being a religious True Believer.”

“The leaders of this movement [The Religious Right in the United States], while accepting the biblical doctrine regarding the radical corruption of human nature by sin, in effect exempt themselves as "born-again Christians" from its operation. They identify their own cause unconditionally with the cause of God, regard their critics as agents of Satan, and are apparently prepared to see the human race obliterated in an apocalyptic catastrophe in which the nuclear arsenal of the United States is the instrument of Jesus for the fulfillment of his purpose against the Soviet Union as the citadel of evil. This confusion of a particular and fallible set of political and moral judgements with the cause of Jesus Christ is more dangerous than the open rejection of the claim of Christ in Islam […. ] The "Religious Right" uses the name of Jesus to cover the absolute claims of one national tradition.”

“Whoever lives a noble life for Christ and God — he is one of God's workmen, working on that building of which God is the supreme Architect.”

“A state that needs allies can never obtain them; it can become an ally of another, more powerful state, and fight for the Increase of that power, but the state that needs to ally is the subordinate one.”

“The theory of three person in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I AM. … Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God.”

“One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.”

“The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.”

“Christianity, with its strong emphasis on unity under one God (an emphasis that it shares with Islam), can seem an almost natural ally of empire—unless, of course, the prophetic-critical dimension of the biblical tradition, which the Jesus of the synoptics certainly represented, is allowed a hearing. But as the history of Christology in the West easily demonstrates, after the establishment of Christianity, the prophetic office of the Christ, based not only on Jesus’ teaching but (even more so) on his suffering at the hands of power, was definitely subdued in favor of his priestly and kingly offices. Triumphant peoples, successful peoples, possessing peoples—empires!—do not want crucified criminals as their chief cultic symbol, especially not when they themselves are the crucifiers … as they regularly are!”

“It is a new place to live and many new people to get to know, but one thing is always the same, and that is Jesus Christ. Our faith in Christ brings us through whatever we face and whatever he asks of us.”