Churches and religious communities and organizations can claim to speak for God while at the same time actually being behind the movement of God that is continuing forward in the culture around them . . . without their participation.

Because when you can't hear the cry, when you stop caring for the widow, the orphan, and the refugee among you, it always leads to the diminishing of your empire.

What's disturbing, then, is when people talk more about hell after this life than they do about hell here and now. As a Christian I want to do what I can to resist hell coming to earth: poverty, injustice, suffering--they're all hells on earth and as Christians we oppose them with all of our energies.

Why have the writings of the prophets endured? Because they fearlessly speak truth to power. They call out the injustice and oppression of the system gone wrong. They hold those in leadership accountable for the decisions they make.

Because when you can't hear the cry, when you stop caring for the widow, the orphan, and the refugee among you, it always leads to the diminishing of your empire. History

I read more of the prophets, these poets and sages who spoke all kinds of truth to power. Another of the ways they explained why they'd been taken into exile was because there was a widening gap between rich and poor in their society, and whenever that happens, the entire system is in danger of imploding. Again and again prophets like Amos announce that if more and more wealth ends up in fewer and fewer hands everybody will suffer. How had I missed this?

Your days in power are numbered because the deepest forces of the universe are on the side of the oppressed, the underdog, and the powerless

When we hear people saying they can't believe in a God who gets angry—yes, they can. How should God react to a child being forced into prostitution? How should God feel about a country starving while warlords hoard the food supply? What kind of God wouldn't get angry at a financial scheme that robs thousands of people of their life savings?

Nothing can make injustice just but mercy.

If the ethical - that is, social morality - is the highest and if there is in a person no residual incommensurability in some way such that this incommensurability is not evil then no categories are needed other than what Greek philosophy had... and what their wisdom amounts to is the beautiful proposition that basically everything is the same.

There is a direct relationship between a person's grasp and experience of God's grace, and his or her heart for justice and the poor.

True peace must be anchored in justice and an unwavering commitment to universal rights for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, national origin or any other identity attribute.