Quotes about Community

Time and again I hear how important the darker environment is to those at our vintage-faith worship gathering. Attenders feel they can freely pray in a corner by themselves without feeling that everyone is staring at them.

When organized religion organizes around the things Jesus would be pleased with, amazing things can happen.

This might sound odd, but I believe that one of the biggest reasons there are so many negative perceptions of Christianity and the church is that Christians hang out with each other too much.

God's house is now in the people of God wherever they are, whether it's in the parking lot, in a bowling alley, or in an office cubicle.

But when we understand that we are called to be the church, not just go to church, it changes our identity. No longer do we go to a building where religious activities happen and that is "church." We now are the church all week long.

When we think of church primarily as a place or an event we go to, we minimize the theologically rich identity of the church as the people of God. And this identity — of being the church — is more than a passive statement about who we are; it's also a call to action. As representatives of Jesus, those called to communicate and live out his message and the message about him, we are on a mission.

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.

I grew up hearing stories about my grandmother - my mother's mother - who used to go to villages in India in her little VW bug. My grandmother would take a bullhorn and make sure women in these villages knew how to access birth control.

We Catholics have been in the forefront in defending the dignity of the human person. Clericalism is a direct violation of human dignity.

Our first responsibility in the midst of violence is to prevent it from destroying us.

The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that lead to death. It's an unfortunate parallel to human behavior - they have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse, because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil.

Christian nonviolence must be embodied in a community that is an alternative to the world's violence.