Quotes about Community

It had been Luther's idea that Christians should confess to one another instead of to a priest. Most Lutherans had thrown that baby out with the bathwater and didn't confess to anyone. Confession of any kind was considered overly Catholic, just as extemporaneous prayer was criticized as too pietistic. But Bonhoeffer successfully instituted the practice of confessing one to another.

We must be able to speak about our faith so that hands will be stretched out toward us faster than we can fill them.

Nowadays we often ask ourselves whether we still need the Church, whether we still need God. But this question, he said, is wrong. We are the ones who are questioned. The Church exists and God exists, and we are asked whether we are willing to be of service, for God needs us.

Where a people prays, there is the church; and where the church is; there is never loneliness. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

They understood that America would not flourish without great help from all Americans.

Bonhoeffer's experiences with African American community underscored an idea that was developing in his mind: the only real piety and power that he had seen in the American church seemed to be in the churches where there were a present reality and a past history of suffering.

It does not matter where we come from or what we look like. If we recognize our abilities, are willing to learn and to use what we know in helping others, we will always have a place in the world.

Americans are terrified because so many of them have been laid off in recent years and months and they fear that they may be next. Even if they have not been laid off or have not known anyone laid off, they definitely know someone who has lost his home.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

Power has only one duty--to secure the social welfare of the people.

Our safety net must reflect our country's belief that - without exception - Americans are not liabilities to be written off but assets to be realized.

With continued prayer and an equally-determined commitment to action for needed anti-violence reforms, let us resolve to work toward a new era in which every American child and every adult are protected from the ravages of brutality, safe and secure in our homes and schools and communities.