EthixBytes

 

“‘My country right or wrong’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It’s like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”
G. K. Chesterton.

 

“Better to be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian.”
Martin Luther.

 

“[I saw myself as] the captain of a warship leading God’s troops into battle. Instead I found my flock wanted me to captain the Love Boat, making sure everyone was having a good time.”
Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, explaining his frustrations in the ministry (Newsweek, 12/17/07).

 

“How have we provoked al-Queda? We now have 700 military bases in 130 countries!”
Presidential candidate Ron Paul on Meet the Press (12/23/07).

 

“My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won’t be fulfilling God’s will unless I go out and do the Lord’s work.”
Sen. Barack Obama, addressing the General Synod of his denomination, the UnitedChurch of Christ.

 

“Many U.S. Christians seemed to listen more to a version of American nationalism than they did to the global Body of Christ. We must decide: To whom do we belong?”
Jim Wallis  on the issue of Iraq (Sojourners, 1/08).

 

“While the oil companies are turning the American consumer upside down at the pump, the White House is defending unnecessary giveaways and tax breaks to big oil.”
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass), Ch. Of House Select Committee on Energy Independence in response to Exxon Mobil’s $40,610,000,000 profit in 2007.

 

“Oil companies are now celebrating in their boardrooms. They continue to have a death grip on this Senate.”
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill), as a veto threat defeated an attempt to revoke $12 billion in tax breaks to the wealthiest corporations (Dallas Morning News, 12/14/07).

 

“I will give $1 million to any C.E.O. who pays more income taxes than his secretary. I know I don’t.”
Multimillionaire Warren Buffet, criticizing the present tax system that favors the rich.

 

“It is pitiful that Mexico—a country of 108 million people that shares a 2000 mile border with the U.S.—has the same cap as Botswana, an African country of 1.8 million.”
Douglas Massey, sociology professor at Princeton University, noting in 2006 the U. S. issued only 418 permanent immigrant visas to low-skilled Mexican workers.

 

“While the media persist in using the word casualty as if it meant ‘death,’ my dictionary defines casualty as ‘a member of the armed forces who is killed or injured during combat.’ By that definition, the American casualties in this war on terror are not 4,000 but over 27,000 and climbing.”
Barbara Brown Taylor in Christian Century (7/24/07).

 

“About 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years after the U.S. invaded, concludes the best effort yet to count deaths.”
World Health Organization projection based on door-to-door surveys of 10,000 households (New England Journal of Medicine, 1/08).

 

“Those who follow the leaders of the religious right begin not with what they think or even with what they believe but rather with what they fear. Fear has been an essential element in creating a highly polarized worldview in which one could never consider voting for those outside of one’s customary political party.”
Tom Sine in Prism (7/2007).

 

“We are not preaching any type of civil disobedience, we’re simply saying if someone comes to us and they’re in need of food [or} a doctor, we’re not going to take the time to look for a green card, we’re going to minister and show them Christ’s love.”
Rev. Robert Wilson, explaining a resolution passed by Oklahoma Baptists to continue working with illegal immigrants despite a new state law that makes it illegal to aid them.

 

“[MANY CHRISTIANS] demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. . . . I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. ‘Blessed are the merciful’ in a courtroom? ‘Blessed are the peacemakers’ in the Pentagon?”
Kurt Vonnegut, In These Times.

 

“The decision to block California’s vehicle emissions standards is a new low in the federal government’s ongoing efforts to torpedo environmental regulations. The Bush administration’s disdain for pollution limits is well documented. Sixteen other states were poised to follow California’s lead.”
Editorial in the Dallas Morning News (12/30/07).

 

“Of the 6,691,484,000 people in the world in 2008, in the broad-brush-painted sense 2,231,421,000 are Christians, 1,412,301,000 are Muslim, 887,991,000 are Hindu, Buddhists number 391,122,000, and Jews list 15,044,000. Every 24 hours the world has a population net growth of 219,000 people. Christians number 170,000 converts per day but find 91,000 defectors, so the net growth is 79,000. The database lists 175,000 Christian martyrs this year, 480 per day.”
Martin Marty quoting statistics from the WordChristianDataBase.org and the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol.32.

 

“It’s not like studying sumo wrestling in Japan. It’s more like wrestling itself. This opponent of mine is sometimes beautiful, sometimes cruel, sometimes ancient, sometimes crazily relevant. I can’t get a handle on it. I’m outmatched.”
A. J. Jacobs, a secular view who wrote and lived The Year of Living Biblically and came to realize the Bible is far more than he (Books & Religion, 12/2007).

 

“We should desire health not in order to be healthy, but in order to live as fully as possible.”
Gilbert Meilaender (Christian Century, 10/16/07)

 

“Do not mistreat an alien or oppress him, for you were aliens in Egypt . . . . you yourselves know how it feels to be an alien.”
Exodus 22:21; 23:9.