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Since politics fundamentally should be a moral enterprise, the church in this sense has something to say about politics.

All politics are local, and so in church.

What's true for churches is true for other institutions: the older and more organized they get, the less adaptable they become. That's why the most resilient things in our world - biological life, stock markets, the Internet - are loosely organized.

The church is not a political power; it's not a party, but it's a moral power.

Politicians use religion, and they get their troops riled up with religion.

Politics in America is the binding secular religion.

In American religious history, theological qualms tend to get pushed aside when politics intervenes.

Churches, by the very reason of their structures, are monolithic and do not adapt easily. But in many cases, they, too, have allowed themselves to become allied or even part of an unjust establishment or system.

Religion has to stay in the heart, not in politics. It is private.