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I just think Texas and that whole Bible Belt section is so, like, corporate. And I don't agree with organized religion in that respect.

The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written. It has emptied more churches than all the counter-attractions of cinema, motor-bicycle and golf course.

It is still fashionable to believe that how you organize yourself religiously in this life may matter for eternity. Unless we can erode the prestige of that kind of thinking, we're not going to be able to undermine these divisions in our world.

At present, too much theological thinking is very human-centered.

The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialist than it cares to acknowledge.

Secular thinkers have no more been able to work free of the centuries-old Judeo-Christian culture than Christian theologians were able to work free of their inheritance of classical and pagan thought. The process... has not been the deletion and replacement of religious ideas but rather the assimilation and reinterpretation of religious ideas.

I think, for years, people have been pushed down by religion, and I don't say that disrespectfully, but they've been shown a God that you can't measure up to.

People don't do theology in a vacuum but in a community with other theological thinkers, where there's jealousy, vanity, hurt pride, all those things.

I don't pass myself off as a Bible scholar or a pastor or someone who knows all the biblical facts cover-to-cover. I'm just a guy whose life was changed by it. And that's about the extent of it. So I'm not easily offended when people struggle about where they're at with their faith at all.