“Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.”
Albert Schweitzer

“A friendly discussion is as stimulating as the sparks that fly when iron strikes iron.”
Proverbs 27:17, LBT.

“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the people you do.”
Ann Lamott in Bird by Bird.

“Holy war is an oxymoron. There are no wars in my name . . . only peace.—God”
Bumper Stickers in the Chicago Tribune, Sept. 29.

“The conventional liberal political wisdom that people who are conservative on abortion are conservative on everything else is just wrong. Christians who are economic populists, peacemaking internationalists, and committed feminists can also be ‘pro-life.’ The roots of this conviction are deeply biblical and, for many, consistent with a commitment to nonviolence as a gospel way of life.”
Jim Wallis in Sojourners, June.

“We do evil in the name of some overriding good—usually, paradoxically, the conquest of evil.”
Nel Noddings, Women and Evil

“The Federal Communications Commission fined Fox Broadcasting $1.2 million for showing [nudity and sexual activity] in ‘Married by America’ intended to pander and titillate the audience.”
Wire Reports on October 12, 2004

“The weird and the stupid and the untrue are becoming our popular culture. That’s the triumph of idiot culture. Truth is no longer the bottom line. The bottom line is the bottom line.”
Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein in a lecture at the University of Texas (11/11/04).

“Since their own churches are marked by widespread divorce, child abuse, substance abuse, greed, infidelity, hypocrisy, abortion and homosexuality, they know that the church lacks a transforming power about which they preach weekly. They see larger social forces overwhelming the church and contend that only a theocratic government is powerful enough to bring about moral revival.”
Robert Parham on “Why are so many white, evangelical Christian clergy expressing such hyper-statements about the 2004 election?” in EthicsDaily.com.

“There is no one explanation . . . the values divide is a complex layering of conflicting views about faith, leadership, individualism, American exceptionalism, suburbia, Wal-Mart, decorum, economic opportunity, natural law, manliness, bourgeois virtues and a zillion other issues.”
David Broder, NY Times, on media explanations for the 2004 election.

“The way the question was set up, moral values was sure to be ranked disproportionately high. Why? Because it was a multiple-choice question and moral values cover a group of issues, while all the other choices were individual issues. Look at the choices: Education (4%), Taxes (5%), Health care (8%), Iraq (15%), Terrorism (19%), and Economy and Jobs (20%), and Moral Values (23%).”
Charles Kauthammer, The Washington Post.

“Moral values can mean different things to different voters, but typically when ordinary people think of morality, they think of traditional sexual morality . . . . They don’t think of social justice.”
John Green, University of Akron expert on religion and politics.

“A post-election poll conducted by Zogby International a few days later confirmed that when a list of specific issues was asked, the results were quite different. When asked ‘which moral issue most influenced your vote,’ 42% chose war in Iraq while 13% said abortion and 9% said same-sex marriage. The ‘most urgent moral problem in American culture’ resulted in 33% selecting ‘greed and materialism,’ 31% ‘poverty and economic justice,’ 16% abortion and 12% same-sex marriage.”
Jim Wallis, Sojourners Online.

“People are tired of everything being based upon the bottom line, where companies are getting richer and everyone else is losing out.”
Marcus Courtney, organizer of the Seattle-based Washington Alliance of Technology Workers.

“Within the past two years, the U.S. has launched a preemptive war, in flagrant disregard of ‘Just War’ criteria, on Iraq. This military action has killed at least 10,000 Iraqis, the great majority of them civilian noncombatants. This is more than three times the number killed in the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001.”
Richard B. Hays, An Open Letter to United Methodists in The Christian Century, August 24, 2004.

“Guys want to marry guys? Cowards.”
Christian comedian Brad Stine

Updated Tuesday, December 28, 2004