This and That... Religion

from William Cathcart The Baptist Encyclopedia Volume 2

"General Miles was a zealous Baptist, and a warm friend to every Baptist interest."

" You have forgotten to mention one of my honors, which I prize more than all the rest, and that is the office of an elder in my parish church, which I have filled for many years."

"He loved and cherished his country as if he expected to live in it forever, and yet he served his God as if he constantly felt he was a stranger in this world, and that his citizenship and home were in heaven."


From David Hazony The Ten Commandments

The spirit of redemption, grounded in the Ten Commandments and expressed throughout the prophetic teachings, calls on us to be dissatisfied with our world, to be vigilant and, when necessary, to do battle against those who aim to harm it, from within or without.  8

I am the Lord your God; not a dry theological statement but a vibrant moral one; the listener is as deeply implicated as is the speaker. To have a God means to embrace his example. 28

The wisdom of our parents froms the first basis of our whole moral dialogue with the world. 137

The Israelites did not believe in this kind of purity. They believed, rather, in the success of human life in the real world. If "Thou shalt not kill" implies the absolute inviolability of biological life, You shall not murder implies something else: an affirmation of humanity as such, of human existence, body and spirit alive. When someone allows his rage, his ideology, his jealousy, or his poverty to bring him to killing another, he destroys humanity, dehumanizes all of us, and reduces redemption to rubble. 149


Our bodies, though inscrutable and complex, are nonetheless a gift of God ... 153

The body is not the prison of the spirit, nor even its temple. It is its lover, its life partner, its separable being. It is the match from which the fire of spirit rises. 159

For every moment of anger in the Bible there is a moment of love, for every punishment there is a redemption, for every livid prophecy of doom there is a prophetic song of hope, for every wise proverb there is a psalm bursting with life. 161

The Bible is exceptionally sensitive to genealogies... these lists often contain literary or moral significance. 171

For everything we want to achieve in life, poverty stands in the way. Poverty is not just suffering, like physical pain or rejection or the loss of a loved one. It is different, a calamity coupled with the constant terror of how much worse things might get, a thick fog of fear that seeps into every choice, every human interaction, and for some people is so traumatic that it never fully disappears .... Poverty digs its fangs of fear all the way to the bone of our being. 202