My belief is that any religion that focuses solely on the individual is a stunted religion because religion must have two dimensions, a vertical dimension that deals with relation to God and also a horizontal dimension that deals with relation to others. This is brought to the forefront when a certain lawyer inquired of Jesus about inheriting eternal life. When asked of Jesus how he understood it, the lawyer responded, “Thou shall love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself.” To these words, Jesus simply replied, “This do, and thou shall live.” (Luke 10:25-28)

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s preaching and what should be Senator Obama’s response as a parishioner engages our American media understandably.

The matter really comes down to several considerations. A pastor preaching and pastoring is not called on to be a mirror in which the congregation can identify themselves. He or she is called on to be a kind of clear window through which congregants are called to see the vision of what they ought to be and do individually and collectively.

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If the historical Jesus were running for our United States presidency, He would be a Demopublican, combining what is affirmative in both parties, rejecting shrillness, anger, posturing, and denouncing the corruption made inevitable by the necessary scrounging for money, much to the anger, I am sure, of television and newspaper profit makers, to say nothing of political hangers-on, and talking heads prostituting their voices for profit. In the case of abortion or the death penalty or war, He would place the work of every individual soul before God above all considerations. I think He would also be assassinated, lynched, or if you prefer, crucified as before.

The seven deadly sins are almost all related to one another. For instance, one lusts because one has gluttony, which is another form of greed. In our current society greed is the chief sin, but it is a child of lust for authority and supremacy. The nation’s future rests on whether we can free ourselves of inordinate greed which is twin, if not parent, to lust, anger, and gluttony. Greed has corrupted our practice of Christian faith with the heresy that God exists to satisfy our lusts and gluttony.

Governor Mitt Romney’s statement about his religious beliefs prompts examination of what the founding people of the country believed about the political doctrines underlying the new nation. There is not one clear word in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution which refers to the deity in terms of being related to Jesus Christ. In fact many of the people involved in formulation of our political documents were disciples of the English Deists and the French Philosophs [note: no correction necessary], notably lacking in faith in the God who is related in any way to Jesus Christ, who is the heart of the Christian faith.

Perhaps all of us should remember a word which first appeared in another generation in a Mid-Western newspaper which said, “There is so much bad in the best of us and so much good in the worst of us that it hardly behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.”

The wide attention given to Mother Teresa’s doubt about God and Christ represents an almost universal struggle which goes on in most of us who are believers.

Faith and doubt are the two sides of the same religious experience. Even Jesus felt that abandonment on Calvary about the presence of God, though at the last He said that He was able to give Himself into the hands of God with a blessed finality.

Faith and doubt are the two sides of the same religious experience. An example might be a silver dollar held up to the light. Viewing the coin from its top, one sees brightness and clarity. The bottom side of the coin is in shadows, away from the light. But it is the same coin.

There would be no doubt if doubt did not have something which makes doubt possible. What makes doubt real is faith – the ultimate capacity of the human spirit.

God so loved (extent) the world (all) that He gave (donated) His only begotten Son (all that He had) that whosoever believeth on Him (no exception) should have everlasting life (endless joy in His presence). I favor this verse because it is the heart of the gospel (good news).

I believe heaven is the immediate presence of God. I believe hell is the total absence of God. As to who will be in heaven, I plead a reverent agnosticism. Finally, I am inclined to the opinion of Dwight Moody, the premier evangelist in his day. Moody said, “We will be shocked in heaven at the people who are missing. We will be startled at the people who are there. And I think we will most shocked if we get there ourselves.”

We broke it, so we have a moral obligation to help put Iraq together again. In the rebuilding of Iraq we need to take the role of partners rather than masters.

Tenets and traditions are not the bedrock upon which my faith rests. The New Testament is the foundation and superstructure of my faith. It has welcomed and withstood the most exhaustive scrutiny to which competent scholarship could put it, as well as the acid test of human experience, for 20 centuries. The New Testament faith will stand secure and sure when time is no more.

The systems of religion and explanations of religion are man-made, we being partners with God. The original energy and inspiration of religion are not man-made, but are “Givens”, like breathing and love of man for woman and woman for man.

Wherever human beings have appeared in the earth and throughout history, there is that sense of the “Other”. Many of us believe that “Other” is shaped like the mind and heart of Jesus of Nazareth – or better still His mind and heart are like that “Other” – God.

I have had a long, good life and I have been trying to preach for nearly seventy years. After forty-two years in a major pulpit, the Concord Baptist Church, at the crossroads of the world, in New York, I felt when I retired nearly fifteen years ago that I had done about what I could. I know of nothing I want out of this life which my Lord has not given to me through Jesus Christ.

Islam has suffered historically from a deep pathology which threatens all religious systems. The desire to win converts, itself understandable and laudable, is easily perverted into the passion to control, often by violent means if deemed necessary. There is nothing so diabolic as the Divine desecrated and demonized. Jesus put it this way, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven" (Luke 10:18).

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The price we pay for God's love and respect for us in making us free is the kind of senseless tragedy which happened at Virginia Tech. If we had been created with no choice as to our actions, then today's shooting could not have occurred, but then neither the wonderful achievements of the human spirit.

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If the remains of Jesus had been definitively found, Christianity would be radically changed into an ethical system without salvific substance.

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The American Mass Communications Networks honors religion in the same manner which prompted Jesus to say “. . . this people honoreth Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.” (Mark 7:6). The prophet Isaiah much earlier reported that this same word was the indictment made by God (Isaiah 29:13).

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In the second Genesis account of creation (Genesis 2), the Creator settled His creatures in a setting which the Creator called “good” and “very good.” In that setting, represented as a “garden,” the tenants were to “dress it and keep it.”

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I pray to God, my Father and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I earnestly ask Him to grant my desires. He often does.

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I believe that anyone has a right to express his or her personal religious views at anytime, most appropriately when the expression is not obviously aimed at garnering votes.

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My “formative religious experience” occurred on a country road in Louisiana in 1937. I was earning my way through college, serving as chauffeur for Dr. J. A. Becoats, President of Leland College.

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