The foundation of law and morality is mutuality. It’s embodied in the golden rule.

They’ve been tossing treaties away, and tossing institutions away as they need to serve their purpose.

There has to be a yardstick, and my faith is in God and scripture. It tells us that there’s a difference between personal peacemaking and turning the other cheek and so on, and a national incident.

I think that violence almost always leads to more violence.

[T]here are some wars that are just, and they’re probably even necessary, maybe a necessary evil.

Religion in the world plays the role of a curb against excessive government. Unless religion and government are combined and then it can become a very volatile and dangerous thing.

We look to religion for [integrity] in some ways but we also look to things like objective standards for just war. What is the information that we have? I think many folks struggle with the fact that there’s limited information and there always has been and there always will be.

[I]f I define faith as trying to bring about good in the world and follow some of these general principles that we have, I think it matters what car I drive, I think it matters whether I recycle, I think it matters how I treat my children, I think it matters how I behave in a number of forms.

I really feel that regardless of what religion you espouse or what faith, that if you’re thinking logically as a citizen of the earth you’re called upon to be a steward of our resources and our environment.

If I go back in our religious tradition, biblically based, one of the key things that I find is “multiply and replenish the earth”. . . . “Replenish the earth” — I’m not really sure what that meant. To me it means, “think long term.” And I think specifically in our culture we think way short term.

I feel a very deep personal responsibility with how I am a consumer or what I’m doing in this economy and this culture and it is directly connected with my faith and how I feel my responsibility as a person of faith. I’m deeply troubled by a whole wide variety of things, from how my clothes are manufactured, how my food is grown and picked, and all of that kind of thing.

I’m here to unite with your hearts. That’s the only thing that matters in the real world. It’s the spiritual education that we need to talk about, and we’re talking about material things. We’re talking about symptoms and we’re ignoring the basic reasons for that. The basic disease is disunity. The beautiful light has sent us many teachers, yet we get focused on one lamp.

[W]e don’t need to make the Muslims little Christians any more than I want the Muslims coming to me telling me that I need to change because they’ve got a better way.

But how are [Franklin Graham, et al.] perceived in the rest of the world? . . . . Especially in [the Islamic] part of the world, with its 1.3 billion people, almost one-fourth of the world population? This is why some insist that we need to be a little more cautious. And perceptions matter--especially when one thinks of the history, the occupation, the crusades, the imperialism, and all that.

[W]hat we all want to do is to say is that there’s truth in all the religions out there. I think what you have to recognize is that that kind of advocacy is polytheism, that’s what you’re advocating. And the problem that Christians have with that is that when they look at the scriptures and see Jesus saying “No man comes to the Father but by me,” there’s an exclusivity in the Christian faith that says, not all paths lead to God or to enlightenment or to whatever the current phrase would be.

When I was a young woman I heard this phrase, “As man may ascend to the roof by means of a rope, a stairway or a ladder, so diverse are the paths by which we reach God.”