Chris Broussard

A "religion" is a highly acceptable thing. Once it is firmly established in a fixed form, people can do anything they want. They can go to church and take communion, while all the while carrying on with their stealing and cheating. God could say, "Did I ever tell you to build churches, or to celebrate divine worship and communion so as to be saved?" If we think we have something mechanical that will save us, we are heathen. If our Christianity is a matter of forms and rituals, it will be dark around us. What was the worst thing at the time of Jesus? I will tell you plainly: religion! People stagnated in religiosity instead of expecting something from above. Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt Religion is the opium of the people.

Men pray to the Almighty to relieve poverty. But poverty comes not from God’s laws—it is blasphemy of the worst kind to say that. Poverty comes from man’s injustice to his fellow man. - Leo Tolstoy

Ok, I’ll admit it. I’ve been brooding for the past month over the election results. Given the state of our economy, the casualty rates in a war of choice, the erosion of basic civil rights and a series of lies that make the Clinton administration look like a Billy Graham Crusade, it really seemed like a slam dunk for the Democrats. Yet 51% of the voters who showed up on Election Day chose to stay the course. The Christian Right, as expected, displayed its usual lack of humility, gloating and pontificating on the sorry state of Democrats and their evil ways. Several writers on this page even publicly thanked God for the re-election of George W. Bush. This left me in the aforementioned mood, convinced that America had lost its collective mind. Ever since it appeared on the wall of the “War Room” in the 1992 Clinton campaign, “It’s the economy, Stupid!” has been the clarion call for the Democratic Party. Yet increasingly, millions of lower and middle class Americans have voted ag

Long periods of well-being and comfort are in general dangerous to all. After such prolonged periods, weak souls become incapable of weathering any kind of trial. They are afraid of it. Yet it is a fact that difficult trials and sufferings can facilitate the growth of the soul. I know there is a widespread feeling that if we highly value suffering this is masochism. On the contrary, it is a significant bravery when we respect suffering and understand what burdens it places on our soul. - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn