Robert McAfee Brown Quotes

But when one identifies the Church with a cultural and political bloc, there is the danger of making difficult the Church's contact with all those outside the bloc.

The church that weds itself to the culture of the day, will be a widow with each succeeding age.

Had I performed my prayers in the Church of the Resurrection, the Moslems in a future age might have infringed the treaty under color of imitating my example.

A continuing conversation with other persons, with cultural products, and with oneself, is a large part of what it means to be a human being, in our time and perhaps in all time.

People have to be exposed to Muslims, just experience Muslims; talk to them. Reach out, read about Islam, try to find out about it.

The Gospel lives in conversation with culture, and if the Church holds back from the culture, the Gospel itself falls silent. Therefore, we must be fearless in crossing the threshold of the communication and information revolution now taking place.

We have to defeat them on the battlefield and in the marketplace of ideals. And PBS, I believe, owed the nation the chance to hear the moderate Muslim voices who decry terrorism and Jihadism, and they didn't give them that chance, and that's a terrible thing.

Sectarianism is a real problem, but it should be addressed by people engaging with each other - reconciliation.

Before I wrote 'God's War,' I probably did eight years of research into the Middle East, Judaism, Islam, Catholicisim, and all sorts of fabulous other things.

What sort of Europe do we want to have? Parallel societies? Muslim communities living together with the Christian community?

Being raised by a Catholic father, a Protestant mother, and marrying the Muslim father of my three children, I encourage people to respect and at least try to understand different religions.

Youth fare aside, I have generally always been interested in what's going on culturally.

It's pretty cool to see, like, from town to town, how different the crowds are.

My grandad's a gospel singer, and his children were singers, too. But I don't believe in God in the same way... not religion; it breaks us up too much. The same with musical styles - it breaks people up. I believe they are all one thing - why not put them together?

Our policies should be to help develop civil society and increase contacts with people.

Culture is an output of a bunch of inputs that have to come together the right way. Specifically, it is the collision of people and their context, how they interact with each other in that context, and then how that context evolves based on those interactions as they multiply.

I just love history and I loved learning about different religions and other's people's views about the world.

My company is called East-West Theatre precisely because Sarajevo is this city on the border between East and West, the place where the Great Mosque and the Catholic Cathedral and the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral stand almost within touching distance of each other.

My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths - that's why I am so open.

I think the Hajj tends to reflect the state of the Ummah. That's one of the things about the Hajj is that you get to see the Ummah. It's a microcosm of the Ummah's condition.

Cities are a melting pot for different ideas, and diversity brings a high-energy rhythm that I don't think we'd know was gone until it was too late.

The carnal nature of man is that he places his tribe above others, but the only basis for the power and unity of the church is that there is no Jew or Gentile.

I will say that the power of being a stranger in someone else's religious community has its own lessons, really. It is something like the power of visiting another very happy extended family and being at their table.

During the centuries-long process of Reformation and Enlightenment, Christian churches had to accept some things they didn't like. Islam will have to do the same; otherwise it isn't part of Europe.

Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can’t consume much if you sit still and read books.