I cannot take seriously—at least, as Christian ministers—the present-day gang that calls itself the Moral Majority...such as follow the Right Reverend Robertson. They have taken the man from Galilee as hostage. He does not know them and they do not know him.
—James Baldwin, 1987

"Not one of the present-day white fundamentalist preachers would have had the humility, the courage, the sheer presence of mind to have said to the mob surrounding the woman taken in adultery, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone,”

“Whereas Jesus and his disciples were distrusted by the state largely because they respected the poor and shared everything, the fundamentalists of the present hour would appear not to know that the poor exist.”

“These ministers, however, are of no interest in themselves—at least of no more interest than any Deep South sheriff. And, the ministers remind me of sheriffs and deputies I have encountered: the same lips, the same flat, slatelike eyes, the same self-righteous voices.”

“Now, I find it somewhat disturbing to mention the minister and the sheriff in the same breath, but I am black and they entered my life in the same breath. Both the white fundamentalist minister and the deputy are Christians—hard-core Christians, one might say. ”

“Both believe that they are responsible, the one for divine law and the other for natural order. Both believe that they are able to define and privileged to impose law and order; and both, historically and actually, know that law and order are meant to keep me in my place.”

“Race and religion, it has been remarked, are fearfully entangled in the guts of this nation, so profoundly that to speak of the one is to conjure up the other. One cannot speak of sin without referring to blackness, and blackness stalks our history and our streets”

“Therefore, in many ways, perhaps in the deepest ways, the minister and the sheriff were hired by the Republic to keep the Republic white—to keep it free from sin."

"We are not told that the way of the transgressor is wrong... This means that I was challenged to discover for myself the meaning of the word “transgressor”: or the meaning of the Word. This challenge became the key to my journey through the Bible.”

“For example, it seemed to me that those people in Hitler’s Germany who opposed the slaughter of, among others, the Jews, were transgressors. So was Mrs. Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Alabama, on the day she refused to surrender her seat on the bus to a white man.”

“Where were the white Christian ministers then? (Christ was there. Mrs. Parks will tell you so.) A transgressor was the one white woman out of a white multitude who sat on the bus-stop bench in Charlotte to console the lone black girl whose life had been threatened..."

“The Christian ministers who perceived the moral and actual horror of apartheid were transgressors. So are certain Catholic priests today, and so, for that matter, was the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.”

“Salvation is not precipitated by the terror of being consumed in hell: this terror itself places one in hell. Salvation is preceded by the recognition of sin, by conviction, by repentance. Sin is not limited to carnal activity, nor are the sins of the flesh the most crucial"

"Salvation is not flight from the wrath of God; it is accepting and reciprocating the love of God. Salvation is not separation..It is impossible to claim salvation and also believe that, in this life or in any life to come, one is better than another.”

“Salvation is as real, as mighty, and as impersonal as the rain, and it is yet as private as the rain in one’s face. It is never accomplished; it is to be reaffirmed every day and every hour. There is...no salvation without love: this is the wheel in the middle of the wheel. ”

“Condemnation is easier than wonder and obliterates the possibility of salvation, since condemnation is fueled by terror and self-hatred."

This was one of my favorite. It was worth a pause and reflection.

“Those ladders to fire—the burning of the witch, the heretic, the Jew, the nigger, the faggot—have always failed to redeem, or even to change in any way whatever, the mob."

Wow.
Ok, that is all.
Read James Baldwin.
We need to hear his voice.