No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We're not just service providers.

The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it's a faith issue, it's a religious issue.

If the president is going to use so much language of theology and the Bible, then let's use that language for a serious discussion about the war in Iraq. And that was never done.

But when one believes that you've been appointed by God for a particular mission in history, you have to be very careful about that, how you speak about that. Where is the self-reflection in that? Where is the humility in that?

I believe in the separation of church and state, absolutely. But I don't believe in the separation of public life from our values, our basic values, and for many of us, our religious values.

So when the only domestic social policy is tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans, we say, 'Where is faith being put into action here?'

What is my calling? What am I supposed to do? I think running for office, public office, can be a divine calling. I mean, I've wrestled with that very question myself.

I don't think we should discriminate against an organization or congregation because they're religious, if they're doing good work. But government can't subsidize proselytizing or worship or religious activity. It can't.

We have got some mountains to move. Three billion people - half of God's children - are living on less than $2 a day.

A billion dollars every week for Iraq, $87 billion for Iraq. We can't get $5 billion for childcare over five years in welfare reform.

I think it's a good thing for a president or political leaders to want to put their values or their faith into action. Desmond Tutu did that in South Africa. Martin Luther King Jr. did that here. This is a good thing.

But when we place God on our side of things, that we are now ridding the world of evil - that's very dangerous, that one nation has this role to rid the world of evil. What about the evil we have committed, that we are complicit in?

The great thing about social movements is everybody gets to be a part of them.

Martin Luther King Jr. really understood the role of the churches when he said, 'The church is not meant to be the master of the state.' We don't sort of take power and grab the levers of government and impose our agenda down people's throats.

Sometimes it takes a natural disaster to reveal a social disaster.

When evangelical leaders can persuade the president to be concerned about what's happening in Sudan, or sex trafficking around the world, or HIV-AIDS, that's a very good thing. I am completely supportive of that.

We are prophetic interrogators. Why are so many people hungry? Why are so many people and families in our shelters? Why do we have one of six of our children poor, and one of three of these are children of color? 'Why?' is the prophetic question.

The left and right are not religious categories. They're often not even value categories.

I'm often asked what I think about the faith of the President George W. Bush. I think it is sincere. I think it's very real. I think it's deeply held.

Hope unbelieved is always considered nonsense. But hope believed is history in the process of being changed.

No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We're not just service providers.

I met the president when he was president-elect at a meeting in Austin. He spoke of his faith. He spoke of his desire for a compassionate conservatism, for a faith-based initiative that would do something for poor people.

You can't be evangelical and associate yourself with Jesus and what he says about the poor and just have no other domestic concerns than tax cuts for wealthy people.

Healthcare should be a human right and not a commodity for sale.

Yet through history gays have always dominated religious life and churches.

The more I do bookstores, the more people come up to me from church groups. I spoke at Pittsburg State College and had 2 or 3 ministers and book groups from a couple of churches.

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

All churches and all religions contain aspects of the truth, but only God is truth.

You can count on one hand the number of Novus Ordo churches in this country that feature a fully Catholic music program of any quality, consistent with the Roman rite tradition.

The result has been that although few conservative Presbyterian churches actually worship in the Puritan way, the Puritan theology of worship remains the standard orthodoxy among them. This discrepancy sometimes leads to guilty consciences.

Praying privately in churches, I began to discover that heaven was my true home and also that it was here and now, woven into this life.

If real churches exist, such persons are not called on to make them.

Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms, and fills cities and churches, and heaven itself.

They cannot make it say what they want it to say. And this is the beginning and the end of the case for retaining the old language: If the churches give it up, who will remember how to say what is said?

And they turned around and leased it to The Assembly Of God Churches - their headquarters are in Springfield, Missouri. They leased it to them for the first year. Then, after the first year, they will donate it to the church.

The fault seems to me to have been that men have taken ancient country churches as their models and have failed to discover that between them and churches in towns there ought to be a most distinct and marked difference.

But I have been in some very beautiful churches, then I've looked outside and seen people starving to death.

As of essential importance in town churches which are not at all equally necessary in the country.

You get more churches burned down in the United States in the last two years than in the last hundred, because of the lack of understanding of culture and diversity and the beauty of it.

Why did men worship in churches, locking themselves away in the dark, when the world lay beyond its doors in all its real glory?

I support mosques, obviously. We need churches, temples, mosques. Whatever people use to speak with their god or to receive spiritual inspiration is good for the country. But the symbolism of it at ground zero, within two blocks or three blocks, I believe is wrong.

One may as well dam for water tanks the people's cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.

Every one who has a heart, however ignorant of architecture he may be, feels the transcendent beauty and poetry of the mediaeval churches.

Those churches have closed down or have been merged with a church that has a more positive vision.

While attendance at traditional churches has been declining for decades... the evangelical movement is growing, and it is changing the way America worships.

Sodomy is in the Bible, to be read in churches. I wouldn't rule it out of Mr. Bruce's act if he cares to comment on it.

I've been speaking at churches for years, as well as juvenile jails, rehabs and hospitals, and I always talk about my faith. That is a declaration of my relationship with God.

The seminaries must be like the churches' poor relations, prolonging their existence with austerity.