Both And

"There has risen up a modern idea which I cannot too much reprobate, that Christ made no atonement for our sin except upon the cross: whereas in this passage of Isaiah we are taught as plainly as possible that by His bruising and His stripes, as well as by His death, we are healed. Never divide between the life and the death of Christ. How could He have died if He had not lived? How could He suffer except while He lived? Death is not suffering, but the end of it."

"Many of us find ourselves estranged from the narrow issues that define conservatives and from the shallow spirituality that marks liberals. We are thirsty for social justice and peace but have a hard time finding a faith community that is consistently pro-life or that recognizes that there are "moral issues" other than homosexuality and abortion, moral issues like war and poverty. So some folks just end up trying to save individual souls from their sins, and others end up trying to save the world from "the system." But rarely do we see that the sickness of our world has infected each of us, and that the healing of our world not only begins within us but does not end with us."

"…the more controversial implication, is that the salt and light metaphors indicate that Christians can change non-Christian society. The models must mean that, because both salt and light are effective commodities. They change the environments in which they are placed. Salt hinders bacterial decay. Light dispels darkness. This is not to resurrect the social gospel. We cannot perfect society. But we can improve it. My hope is that in the future, evangelical leaders will ensure that their social agenda includes such vital but controversial topics as halting climate change, eradicating poverty, abolishing armories of mass destruction, responding adequately to the AIDS pandemic, and asserting the human rights of women and children in all cultures. I hope our agenda does not remain too narrow."

"First, Methodism reflected, among other things, a dissatisfaction two kinds of Protestantism. First there was a doctrinaire Protestantism that would fight, defame, exclude and even kill for so-called Orthodoxy, but didn’t produce true personal and social holiness. And second was a comfortable, complacent, institutional, apathetic, lukewarm institutionalism that betrayed Jesus in equally distasteful ways. Wesley and others sought methods by which followers of Christ could actually become more Christ-like. They knew that simply assenting to the right doctrines didn’t necessarily produce right relationships with God, self, others, enemies, and creation, and so they sought to create a widely-doable method for pursuing holiness and wholeness. I think whatever this emerging thing today is, it is a desire for Christians to become more like Jesus, and for what passes for Christianity to become less of an embarrassment to its presumed founder."