Gustav Niebuhr

“The criticism that I think is more telling is that the only way you are going to knock out this terrorism eventually is not just through the force of arms, but through the force of ideas. ”

“The wars around the globe into which religion is woven -- violence that over the past two decades has sent many tens of thousands of men, women, and children to terrible deaths in the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia, India, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the United States -- deeply threaten what we have of a human society. Denouncing religion itself is futile. And such simple reactions badly miss the point. It is among the religious believers that the work must be done, within that overwhelming majority who would find common ground in being human and not wanting destruction, if only because their traditions are about so much more. Those traditions contain life-giving possibilities, even if the worst demagogues would try to twist dogma so hard as to wring poison from it. ”

“I will be a better Catholic, not if I can refute every shade of Protestantism, but if I can affirm the truth in it and still go further. So, too, with the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists, etc. This does not mean syncretism, indifferentism, the vapid and careless friendliness that accepts everything by thinking of nothing. There is much that one cannot 'affirm' and 'accept,' but first one must say 'yes' where one really can. If I affirm myself as a Catholic merely by denying all that is Muslim, Jewish, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, etc., in the end I will find there is not much left for me to affirm as a Catholic; and certainly no breath of the Spirit with which to affirm it.”

“Authentic religion teaches one to imagine the other -- to consider another's vulnerability and humanity. The beginning of ethics is this trancendent imagination' (Ingrid Mattson). The message, she said, to be expounded by preacher and politician alike is that all human beings possess a God-given dignity.”

“The terrorism has been a generation growing. It'll take a generation to knock it out.”

“...Dialogue is an activity that represents a state of relations going well beyond tolerance...You can coexist with people without ever having to speak meaningfully with them. What holds society together is not just people who will tolerate others, but people who will actually go beyond that, to provide the glue that nourishes social relationships. ”

“To reach beyond tolerance is to open oneself to getting to know others, to appreciate their role in the world.”

“The only alternative to talking is the building up of resentment and anger, which in the time must inevitably become open hostility and conflict.”

“There can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection.”

“If you are mindful, you can eat the bread and the bread represents the whole cosmos...You set the table, you lay the food in the presence of God. Mindfulness is the awareness that shines on every act in every moment.”

“Absolutism, in both religious and political idealism, is a splendid incentive to heroic action, but a dangerous guide in immediate and concrete situations. In religion, it permits absurdities and in politics cruelties, which fail to achieve justifying consequences because the inertia of human nature remains a nemesis to the absolute ideal...The fanaticism which in the individual may appear in the guise of a harmless or pathetic vagary, when expressed in political policy, shuts the gates of mercy on mankind. ”