The Battle for God

faith-and-doubt

• Just as fundamentalists fear annihilation at the hands of the secularist, a liberal like Oz saw the Gush as threatening to bring down upon us a savage and insane bloodlust.

  BGKA-RC-417

• Early Pentecostalism at its best had been characterized by inclusion and compassionate breaking down of racial and class barriers. Swaggart, however, preached a religion of hatred.

  BGKA-RC-421

obedience-and-authority

• When the Kingdom comes, the modern heresy of democracy will be abolished; adulterers, homosexuals, blasphemers, and witches will all be put to death.

  BGKA-RC-424

• Gush rabbis raised the question whether Rabin had become a rodef, one who actively threatens the life of a Jew, and so is deemed worthy of death under Jewish law.

  BGKA-RC-416

trauma-and-survival

• God created this state not as a reward for justice — because He could no longer take the desecration of His Name and the persecution of the people named after Him.

  BGKA-RC-413

• Fundamentalism is not going to disappear. Events of the last few years indicate there is still a state of incipient war between conservatives and liberals which has occasionally become frighteningly explicit.

  BGKA-RC-425