Jay Parini

“American failures in Vietnam and Iraq suggest that it's not really possible to create and sustain a proxy government in a country far from our own borders.”

“I often think that the last holiday is the greatest, but then some really stand out in my mind. One of the best was one my wife and I had in the Lake District. We stayed in a B&B and walked around the countryside for two weeks.”

“Each year in early spring, during the season of Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Easter, a plenitude of books, magazine articles, and television shows about Jesus appear.”

“American fundamentalist thought connected strongly to reactionary political ideology as nervous Christians pushed back against liberal reforms on many fronts.”

“In a country where Americans sense, quite genuinely, that their freedoms have been taken away by the government - as in the U.S. Patriot Act, as in NSA surveillance - people feel powerless.”

“It's not unusual for socio-economic, even racial or ethnic, groups to cluster.”

“Whether we're looking at the burial box of St. James, a fragment of the True Cross, the Shroud of Turin, or some bones supposedly belonging to John the Baptist, there is always excitement and distrust, faith and doubt.”

“I have always found the baptism of Jesus, with a dove descending and voice from Heaven, one of the great moments in the Jesus story. This is where Jesus hears the deep call from God.”

“Actually, a myth is a story that is not just not true, but it's a story that is especially true. And I think the myth of Jesus is especially true.”

“For the most part, I think of PC as meaning Plain Civil. You treat people the way you'd like to be treated yourself, and that means not using language that is demeaning.”

“Christmas is, for those who wish to follow the way of Jesus, an invitation to accept into our comfortable and safe lives those who come to us from far away, who seem ragged, marginal, in transition.”

“In truth, Jesus did not, in his own time, attract much notice.”

“As a Christian, I try to meditate or pray at least once a day, however briefly.”

“To bolster his right flank and attract women voters, John McCain had cynically opted for a running mate who was, by any stretch of the imagination, unqualified for a position a heartbeat away from the presidency.”

“It's impossible to see the face of Jesus without seeking that face in some concentrated way, in the practice of the faith, through prayer and action.”

“Language kills, and inflamed rhetoric of the kind that spews almost daily from the lips of Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and others running for public office in this country should be condemned.”

“History is, of course, a made thing. It does not exist by itself in anything like a recognizable form.”

“I suspect that a huge amount of the anxiety and suffering that we see around can be closely traced to our wanton misuse of our resources. Just look at any garbage dump and see what is wasted. In a sense, we've wasted our souls.”

“If you think about it, Jesus was this religious genius who grows up on the Silk Road, and so He's getting from the West all these Greek ideas from Plato about body and soul.”

“Even among those who have no special allegiance to a particular branch of Christianity, there are plenty of seekers as well as agnostics and atheists who harbor a certain curiosity about Jesus and his story.”