Martin E. Marty quotes:

God, through Jesus Christ, welcomes you anyhow,

The people who are good at being civil often lack strong convictions and people who have strong convictions often lack civility.

Don't try to impress God with your works" or "Don't attempt to please God with your merits" or "Don't try to keep the rules and regulations in order to earn your salvation." He looked around at nearly slumbering collections of utterly casual Christians and wondered, "Who's trying?

I have a hard time picturing several aspects of the modern world without Luther.

A saint has to be a misfit. A person who embodies what his culture considers typical or normal cannot be exemplary.

To give the whole store away to match what this year's market says the unchurched want is to have the people who know least about the faith determine most about its expression.

All the truly deep people have at the core of their being the genius to be simple or to know how to seek simplicity

Each conquest of distance reveals greater distance.

Even the cry from the depths is an affirmation: Why cry if there is no hint of hope of hearing?

If you go deep enough into any faith tradition, you find the common ground with all faith traditions.

Not only do we cheat ourselves and those around us if we are only glum or always wary when it comes time to respond to divine stirrings. No, we are then also being simply unfaithful to the surrounding reality. The one who purges gloom has given occasions and reasons, in the midst of life's sadness, to be joyful.

The forces, movements, and energies that today we call religious, spiritual, or faith-based have related through the ages in diverse ways to the spheres of life that today we call economic and that we see embodied in business and commerce.

There is no reason to make the search for friendship sound like an animal instinct. Friendship does not always come as a result of a search; it can come when we least look for it, just as it denies itself when we pursue it too earnestly and with pathetic eagerness.