“Commitment, which includes belief but far transcends it, is determination of the total self to act upon conviction.”

(Elton Trueblood, The Company of the Committed, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1961, 22)

“One way of stating the crucial difference between belief and commitment is to say that when commitment occurs there is attached to believe an ‘existential index’ which changes its entire character. Belief in differs from belief that, in the way in which the entire self is involved. ‘If I believe in something,’ says Marcel, ‘it means that I place myself at the disposal of something, or again that I pledge myself fundamentally, and this pledge affects not only what I have but also what I am.’”

(Elton Trueblood, The Company of the Committed, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1961, 22)

“Christians have no monopoly on commitment; they simply have a different object.”

(Elton Trueblood, The Company of the Committed, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1961, 23)

“A Christian is a person who confesses that, amidst the manifold and confusing voices heard in the world, there is one Voice which supremely wins his full assent, uniting all his powers, intellectual and emotional, into a single pattern of self-giving. That Voice is Jesus Christ.”

(Elton Trueblood, The Company of the Committed, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1961, 23)

“He . . . sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands.” —Albert Schweitzer

(quoted in Elton Trueblood, The Company of the Committed, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1961, 24)