John Shelby Spong's Quotes

I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church.

The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. And I have no reason to abandon it because it leads to where I want to go.

The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught.

The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, we're not even supposed to speak the holy name. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I don't think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures.

We've got to deal with the fact that the church has been violently prejudiced against gay people. We've murdered them; we've burned them at the stake; we've run them out of town for something over which they have no control. And that's immoral.

All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. And that's where it turns demonic. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

You can't have a world where 50 percent of the people are dieting and 50 percent of the people are starving if you want stability.

I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates.

You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.'

Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.

I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God.

Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state.

God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny.

I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies.

I live on the other side of Copernicus and Galileo; I can no longer conceive of God as sort of above the sky, looking down and keeping record books.

I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people.

Oh the Christian church has encouraged enormous immaturity among the peoples who are its primary adherence.

Religion is a mixed blessing.

I am a child of the 21st century.

I believe that God is very real.

I can only give away the love that I have received.