John Shelby Spong Quotes - BrainyQuote

American - Clergyman Born: June 16, 1931

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.

John Shelby Spong

Truth You Religion Prove

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.

John Shelby Spong

God Religion People World

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. I just go beyond them.

John Shelby Spong

Me Moon Bible Devil

Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. What I'm trying to do is develop a language that will enable us to talk about God beyond the, what I think, are sterile categories of theism and atheism.

John Shelby Spong

God You Think Language

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.

John Shelby Spong

God You Believe Words

Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue.

John Shelby Spong

Life Believe Humanity New

My basis of morality is this: does this action enhance life, or does it denigrate life? Does it build up or does it tear down?

John Shelby Spong

Life Action Down Morality

If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I'd walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. And I don't mind saying that I don't invalidate any of those paths.

John Shelby Spong

Walk Path Mind Child

I believe God is real, but I believe God calls me beyond myself to take responsibility for my life and to try top work to allow other people to be themselves and to take responsibility for their lives.

John Shelby Spong

Life Work Myself God

When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.

John Shelby Spong

Nature Women God Bible

Top 10
John Shelby Spong
Quotes

The Bible tells me that every life is holy; the Bible tells me that every life is loved; the Bible tells me that every life is called to be all that it can be.

John Shelby Spong

Life Me Bible Loved

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.

John Shelby Spong

Sky God Looking Live

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.

John Shelby Spong

Hero Way Party Say

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

John Shelby Spong

Love I Can Only Give

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

John Shelby Spong

God Never I Can Presence

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

John Shelby Spong

Church Christian Who Oh

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.

John Shelby Spong

People Gay Control Church

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

John Shelby Spong

People Gay Church Inequality

I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. I know rather that the sun, around which my planet Earth revolves, is a middle sized star in a galaxy called the Milky Way that has over a hundred billion other suns or stars within it.

John Shelby Spong

Stars Sun Way Universe

I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth.

John Shelby Spong

Best God Experience Believe

The church is not going to survive if they are going to tell people that they have to twist their minds into 1st century pretzels.

John Shelby Spong

People Church Survive Tell

I believe that God is very real. I believe that I live my life every day inside the reality of this God. I call this God by different words. I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being.

John Shelby Spong

Life Love God Day

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

John Shelby Spong

Life Good Evil Whatever

I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.

John Shelby Spong

Nature Think Universe Person

Mother Nature is not sweet.

John Shelby Spong

Nature Mother Environmental Sweet

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.'

John Shelby Spong

Freedom You World Police

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