Spong Quotes

A lot of people hear me attacking their certainty. I don't have any interest in doing that. I'm interested in penetrating the meaning of certainty. — John Shelby Spong

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

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

I am trying to understand what it means to be a Christian without being religious. — John Shelby Spong

The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. — John Shelby Spong

When I'm asked to define God, I'm almost wordless. — John Shelby Spong

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. — John Shelby Spong

I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. — John Shelby Spong

I think I could make the case for any kind of organized religion,but I'm not an expert in those, so let me narrow my focus to talk about Christianity. — John Shelby Spong

I believe that God is very real. — John Shelby Spong

It's almost inevitable that we become religious people. The question is, what kind of religion is it? — John Shelby Spong

I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. — John Shelby Spong

The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible. — John Shelby Spong

Moral judgment is not life-giving; love that transcends the boundaries of judgment as Jesus' love did, is. — John Shelby Spong

Live life to it's fullest, love wastefully, and be all we can be. — John Shelby Spong

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

I see Christianity in very humanistic terms. — John Shelby Spong

I can only give away the love that I have received. — John Shelby Spong

I experience God as the power of love. — John Shelby Spong

In fact, in 1724 the Western world learned that women were co-creators of life that's when it was discovered that women had an egg cell. — John Shelby Spong

I know Jerry [Falwell] fairly well, and he's probably not bright enough to recognize all of the implications of what he said. — John Shelby Spong

Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. I don't think that's the case. — John Shelby Spong

Toward the end of his life, [Arnold] Toynby said the Christianity he saw developing was brittle, imperialistic and incapable of reforming itself. — John Shelby Spong

It's just not easy enough to say that I pray and God will accomplish. — John Shelby Spong

God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. — John Shelby Spong

I don't think much about my physical body going off into the long, green fairways of Heaven to play golf. — John Shelby Spong

[Charles] Darwin, for example, is the one who made us face the fact that the primary way we tell the Christ story doesn't work anymore. — John Shelby Spong

The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end. — John Shelby Spong

It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. — John Shelby Spong

I prepare for death by living. — John Shelby Spong

Prayer is not adult letters written to Santa Claus, and God is not some parent-like figure up in the sky who's going to take care of us. — John Shelby Spong

Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good. — John Shelby Spong

I am a child of the 21st century. — John Shelby Spong

I have become convinced that we must put an end to atonement theology or there will be no future for the Christian faith. This — John Shelby Spong

We walk into the mystery of God; we do not define that mystery. — John Shelby Spong

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God. — John Shelby Spong

I don't want a God that would go around killing people's little girls. Neither do I want a God who would kill his own son. — John Shelby Spong

Mother Nature is not sweet. — John Shelby Spong

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

Religion is a mixed blessing. — John Shelby Spong

I identify myself quite self-consciously with a man named Melchizedek, who was described in the book of Psalms as "a priest forever" (Ps. 110:4). — John Shelby Spong

Was Judas Iscariot a figure of history? I do not think so. There is no mention of him in any source before the 8th decade. — John Shelby Spong

My sense is if the Episcopal Church can't stand challenge within its own ranks, then it is not a church I would want to be a member of anyway. — John Shelby Spong

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

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

Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. — John Shelby Spong

I experience God as the power of life, the power of love and the ground of being. I don't say that's what God is; I say that's my experience of God. — John Shelby Spong

Human wholeness can never be found in the denigration of another — John Shelby Spong

Hysterical fundamentalism is not the way into the future; it is the last gasp of the past. — John Shelby Spong

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

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

As he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. — John Shelby Spong

Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order. — John Shelby Spong

Death is ultimately a dimension of life through which we journey into timelessness. — John Shelby Spong

When I look back at the Christian faith, I see that we have had to retranslate, almost reinvent ourselves a number of times. — John Shelby Spong

I've never met anybody who was helped by being told how wretched,miserable and sinful they are. — John Shelby Spong

Some parts of the Bible are dreadful. In fact, my working title for The Sins of Scripture was "The Terrible Text of The Bible." — John Shelby Spong

What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore. — John Shelby Spong

I think we have to recover our spiritual nature. The way we have interpreted Christianity does not do that. — John Shelby Spong

The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years. — John Shelby Spong

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. — John Shelby Spong

I ... look at Jesus and see a humanity open to all that God is
open to life, open to love and open to being. — John Shelby Spong

The way you become divine is to become wholly human. — John Shelby Spong

Paul's words are not the Words of God. They are the words of Paul- a vast difference. — John Shelby Spong

The Sins of Scripture is an interesting title; most people don't put sins and scripture together in the same title. It jars people. — John Shelby Spong

Paul drew, however, little more than hostility from those identified as the Orthodox party, for whom any change threatened their security. — John Shelby Spong

Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. — John Shelby Spong

So much organized religion, in my opinion, ends up being life-denying. — John Shelby Spong

I go where I'm invited. And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I'd be away every day of my life. — John Shelby Spong

Or, as a dear pal of the RevGals once advised, whoever you are and wherever God sends you, "Be fierce and fabulous for Jesus. — Martha Spong