John Shelby Spong quotes

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)
True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. View quote
John Shelby Spong
The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end. View quote
John Shelby Spong
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. View quote
John Shelby Spong
What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore. View quote
John Shelby Spong
If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable. View quote
John Shelby Spong
All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. View quote
John Shelby Spong
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. View quote
John Shelby Spong
It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. View quote
John Shelby Spong
I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. View quote
John Shelby Spong
Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience. (John Shelby Spong)
In the first gospel, Mark, the risen Christ appears physically to no one, but by the time we come to the last gospel, John, Thomas is invited to feel the nail prints in Christ's hands and feet and the spear wound in his side. View quote
John Shelby Spong
There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years. View quote
John Shelby Spong
When I'm asked to define God, I'm almost wordless. View quote
John Shelby Spong
Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. View quote
John Shelby Spong
There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrowminded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. 23:17). ... How divine is the message that says for your finite failings you will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. View quote
John Shelby Spong
Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in an illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult. View quote
John Shelby Spong
In [the story of Jesus] I found ... a center for my being. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years. View quote
John Shelby Spong
Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. View quote
John Shelby Spong
The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel. View quote
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)
Mother Nature is not sweet. View quote
John Shelby Spong
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. View quote
John Shelby Spong
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. View quote
John Shelby Spong
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. View quote
John Shelby Spong