John Shelby Spong Quotes
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The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel.
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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.
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All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth.
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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.
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I am a child of the 21st century.
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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.'
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If you begin to give people hope that there is a brighter future, there is a new tomorrow, then the people who were yesterday's terrorists become tomorrow's elected officials and they're part of the system.
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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.
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Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies.
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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.
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The ultimate meaning of the Bible escapes human limits and calls us to a recognition that every life is holy, every life is loved, and every life is called to be all that that life is capable of being.
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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.
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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.
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I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people.
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The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.
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The way you become divine is to become wholly human.
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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.
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Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.
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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.
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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.
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I experience God as the power of love.
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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.
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God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny.
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In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches.