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" I believe that God is very real. "

John Shelby Spong

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" 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

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

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. "

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" I am trying to understand what it means to be a Christian without being religious. "

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

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

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" 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. "

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" 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

" 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

" 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. "

John Shelby Spong

" The cross reveals that we're called to a deeper, fuller experience of what it means to be alive and open to new dimensions of life which our religious boundaries - creeds, atonement theologies - have kept us from experiencing. "

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

" 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

" 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 believe that is what the God experience does for us. It calls us beyond our limits into the fullness of life - into a capacity to love people we are not taught to love - and into an ability to be who we are. "

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 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

" When I'm asked to define God, I'm almost wordless. "

John Shelby Spong

" Religion is a mixed blessing. "

John Shelby Spong

" In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches. "

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 do not live in a world where people can walk on water, or still a storm, or take five loaves of bread and feed 5000 men plus women and children. If that is a requirement of my commitment to Jesus, I find it difficult to stretch my mind outside the capacities of my world view. "

John Shelby Spong

" The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. "

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. "

John Shelby Spong

" I experience God as the power of love. "

John Shelby Spong

" I was baptized as an infant. I was confirmed as an adolescent; I was active in my church's youth group and in my university student group. I was married before the church's altar; trained at the church's seminaries, ordained deacon and priest at age 24. "

John Shelby Spong

" I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. "

John Shelby Spong

" Jesus represents the possibilities of a new dimension of existence that transcends all the boundaries that restrict us from opening ourselves to God and allowing this source of love to flow through us. "

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

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

John Shelby Spong