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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. "

John Shelby Spong

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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. "

John Shelby Spong

" 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

" I experience God as the power of love. "

John Shelby Spong

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

" 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

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

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

" 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. "

John Shelby Spong

" I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. "

John Shelby Spong

" 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. "

John Shelby Spong

" Religion is a mixed blessing. "

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

" 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. "

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

" 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

" I believe that God is very real. "

John Shelby Spong

" 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. "

John Shelby Spong

" 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

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

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. "

John Shelby Spong

" Mother Nature is not sweet. "

John Shelby Spong

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

John Shelby Spong

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

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

" 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. "

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

" 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