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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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" 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. "

John Shelby Spong

You

God

Language

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

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

" 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

People

Meaning

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

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

" I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. "

" 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. "

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

" The way you become divine is to become wholly human. "

" I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people. "

" 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. "

" 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

Life

Build

" We've got to deal with the fact that the church has been violently prejudiced against gay people. We've murdered them; we've burned them at the stake; we've run them out of town for something over which they have no control. And that's immoral. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I experience God as the power of love. "

" It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" Religion is a mixed blessing. "

" 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. "

" I believe that God is very real. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" I never really liked the Gospel of John because I never could find the humanity of Jesus in it. I thought it presented Jesus as a visitor from another planet; in addition, John's gospel is and has been interpreted as a document that fuels anti-Semitism in the church. "

" I believe that God is very real. I believe that I live my life every day inside the reality of this God. I call this God by different words. I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being. "

" 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. "