Quotes by John Shelby Spong

About John Shelby Spong:

John Shelby is a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church. From 1979 to 2000 he was Bishop of Newark (based in Newark, New Jersey). He is a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author. He calls for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines.
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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 ...

John Shelby Spong

I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth.

John Shelby Spong

I experience God as the power of love.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark's gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all.

John Shelby Spong

Many of the characters who appear in the pages of the Fourth Gospel are literary creations of its author and were never intended to be understood as real people, who actually lived in history.

John Shelby Spong

Mother Nature is not sweet.

John Shelby Spong

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

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

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

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...

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

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 ha...

John Shelby Spong

Author Bio

  • NameJohn Shelby Spong
  • DescriptionAmerican bishop
  • BornJune 16, 1931
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPriest; Author; Theologian