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 Read Quote
The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. John Shelby Spong Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I spend my life studying that book, and every book I’ve written has in some sense been a book about the Bible, and that’s what I mean by reclaiming its value and its essence for a world that no longer treats it literally and no longer reads it traditionally. John Shelby Spong Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote