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 Read Quote
If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I’d walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. And I don’t mind saying that I don’t invalidate any of those paths. John Shelby Spong Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. John Shelby Spong Read Quote
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 Read Quote
I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. John Shelby Spong Read Quote
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. John Shelby Spong Read Quote
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 Read Quote