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

John Shelby Spong

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John Shelby Spong
Age: 93
Born: 1931
Born: June 16
Author
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
Writer
Charlotte
North Carolina
Love
Received
Away
Give
Giving

More quotes by John Shelby Spong

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It's almost inevitable that we become religious people. The question is, what kind of religion is it?
John Shelby Spong
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To have a great university library near you with plenty of archives of all the journals that you want to research in the twentieth century is a remarkable asset, and I spend a day, maybe two days a week in that library. I just plain love it.
John Shelby Spong
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Human beings are hardwired by however many millions or billions of years to orient toward their own survival. That's why we're tribal people. That's why we're prejudiced people. That's why we treat women as second-class citizens, that's why we are homophobic, and that's why we make religion a weapon to prove we're superior to other people.
John Shelby Spong
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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.
John Shelby Spong
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The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the bible lost. The Bible was quoted to keep women silent, and the Bible lost. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose.
John Shelby Spong
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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
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I think the story of the Christian faith is how you can become more deeply and fully human, not how you can become religious. And I don't see any indication that being religious makes you more moral.
John Shelby Spong
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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
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As for the status of Western Christianity, we are in a place where our task is to redefine the primary symbols of our faith or tradition in a more human direction. That's the thing I spend my time doing.
John Shelby Spong
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Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
John Shelby Spong
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You don't take your newborn baby, put that baby on your lap, and say, Now listen, kid, you were born in sin, you're not worth anything, and you've got to pray for mercy. That's not going to raise a healthy adult. And that's what we do Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.
John Shelby Spong
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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
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I think I can tell you how I experience God. I experience God as the power of life calling me to live, I experience God as the power of love calling me to love. That's the God I see in Jesus of Nazareth, that's the God I see in the fourth gospel.
John Shelby Spong
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If you want to be a Roman Catholic scholar and write, you've got to write in such a way that nobody understands what you're saying, and then you're thought to be profound.
John Shelby Spong
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I go where I'm invited. And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I'd be away every day of my life.
John Shelby Spong
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I find it fascinating that Paul [the apostol], writing to the Galatians, responds to the question, What does it mean to live in Christ? by saying, There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
John Shelby Spong
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[Charles] Darwin, for example, is the one who made us face the fact that the primary way we tell the Christ story doesn't work anymore.
John Shelby Spong
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I don't make that decision [what next book will be] until I've read enough to know that I've got something different to say and I know how to say it.
John Shelby Spong
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The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.
John Shelby Spong
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Nobody in the scientific or medical world thinks that homosexuality is something that people choose. It's something we are. Now, I didn't choose to be heterosexual. I just woke up when I was about twelve years old and girls didn't look obnoxious to me any longer, but I didn't make a choice about the matter. I just responded to my own hormones.
John Shelby Spong