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...death is ultimately a dimension of life through which we journey into timelessness.

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
Life
Timelessness
Dimension
Dimensions
Ultimately
Journey
Death

More quotes by John Shelby Spong

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My hope is that a religious consciousness will begin to rise, one based on enhancing humanity, grasping life in all of its complex wonder, having the courage to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that each of us can be and that it will express itself in our national life in more earth centered, justice enhancing and humane ways.
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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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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The demolishment of the power of organized Christianity in the Western world to finally realize the emancipation of women and give them the vote in 1920. Women couldn't even own property in their own names until the last quarter of the 19th century in America.
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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Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.
John Shelby Spong
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I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naïveté?
John Shelby Spong
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I've never known about anyone being helped by being told how wretched, miserable, sinful, and evil they are.
John Shelby Spong
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Edward Schillebeeckx is probably as fine a New Testament scholar as I've ever read. He's a Dutchman. And he was harassed so many times that it was just painful for him. He constantly had to go to Rome to explain his views.
John Shelby Spong
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Human wholeness can never be found in the denigration of another
John Shelby Spong
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The church had to find a way to protect Jesus' perfection so that he could do the work of salvation which, in their frame of reference, only God could do, because God had to come into this world from outside this world to rescue the fallen creation.
John Shelby Spong
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In the private arena, you can do whatever you wish, and people do. These crazy evangelical preachers get on the radio and TV and say incredible things.
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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We have a democracy within the bounds of a constitution which provides certain guarantees related to the basic humanity of every person. I think that's the best way to go.
John Shelby Spong
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The Jesus experience expanded people into a position where they didn't have to have defensive tribal lives, God loves my people, my tribe, anddoesn't like yours. The Bible is full of such references.
John Shelby Spong
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That's why the virgin birth never gets rid of the human mother. The story only gets rid of the human father. So Jesus' life was the life of God nurtured through the Virgin Mary. That's because the virgin birth died as a literal story as soon as we discovered that women had an egg cell. It's interesting to watch what the Roman church did about that.
John Shelby Spong
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Religion is a mixed blessing.
John Shelby Spong
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I experience God as the power of life, the power of love and the ground of being. I don't say that's what God is I say that's my experience of God.
John Shelby Spong
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What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore.
John Shelby Spong
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The Protestant reformation was an attempt to recast the Christian faith in terms of the new learning of the 16th century, the enlightenment learning. It was the first time that the Christian church did not have the capacity to keep itself unified as it recast itself, so it split into Protestant and Catholic traditions.
John Shelby Spong