Quote

The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

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
Primitive
Based
Sins
View
Cross
Views
Crosses
Religion
Concepts
Idea
Atheism
Barbarian
Ideas
Sin
Dismissed
Must
Barbarians
World
Sacrifice

More quotes by 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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The way you become divine is to become wholly human
John Shelby Spong
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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 trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures.
John Shelby Spong
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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
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I can only give away the love that I have received.
John Shelby Spong
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I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God.
John Shelby Spong
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The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person.
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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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
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Human wholeness can never be found in the denigration of another
John Shelby Spong
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The Sins of Scripture is an interesting title most people don't put sins and scripture together in the same title. It jars people.
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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Matthew is the only gospel that uses the Sermon on the Mount, for example, because that's the new Moses making a new interpretation of the law on a new mountain. So then you begin to put all these things together, and I don't know how you can make sense out of that book if you don't know the Jewish background.
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 ... look at Jesus and see a humanity open to all that God is--open to life, open to love and open to being.
John Shelby Spong
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The trouble is, the same thing that enabled us to survive evolution is also going to kill us, because in the final analysis, if survival is the primary motivation of every human being, then we will finally be in a situation where might will make right and only one person will survive.
John Shelby Spong
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Jerry Falwell says, on Pat Robertson's program, that the reason we got attacked on 9/11 is that we were accommodating the ACLU and abortion and homosexuals and feminists in America, so God smacked us down.
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 Bible Belt, the religious South, is the section of the country that practiced slavery until the war made them give it up. They practiced segregation. They practiced lynchings. I don't see any great value in that.
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