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Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue.
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
Creation
Closed
Divine
Fallen
Interventions
Achieve
Originals
Heightened
Consciousness
Original
Expanded
Humanity
Guilt
Supernatural
Mind
Minds
Achieving
Believe
Sin
Intervention
Life
Christianity
Rescue
More quotes by John Shelby Spong
Religion is a mixed blessing.
John Shelby Spong
...death is ultimately a dimension of life through which we journey into timelessness.
John Shelby Spong
I do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be.
John Shelby Spong
I've probably read maybe by now fifteen, twenty books on Matthew. I'd say the authors I like best are an English fellow named Michael Goulder, who taught at the University of Birmingham in England, and he writes about the Jewish background in Matthew's gospel, which is part of what I was just talking about, which is just really thrilling to me.
John Shelby Spong
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
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
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
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
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
[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
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
I think I could make the case for any kind of organized religion, but I'm not an expert in those, so let me narrow my focus to talk about Christianity.
John Shelby Spong
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
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
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
Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
John Shelby Spong
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
Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, says, From the rising of the sun to its setting, God's name shall be great among the Gentiles. This encompasses the whole world. Suddenly it's not the Jews against the Gentiles, or my tribe against your tribe.
John Shelby Spong
The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
John Shelby Spong
It's just not easy enough to say that I pray and God will accomplish.
John Shelby Spong
