277 Quotes by John Shelby Spong

Live life to it’s fullest, love wastefully, and be all we can be.

John sees Jesus symbolically as the serpent lifted up on his cross, drawing the venom out of human life, restoring wholeness. It is a powerful image. John.

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.

I still hope. I wouldn’t be in this position if I didn’t. I love the church. I love the Bible. But I think we’re in a time where we’re desperately in need of a great reformation.

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.

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.

Prayer is not adult letters written to Santa Claus, and God is not some parent-like figure up in the sky who’s going to take care of us.

We’re either going to be driven to a whole new sense of radical interdependence where we are, in the Bible’s words, our neighbor’s keeper, or destroy ourselves.

I treasure the Bible. I live in it and work on it all the time. But it is not the word of God. It’s the tribal story of a particular people, and the best thing about that story is that the story keeps growing and evolving.