277 Quotes by John Shelby Spong

Pat Robertson said the feminist movement was just a bunch of lesbians who wanted to leave their husbands and kill their children. I quoted him in my book. It’s a fantastic statement.

All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

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.

Some parts of the Bible are dreadful. In fact, my working title for The Sins of Scripture was “The Terrible Text of The Bible.”

The task of religion is not to turn us into proper believers; it is to deepen the personal within us, to embrace the power of life, to expand our consciousness, in order that we might see things that eyes do not normally see.

I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he’s no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.

I have become convinced that we must put an end to atonement theology or there will be no future for the Christian faith. This.

I don’t want a God that would go around killing people’s little girls. Neither do I want a God who would kill his own son.

I want the traditional family upheld, but I don’t want it upheld to the detriment of other people.