277 Quotes by John Shelby Spong

I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth.

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.

In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches.

When we unravel the theological tomes of the ages, the makeup of God becomes quite clear. God is a human being without human limitations who is read into the heavens. We disguised this process by suggesting that the reason God was so much like a human being was that the human beings were in fact created in God's image. However, we now recognize that if was the other way around. The God of theism came into being as a human creation. As such, this God, too, was mortal and is now dying.

My basis of morality is this: does this action enhance life, or does it denigrate life? Does it build up or does it tear down?

The task of the church, for example, becomes less that of indoctrinating or relating people to an external divine power and more that of providing opportunities for people to touch the infinite center of all things and to grow into all that they are destined to be.

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.

If you begin to give people hope that there is a brighter future, there is a new tomorrow, then the people who were yesterday's terrorists become tomorrow's elected officials and they're part of the system.

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.