Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Shelby Spong

The primary message of the Christian Church is that we were born in sin and we need to be rescued; we cannot rescue ourselves, so God comes to our rescue, pays the price of our sin and transforms us through the death of Jesus.

John Shelby Spong

The Protestant reformation was an attempt to recast the Christian faith in terms of the new learning of the 16th century, the enlightenment learning. It was the first time that the Christian church did not have the capacity to keep itself unified as it recast itself, so it split into Protestant and Catholic traditions.

John Shelby Spong

The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church.

John Shelby Spong

The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught.

John Shelby Spong

Oh the Christian church has encouraged enormous immaturity among the peoples who are its primary adherence.

John Shelby Spong

Biblical higher criticism is preserved in the particular enclave of academic Christian scholarship and is thought to be too unfruitful to share with the average pew-sitter, for it raises more questions than the church can adequately answer. So the leaders of the church would protect the simple believers from concepts they were not trained to understand. In this way that ever-widening gap between academic Christians and the average pew-sitter made its first appearance.

John Shelby Spong

When I look back at the Christian faith, I see that we have had to retranslate, almost reinvent ourselves a number of times.

John Shelby Spong

My audience is made up of two groups of people. The first group includes people whose roots are deep in the Christian faith, but for whom the traditional symbols, as traditionally understood, no longer make sense. The other audience is the audience that has left. I call them the Church Alumni Association, citizens of the secular city. They are a bit nostalgic about this faith of their childhood, but they aren't really interested in trotting it out or becoming involved with it again as it is presently organized.

John Shelby Spong

We live in a very pluralistic society today. There are Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, atheists, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Christians like me. There are a wide variety of religious expressions in this country. I think they all must be treated with respect and none of them must be given priority in the public arena.

John Shelby Spong

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.

John Shelby Spong

I look at American Christianity and I'm almost in despair. I don't want to be identified with it. The Christian vote in America is an anti-abortion, anti-homosexual vote. I consider that to be anti-female and anti-gay, and I don't want to be identified with a God who is anti-anything.

John Shelby Spong

I think if you're convinced that you're evil, and that God has had to rescue you, then the best you can be is grateful. But nobody ever loves the person they have to be perpetually grateful to. That's just not the way it works in humanity. You need to be set free. You need to be loved just as you are so that you can become all that you can be. That's the direction we have to turn the Christian message; when we do, it becomes universal.

John Shelby Spong

God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.

John Scalzi

Christianity is a fine religion and I wish more Christians practiced it.

John Piper

There are two basic restrictions on marriage in the Bible: Number one, she should marry a man. Number two, he should be a Christian.

John Piper

The task of all Christian scholarship—not just biblical studies—is to study reality as a manifestation of God’s glory, to speak and write about it with accuracy, and to savor the beauty of God in it, and to make it serve the good of man. It is an abdication of scholarship when Christians do academic work with little reference to God. If all the universe and everything in it exist by the design of an infinite, personal God, to make his manifold glory known and loved, then to treat any subject without reference to God’s glory is not scholarship but insurrection.

John Piper

What was once foolishness to us-a crucified God-must become our wisdom and our power and our only boast in this world.

John Piper

Christian fasting, at its root, is the hunger of a homesickness for God

John Piper

Bad theology dishonors God and hurts people. Churches that sever the root of truth may flourish for a season, but they will wither eventually or turn into something besides a Christian church.

John Piper

A Christian is not a person who believes in his head the teachings of the Bible. Satan believes in his head the teachings of the Bible! A Christian is a person who has died with Christ, whose stiff neck has been broken, whose brazen forehead has been shattered, whose stony heart has been crushed, whose pride has been slain, and whose life is now mastered by Jesus Christ.

John Piper

The Christian life becomes impossible. That is, it becomes supernatural.

John Piper

A God-centered theology has to be a missionary theology

John Piper

The key that unlocks the treasure chest of God's peace is faith in the promises of God.

John Piper

Spot the first risings of your besetting sin and kill it, till it is no more.

John Piper

Prayer as a relationship is probably your best indicator about the health of your love relationship with God. If your prayer life has been slack, your love relationship has grown cold.

John Piper

Too many Christians are fighting graduate school sins with a grammar school knowledge of God.

John Piper

One way to appreciate C.S. Lewis is to see how his Christian humility shaped his life and work.

John Piper

The missionary question is not, 'Where are there unbelievers?' and then send a missionary there. There are unbelievers everywhere! The missionary question is, 'Where are there people's who don't have any Christians in them or don't have a church strong enough to do the neighbor evangelism that we can do if we just want to do it?' That's the missionary question.

John Piper

Oh, how rare are the Christians who speak with a tender heart and have a theological backbone of steel.

John Piper

I sometimes fear that we have so redefined conversion in terms of human decisions and have so removed any necessity of the experience of God’s Spirit, that many people think they are saved when in fact they only have Christian ideas in their head not spiritual power in their heart.

John Piper

The way of the cross is the way of suffering. Christians are called to die, not kill, in order to show the world how they are loved by Christ.

John Piper

There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian's right to live luxuriously "as a child of the King" in this atmosphere sounds hollow - especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.

John Piper

The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christ's death and resurrection to remove every obstacle between us and himself so that we may find everlasting joy in seeing and savoring his infinite beauty.