John Shelby Spong
John Shelby Spong
John Shelby "Jack" Spongis a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church. From 1979 to 2000 he was Bishop of Newark. He is a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author. He calls for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth16 June 1931
CountryUnited States of America
John Shelby Spong quotes about
buddhist mind muslim saying suspect tibet
If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I'd walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. And I don't mind saying that I don't invalidate any of those paths.
human paradigm shift
Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order.
religion atheism divinity
The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
yesterday giving people
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.
life-is-good evil life-is
Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.
punishment forever religion
The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
tasks tradition christianity
As for the status of Western Christianity, we are in a place where our task is to redefine the primary symbols of our faith or tradition in a more human direction. That's the thing I spend my time doing.
miserable mets wretched
I've never met anybody who was helped by being told how wretched,miserable and sinful they are.
power-of-love
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.
kings people church
Some people in the church, like Martin Luther King, Jr., came out against segregation. But if you look at the bulk of organized religion, you will discover that it endorsed slavery and quoted the Bible to approve it; the Pope even owned slaves.
north-carolina slavery segregation
I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.
christianity term humanistic
I see Christianity in very humanistic terms.