Quotes by John Shelby Spong

As he becomes self-conscious, hes no longer part of nature.

What the mind cannot accept, the heart can finally never adore.

This is the picture of a woman cast in the role of a learner, a pupil, even a rabbinic student. Quite obviously this is a prohibited role for women in those days and in that culture. Yet Jesus affirms Mary in that role. Martha, however, rebukes her. Martha demands that Jesus order Mary to abandon the pupil role for the more acceptable domestic role of assisting with the dinner preparations. Jesus supports Mary and defends her consciousness-raising act by stating that she has elected a higher choice.

Whatever it was that people experience in Jesus has today come to be identified with medieval doctrines based on premodern assumptions that are no longer believable. That identification means that serious theological discussion seems to accomplish little more than to erect a division between the shouters and the disinterested. Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age that is no more and a nostalgic reminder of our believing past. To me neither option is worth pursuing. Yet even understanding these things, I am still attracted to this Jesus and I will pursue him both relentlessly and passionately. I will not surrender the truth I believe I find in him either to those who seek to defend the indefensible or to those who want to be freed finally from premodern ideas that no longer make any sense.

If you begin to give people hope that there is a brighter future, there is a new tomorrow, then the people who were yesterdays terrorists become tomorrows elected officials and theyre part of the system.

Mother Nature is not sweet.

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, hes no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.

All religion seems to need to prove that its the only truth. And thats where it turns demonic. Because thats when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake.

The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world.

The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, were not even supposed to speak the holy name. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I dont think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe youve captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures.

I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God.

Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience.

You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you dont have any freedom left, or youre going to build a world that doesnt create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of getting along.