John Shelby Spong Quotes (12 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

John Shelby Spong: 12 quotes0 likes

Famous John Shelby Spong Quotes

“The church is like a swimming pool. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end.”

Source: Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell

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

Source: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991), p. 24

“True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers.”

John Shelby Spong

"Q&A on The Parliament of the World's Religions," weekly mailing, 2007-SEP-05, as reported on Religious Tolerance.org http://www.religioustolerance.org/reltrue.htm

“Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.”

John Shelby Spong

Source: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991), p. 25

“There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrowminded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. 23:17). … How divine is the message that says for your finite failings you will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”

John Shelby Spong

Matt. 25:30
Source: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991), p. 21

“Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in an illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult.”

John Shelby Spong

Source: Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994), p. 99

“In [the story of Jesus] I found … a center for my being. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years.”

John Shelby Spong

This Hebrew Lord (1974), p. 13

“Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue.”

John Shelby Spong

"Why We Must Reclaim The Bible From Fundamentalists" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/why-i-wrote-re-claiming-t_b_1007399.html, The Huffington Post (13 October 2011)

“The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel.”

John Shelby Spong

Source: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991), p. 78