Explore Quotes by John Shelby Spong

It's just not easy enough to say that I pray and God will accomplish.

The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person.

I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication.

Religion is a mixed blessing.

My sense is if the Episcopal Church can't stand challenge within its own ranks, then it is not a church I would want to be a member of anyway.

It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different.

I experience God as the power of love.

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

Mother Nature is not sweet.

I can only give away the love that I have received.

I am a child of the 21st century.

I believe that God is very real.

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

I live on the other side of Copernicus and Galileo; I can no longer conceive of God as sort of above the sky, looking down and keeping record books.

Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state.

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.

I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies.

Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies.

God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny.

I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people.

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