Bible Quotes by John Shelby Spong

The Bible tells me that every life is holy; the Bible tells me that every life is loved; the Bible tells me…

— John Shelby Spong

There's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance.

— John Shelby Spong

The Sins of Scripture is an interesting title; most people don't put sins and scripture together in the same title. It jars…

— John Shelby Spong

The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history.

— John Shelby Spong

We're either going to be driven to a whole new sense of radical interdependence where we are, in the Bible's words, our…

— John Shelby Spong

Some parts of the Bible are dreadful. In fact, my working title for The Sins of Scripture was "The Terrible Text of…

— John Shelby Spong

I grew up in North Carolina being told that the Bible approves slavery and segregation, that it was the will of God.

— John Shelby Spong

The ultimate meaning of the Bible escapes human limits and calls us to a recognition that every life is holy, every life…

— John Shelby Spong

...secular journalists... tend to accept uncritically the oft - repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti…

— John Shelby Spong

I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in…

— John Shelby Spong

The Jesus experience expanded people into a position where they didn't have to have defensive tribal lives, "God loves my people, my…

— John Shelby Spong

Another [book on Matthew] is Amy-Jill Levine, who is a Jewish woman who teaches New Testament at the Vanderbilt School of Religion.…

— John Shelby Spong

I still hope. I wouldn't be in this position if I didn't. I love the church. I love the Bible. But I…

— 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…

— John Shelby Spong

I treasure the Bible. I live in it and work on it all the time. But it is not the word of…

— John Shelby Spong

A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of…

— John Shelby Spong

The Bible was written between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago, and it's filled with the knowledge that people had in that period…

— John Shelby Spong

I began to read [Bible] as a critic, an in-house critic. So I got to a place where when I got to…

— John Shelby Spong

They amuse themselves by playing an irrelevant ecclesiastical game called "Let's Pretend." Let's pretend that we possess the objective truth of God…

— John Shelby Spong

The Hebrew scriptures say it's okay to enslave anybody except your fellow Jews. It says you should enslave only your neighbors. I…

— John Shelby Spong

The Bible is full of dreadful things. There's a Psalm that says "Happy will you be when you take your enemy's children…

— John Shelby Spong

The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, we're not even supposed to speak the holy name. We were…

— John Shelby Spong

The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. The Bible was quoted to defend slavery and the bible lost.…

— John Shelby Spong

In my book, The Sins of Scripture, I traced the development of tribal religion, which included ideas like God's killing the Egyptians…

— John Shelby Spong

Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal…

— John Shelby Spong

Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, says, "From the rising of the sun to its setting, God's name shall be…

— John Shelby Spong

Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread…

— John Shelby Spong

Almost any poll of regular churchgoers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. It…

— John Shelby Spong

Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of…

— John Shelby Spong

When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted…

— John Shelby Spong

I spend my life studying that book, and every book I've written has in some sense been a book about the Bible,…

— John Shelby Spong