John Shelby Spong

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

— 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

“When a human life is open to all that humanity can be, humanity and divinity flow together as one. It was and…

— John Shelby Spong

I don't see Jesus as rescuing the fallen; I see Jesus as expanding the potential of life. The primary reason the old…

— 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

My basis of morality is this: does this action enhance life, or does it denigrate life? Does it build up or does…

— John Shelby Spong

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

— John Shelby Spong

We live in a very pluralistic society today. There are Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, atheists, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Christians like me.…

— 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

We are in a survival mentality, and that's hard-wired into our humanity, because we are the winners of an evolutionary struggle of…

— John Shelby Spong

Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. It doesn't. That's magic, that's not God. Sometimes, you're just in…

— 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

I know Jerry [Falwell] fairly well, and he's probably not bright enough to recognize all of the implications of what he said.

— John Shelby Spong

Benedict XVI kept saying that homosexuals are deviant. They're not deviant. They're deviant only if you say that anyone who is different…

— John Shelby Spong

I find it fascinating that Paul [the apostol], writing to the Galatians, responds to the question, "What does it mean to live…

— John Shelby Spong

"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is your neighbor's." Your neighbor is…

— John Shelby Spong

My audience is made up of two groups of people. The first group includes people whose roots are deep in the Christian…

— John Shelby Spong

Moral judgment is not life-giving; love that transcends the boundaries of judgment as Jesus' love did, is.

— 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

[Charles] Darwin, for example, is the one who made us face the fact that the primary way we tell the Christ story…

— John Shelby Spong

You can't go to church without praying ten or fifteen times for God to have mercy on you. You can't sing "Amazing…

— 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

Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. I might define God quite differently from…

— 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

I live on the other side of Copernicus and Galileo; I can no longer conceive of God as sort of above the…

— John Shelby Spong