John Shelby Spong Quotes About Religion

Quotes about: Religion

• God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.

  John Shelby Spong

  God, Christian, Buddhist

  "Walking into the Mystery of God" by John Shelby Spong, www.uua.org.

• 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

  Journey, Religion, Doe

  "Q&A on The Parliament of the World's Religions". Weekly mailing, September 5, 2007.

• I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naïveté?

  John Shelby Spong

  Book, Believe, People

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

  John Shelby Spong

  Religious, War, Religion

• The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

  John Shelby Spong

  Sacrifice, Views, Ideas

• Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long- range future of anyone.

  John Shelby Spong

  Ignorance, Biblical, Two

  John Shelby Spong (1994). “Resurrection: myth or reality? : a bishop's search for the origins of Christianity”, Harpercollins

• A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of life with all of its defining prejudices. It thereby provides an appropriate and legitimate outlet for one's anger. The authority of an inerrant Bible that can be readily quoted to buttress this point of view becomes an essential ingredient to such a life. When that Bible is challenged, or relativized, the resulting anger proves the point categorically.

  John Shelby Spong

  Insecure, Fundamentalist Religion, Views

  John Shelby Spong (2009). “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks this Meaning of Script”, p.5, Harper Collins

• The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

  John Shelby Spong

  Punishment, Forever, Religion

• Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

  John Shelby Spong

  Prayer, Religion, Atheism

• I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter.

  John Shelby Spong

  Easter, Moving, Religion

  John Shelby Spong (1994). “Resurrection: myth or reality? : a bishop's search for the origins of Christianity”, Harpercollins

• Biblical higher criticism is preserved in the particular enclave of academic Christian scholarship and is thought to be too unfruitful to share with the average pew-sitter, for it raises more questions than the church can adequately answer. So the leaders of the church would protect the simple believers from concepts they were not trained to understand. In this way that ever-widening gap between academic Christians and the average pew-sitter made its first appearance.

  John Shelby Spong

  Christian, Biblical, Simple

• At its very core the story of Easter has nothing to do with angelic announcements or empty tombs. It has nothing to do with time periods, whether three days, forty days, or fifty days. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension.

  John Shelby Spong

  Easter, Religion, Three

  John Shelby Spong (2009). “Resurrection: Myth or Reality?”, p.21, Harper Collins

• ...secular journalists... tend to accept uncritically the oft - repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti - gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro - slavery and anti - women.

  John Shelby Spong

  Gay, People, Catholic

• If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable.

  John Shelby Spong

  Jesus, Views, Religion

  John Shelby Spong (1994). “Resurrection: myth or reality? : a bishop's search for the origins of Christianity”, Harpercollins

• The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

  John Shelby Spong

  Religion, Atheism, Divinity

• The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

  John Shelby Spong

  Miracle, Religion, Atheism

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

  John Shelby Spong

  Heart, Mind, Religion

• The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years.

  John Shelby Spong

  Gay, Past, Years

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