John Shelby Spong

“The cross reveals that we're called to a deeper, fuller experience of what it means to be alive and open to new dimensions of life which our religious boundaries - creeds, atonement theologies - have kept us from experiencing.”

“I don't think much about my physical body going off into the long, green fairways of Heaven to play golf.”

“Almost any poll of regular churchgoers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. It is the book that is most often used at Christian funerals.”

“You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.'”

“The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught.”

“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.”

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

“Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order.”

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

“I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates.”

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

“In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches.”

“You can't have a world where 50 percent of the people are dieting and 50 percent of the people are starving if you want stability.”

“I experience God as the power of love.”

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

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

“When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it.”

“The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church.”

“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.”

“Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark's gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all.”