John Shelby Spong Religious Quotations

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.

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 do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be.

Theism, as a way of conceiving God, has become demonstrably inadequate, and the God of theism not only is dying but is probably not revivable. If the religion of the future depends on keeping alive the definitions of theism, then the human phenomenon that we call religion will have come to an end. If Christianity depends on a theistic definition of God, then we must face the fact that we are watching this noble religious system enter the rigor mortis of its own death throes.

My hope is that a religious consciousness will begin to rise, one based on enhancing humanity, grasping life in all of its complex wonder, having the courage to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that each of us can be and that it will express itself in our national life in more earth centered, justice enhancing and humane ways.

Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age that is no more and a nostalgic reminder of our believing past. To me, neither option is worth pursuing.

I think the story of the Christian faith is how you can become more deeply and fully human, not how you can become religious. And I don't see any indication that being religious makes you more moral.

We live in a very pluralistic society today. There are Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, atheists, Roman Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Christians like me. There are a wide variety of religious expressions in this country. I think they all must be treated with respect and none of them must be given priority in the public arena.

It's almost inevitable that we become religious people. The question is, what kind of religion is it?

The Bible Belt, the religious South, is the section of the country that practiced slavery until the war made them give it up. They practiced segregation. They practiced lynchings. I don't see any great value in that.

I think human beings are almost, by definition, religious people,in the sense that we ask questions of meaning, we anticipate future events, we deal with the issues of mortality from the first time we see a dead bird as a little child.