American - Clergyman | June 16, 1931 -
I live on the other side of Copernicus and Galileo; I can no longer conceive of God as sort of above the sky, looking down and keeping record books.
John Shelby Spong
LiveGodSkyLookingDownI Can
My sense is if the Episcopal Church can't stand challenge within its own ranks, then it is not a church I would want to be a member of anyway.
ChallengeStandChurchWantWithin
If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I'd walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. And I don't mind saying that I don't invalidate any of those paths.
PathWalkChildMindSayingPaths
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.
FutureHopeTomorrowPeopleYouNew
God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny.
GodI CanNeverPresenceDefine
I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. I know rather that the sun, around which my planet Earth revolves, is a middle sized star in a galaxy called the Milky Way that has over a hundred billion other suns or stars within it.
StarsSunUniverseEarthKnowWay
When I'm asked to define God, I'm almost wordless.
GodDefineAlmostAsked
The way you become divine is to become wholly human.
YouWayBecomeHumanDivineWholly
Oh the Christian church has encouraged enormous immaturity among the peoples who are its primary adherence.
ChurchChristianWhoOhPrimary
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.
LifeExperienceAliveNewBoundaries
Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good.
LifeGoodEvilWhateverEnhances
I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. He sees himself against nature. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile.
NatureThinkUniverseBootsPerson
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