John Shelby Spong Quotes

If I want to put a Christmas tree in my yard, or three crosses for the crucifixion story, that's fine. But if I try to use public property or a public school as a way to impress my religion on other people, I think that violates the constitution.

Each new lawsuit seeks to expand the size of the 'religion-free zone' in the public square.

Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?

The point is that knowledge of God is not prohibited under the First Amendment.

The First Amendment to the Constitution reflects that concept recognized in the Ten Commandments, that the duties we owe to God and the manner of discharging those duties are outside the purview of government.

The framers of our Constitution meant we were to have freedom of religion, not freedom from religion.

I believe that freedom of speech and freedom of religion go hand-in-hand in America.

Private religious speech can't be discriminated against. It has to be treated equally with secular speech.

The courts are using the First Amendment to attack religion, when they should be using it to protect religion.

I don't have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

The phrase 'religious liberty' has become an overused talisman. Most of the invocations lately have nothing to do with actual infringements of free exercise [of religion]. They're about political and cultural dissent from gay rights.

A school prayer amendment would confer upon public school boards a power the 1st Amendment now denies to Congress and the states, that is, the power to establish religion.

Government has no more right to help us Christians flaunt our beliefs than it has to suppress any faith.

To those who cite the first amendment as reason for excluding God from more and more of our institutions and everyday life, may I just say: The first amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people of this country from religious values; it was written to protect religious values from government tyranny.

Of the five rights listed in the First Amendment. - religion, speech, press, assembly, petition - the very first right protected is freely exercising our religion.

The intensive and concerted effort to exclude references to religion or God from public places is an attack on our founding principles. It's an attempt to bolster a growing reliance on the government--especially the judiciary--as the source of our rights. But if our rights are not unalienable, if they don't come from a source higher than ourselves, then they're malleable at the will of the state. This is a prescription for tyranny.

The ACLU sues no matter what public property a religious symbol is placed on.

It is wrong for a secular government to promote prayer. We think the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional. What if the president declared a National Day of Cursing God because He failed us on September 11? Americans would say, "You've overstepped your authority." That's how we feel when he promotes prayer.

The First Amendment of the Constitution was not written to protect the people from religion; that amendment was written to protect religion from government tyranny. . . But now we're told our children have no right to pray in school. Nonsense. The pendulum has swung too far toward intolerance against genuine religious freedom. It is time to redress the balance.

The ACLU spent this entire holiday season protesting public displays of the nativity scene. Yeah, that's the problem with America right now: Public displays of Christ's birth, that's the problem. It's unbelievable to me. The ACLU will no longer fight for your right to put up a nativity scene, but they'll fight for the right of the local freak who wants to stumble onto the scene and have sex with one of the sheep.

So when people tell you, oh, you can't have the Ten Commandments on public property, they're just wrong. It's historically false. It's not true. Now, you can decide to invent a new America in which you shouldn't say "one nation under God" as part of the pledge because, after all, you will offend three atheists. But that's not the America you inherited. That's a different country. And I think it's a weaker country and I think it's a country that has no roots in terms of where its rights come from.

We don’t punish prayer. We don’t tear down crosses. We don’t ban symbols of faith. We don’t muzzle preachers and pastors. In America, we celebrate faith, we cherish religion, we lift our voices in prayer, and we raise our sights to the Glory of God.

The first amendment makes it clear that we are free to practice religion without government interference. The Constitution also establishes the separation of church and state so that the laws we live by our never guided by religious zeal.

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

Religious liberty should be a bipartisan issue.