John Shelby Spong Quotes

My family was Jehovah's Witnesses, which is a really tough religion. It kind of deterred me from religion for a long time. They still practice, but I don't. But I always remained spiritual, and had a belief that there is a God. I'm trying to find my way, you know?

I still consider myself a very spiritual person but the structure of the church isn't really for me.

The borderlanders are people who are kind of caught in the middle. They think there must be another world out there. There probably is a God, but they are either turned off by the church or wounded by the church or wary of the church for whatever reason.

I have a much wider, freer view about spirituality. I feel that people need to pursue it on their own, personally. You know, let it be theirs - a personal relationship with their soul, or their God, or with their church.

I seek a deeper truth, but I don't think I have to go to a building designated for worship to find it.

You can educate yourself right out of a relationship with God.

A childish soul not inoculated with compulsory prayer is a soul open to any religious infection.

I completely understand why people would find the Church intolerable. I'm not the least bit surprised when people seek to leave it, though I miss them and I wish they'd stay. But I sometimes think you leave to come back, and that's certainly true in my case.

A lot of people have questioned how yoga and their own spiritual beliefs can come together. Yoga actually pre-dates religion.

I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.

I was born with a serious spiritual consciousness and for many years studied different paths.

Every day people are straying away from the church and going back to God.

For many people religion can be so easy they stumble right over it.

I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it's kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don't know about any others.

I seemed so different from other kids; I grew up in church and felt a connection with God, and a lot of kids my age really didn't understand that.

Give yourself entirely to God, enter and hide in the hidden ground of your soul.

I say three prayers every night to make sure that God knows I thank him so much.

Well, the research into it affected me. And the novel, it very much strengthened my faith.

Religion is a search for transcendence. But transcendence isn't necessarily sited in an external god, which can be a very unspiritual, unreligious concept.

Mary, my little girl, was confirmed in a Buddhist temple. She saw the Life write up on Buddhism, with pictures of the ceremony, and she said she wanted to be confirmed there because she only liked Jesus as a kid. She was a little disappointed in him when he grew up.

It is only when men begin to worship that they begin to grow.

I was raised Catholic until I was old enough to say no.

I believed in God my whole life, and then strayed away from it in my teen-age years, until recently.

Actually, I began to think that maybe there is a god, after all. Or maybe it's a different one. The old one got fired.

Most of the characters I write with don't think an awful lot about their faith. They're not always questioning the church or feeling confined by the church or rebelling against the church.