John Shelby Spong Quotes

My moms is strictly Christian but once I got knowledge of self and started reading she used to love when I would sit there and tell her some of the things that I learned. It gave her an open mind to where she started believing in the most high.

As for the status of Western Christianity, we are in a place where our task is to redefine the primary symbols of our faith or tradition in a more human direction. That's the thing I spend my time doing.

But hey, if that’s too much to ask, tell them to just become Christians—you know, the people who get to go to heaven without having to commit to anything

It almost seems like God is transforming into just a strictly spiritual advisor, a personal-transformation type of figure more than an explainer of the world, you know?

All Christians have the Spirit of Christ, but not all Christians have the mind of Christ.

It is impossible for a man to be a Christian without having Christ; and if he has Christ he has at the same time all that is in Christ.

As all types and figures in the Law were but empty shadows without the coming of Christ, so the New Testament is but a dead letter without the Holy Spirit in redeemed men as the living power of a full salvation.

If religion is onlya garment of Christianityand even this garment has looked very different at different timesthen what is religionless Christianity?

Belief in the resurrection is not an appendage to the Christian faith. It is the Christian faith.

One form of religion perpetually gives way to another; if religion did not change it would be dead. ... Each time the new ideas appear they are seen at first as a deadly foe threatening to make religion perish from the earth; but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices gone.

So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead. Jesus Christ dying for my sins spoke to the humility we all have to have as human beings, that we're sinful and we're flawed and we make mistakes, and that we achieve salvation through the grace of God.

We may not understand how the spirit works; but the effect of the spirit on the lives of men is there for all to see; and the only unanswerable argument for Christianity is a Christian life. No man can disregard a religion and a faith and a power which is able to make bad men good. . .

The Christian idea of 'putting on Christ' is the whole of Christianity.

Being a Christian is not just about following commandments: it is about letting Christ take possession of our lives and transform them.

Holiness is not the way to Christ. Christ is the way to holiness.

The Hebrew will turn Christian; he grows kind.

A friend asked the author,"If this conversion you speak about is truly supernatural, and why is it not more evident in the lives of so many Christians that I know?

Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good. The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior. Too many people have walked away from the church, not because they’re walking away from Jesus, but because the church has walked away from Jesus.

Now is the time to Start a Normal Christian Life!

Even the disciples of Jesus all fled from their master's cross. Christians who do not have the feeling that they must flee the crucified Christ have probably not yet understood him in a sufficiently radical way.

The heart of the Christian faith is Good News, not good advice, good technique, or good behavior.

Christians are directed to have faith in Christ, as the effectual means of obtaining the change they desire.

Today we need whatever methods or help we can receive to allow the Christian message to take us to a deeper level of transformation.

I was raised Catholic and now I am a Christian and follow of the Lord Jesus Christ. I made the change because the Holy Spirit revealed a truth to me.

If a person claims to have met Jesus without being changed then they have not met the real Jesus.