I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people.
John Shelby SpongI know Jerry [Falwell] fairly well, and he's probably not bright enough to recognize all of the implications of what he said.
John Shelby SpongThe God understood as a father figure, who guided ultimate personal decisions, answered our prayers, and promised rewards and punishment based upon our behavior was not designed to call anyone into maturity.
John Shelby SpongIt appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different.
John Shelby SpongI was raised pretty much a fundamentalist, but the one thing that fundamentalism gave to me was the love for that book and a commitment to read and study it. The difficulty is that I've read it all, I didn't skip around, I read it all, and when you read it all, you can't take it literally because you don't want to blame God for a lot of stuff that occurs in that book. There are some pretty violent scenes.
John Shelby Spong