Faith & Spirit Quote by John Shelby Spong

Spong’s move is a neat act of rhetorical judo: he indicts religion’s most familiar defense mechanism - exclusivity - as the very thing that corrupts it. Coming from a clergyman, it lands like an insider’s confession rather than an outsider’s sneer. He isn’t dismissing faith as childish or irrational; he’s separating the human need for meaning from the institutional need for monopoly. The verb “prove” matters. It frames absolutism not as serene conviction but as anxious performance, a brittle project that requires enemies to look coherent.

Calling that turn “demonic” is deliberately provocative, and it’s also strategic. Spong borrows the tradition’s own moral vocabulary to prosecute the tradition’s worst habits. “Demonic” doesn’t mean “supernatural villain” so much as “the moment a sacred story starts feeding on fear.” It’s a theological term used psychologically: when certainty becomes a hunger that must be satisfied by control.

The historical roll call - wars, persecutions, heretics at the stake - is not there as a cheap horror montage. It’s a reminder that ideas about truth are never merely private; they become policy, law, and violence once a community is convinced it has divine permission to coerce. The subtext is contemporary: swap “stake” for social exclusion, legislation, or online crusades and the pattern persists. Spong’s broader project as a liberal Christian bishop was to argue that Christianity can survive only if it relinquishes the demand to be the sole gateway to reality. The quote’s sting is that he treats pluralism not as polite tolerance but as a spiritual safeguard against tyranny.