Education Quote by John Shelby Spong

Spong’s line weaponizes a truth polite religion prefers to deny: conflict is often the price of movement. As a clergyman who spent decades prying open Anglican Christianity to women’s leadership, LGBTQ inclusion, and a less literal Bible, he knew that “getting places” rarely comes from being universally admired. It comes from picking the fights that reveal what you actually stand for.

The genius of “the right enemies” is its double edge. It’s not a call to be quarrelsome; it’s a diagnosis of how institutions defend themselves. In churches, opposition isn’t accidental background noise. It’s a sorting mechanism. If your “enemies” are the gatekeepers of a brittle orthodoxy, their outrage becomes a kind of credential: proof you’ve touched the live wire. Spong is also puncturing the naïve fantasy that moral seriousness looks like consensus. When you challenge the sacred cows, you don’t just gain critics; you gain visibility, clarity, and, paradoxically, leverage.

There’s also a quiet self-protection in the phrasing. He doesn’t say you get places by having the right friends, because friends can abandon you when the heat rises. Enemies, on the other hand, are reliable; they keep showing up, sharpening your message by forcing you to articulate it against resistance.

In the late-20th-century culture wars, “right enemies” reads like a survival guide for reformers: choose your antagonists carefully, because they will define your public identity as much as your allies do.