"I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God"
About this Quote
Spong smuggles a radical theology into a sentence that sounds almost pastoral. By defining God as “anything” that awakens “worth and dignity,” he refuses the usual job description: a supernatural manager who rewards, punishes, and polices belief. The line is less a creed than a reorientation of power. God stops being an external authority and becomes a name we give to experiences and movements that make human beings harder to degrade.
The intent is deliberately destabilizing. Spong, an Episcopal bishop famous for challenging literalist Christianity, is taking aim at a church culture that has too often treated shame as a sacrament. If your image of God makes people smaller - guilt-ridden, afraid, obedient to the right gatekeepers - then, in Spong’s calculus, that image fails the only test that matters. He shifts the burden of proof: religion must justify itself by what it does to human dignity.
The subtext is political without ever saying “politics.” “Begins to give” hints at process and liberation, the slow unlearning of internalized contempt. It also places sacredness in the ordinary: therapy, art, activism, friendship, education, even a long-overdue apology can function as “God” when they restore someone’s sense of self.
Context matters: Spong spoke from the late-20th-century mainline crisis, with rising fundamentalism, culture-war Christianity, and growing public disaffiliation. His answer isn’t retreat or dogmatic hardening; it’s a wager that the divine, if it’s worth the name, is recognizable by its human consequences.
The intent is deliberately destabilizing. Spong, an Episcopal bishop famous for challenging literalist Christianity, is taking aim at a church culture that has too often treated shame as a sacrament. If your image of God makes people smaller - guilt-ridden, afraid, obedient to the right gatekeepers - then, in Spong’s calculus, that image fails the only test that matters. He shifts the burden of proof: religion must justify itself by what it does to human dignity.
The subtext is political without ever saying “politics.” “Begins to give” hints at process and liberation, the slow unlearning of internalized contempt. It also places sacredness in the ordinary: therapy, art, activism, friendship, education, even a long-overdue apology can function as “God” when they restore someone’s sense of self.
Context matters: Spong spoke from the late-20th-century mainline crisis, with rising fundamentalism, culture-war Christianity, and growing public disaffiliation. His answer isn’t retreat or dogmatic hardening; it’s a wager that the divine, if it’s worth the name, is recognizable by its human consequences.
Quote Details
| Topic | God |
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