You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you dont have any freedom left, or youre going to build a world that doesnt create terrorists and that means a whole different way of getting along.. Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. window.csa("Config", { Part 2 of the all things quotations list about every-one and in-its-entirety sayings citing Jay Baruchel, David Frum and David Frum captions. var cookiePair = cookie.split('='); I do not live in a world where people can walk on water, or still a storm, or take five loaves of bread and feed 5000 men plus women and children. The author made sure that it was understood as a universal happening, Spong said. I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth. He was 90. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. John Shelby Spong Life, Want, Reason, Normal Generate image Prayer is entering into the pain or joy of another person. In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as heresy in the churches. He is as radically liberal as it is possible to be and still maintain a nominal identification with the name "Christian.". I thought it presented Jesus as a visitor from another planet; in addition, Johns gospel is and has been interpreted as a document that fuels anti-Semitism in the church. I believe that is what the God experience does for us. I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, p.12, Harper Collins. [9], A prominent theme in Spong's writing was that the popular and literal interpretations of Christian scripture are not sustainable and do not speak honestly to the situation of modern Christian communities. The Bible was written between 3,000 and 2,000 years ago, and it's filled with the knowledge that people had in that period of time, some of which you and I rejected long ago. That is not within human competence. } catch (err) { I am content to learn from them and to walk with them side by side toward the God who lives, I believe, beyond the images that bind and blind us. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile. var source = getCookieWithoutJQuery("source"); I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. It is the book that is most often used at Christian funerals. I am trying to understand what it means to be a Christian without being religious. www.huffingtonpost.com. return true; googletag.cmd = googletag.cmd || []; _Q: [] The way you become divine is to become wholly human. It's a group of essays by mostly womanly scholars looking at Matthew's gospel through feminists' eyes - very exciting. If you look at history, every nation that has operated as if it spoke for God has become violently destructive. I do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be. Weekly mailing, September 5, 2007. for(var i=0; i Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. Spong said this means human division must disappear. a[a9]._Q.push([c, r]) node.parentNode.insertBefore(gads, node); He believed that theism had lost credibility as a valid conception of God's nature. Chapter seven begins with quotations from the Pauline Epistles, including Gal 5:12, "I wish those who unsettle you would mutilate themselves", Col 3:22, "Slaves, obey in everything those who are your earthy masters, not with eye service, as men pleasers, but in singleness of heart", and from 1 Cor 14:35, "It is shameful for a woman to speak in "Q&A on The Parliament of the World's Religions," weekly mailing, 2007-SEP-05, as reported on. I prepare for death by living. We do not have to literalize their words to perceive their meaning or their intention to join in the singing of their creedal song. "CacheDetection.RequestID": "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY", I call this God by different words. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is what Jesus meant and thats what the original Christ experience was, before we became Scripture defenders, and before the creeds became the essence of our faith.. John Shelby Spong has long been known as the "nightmare" of the more conservative element of the Anglican Church in America. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose. Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. If you're really thinking prayer can stop rockets or bullets, you have to ask why some people do get hit by rockets or bullets. Jerry Falwell says, on Pat Robertson's program, that the reason we got attacked on 9/11 is that we were accommodating the ACLU and abortion and homosexuals and feminists in America, so God smacked us down. Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark's gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all. The primary reason the old idea of rescuing the fallen is no good is that there never was a time when we fell from perfection into sin. "https:" : "http:") + In 2000, Spong was a critic of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church's declaration Dominus Iesus, because it reaffirmed the Catholic doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church and that Jesus Christ is the one and only savior for humanity. I live on the other side of Copernicus and Galileo; I can no longer conceive of God as sort of above the sky, looking down and keeping record books. I do not think so. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile. "The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the. The final address of this week, the final address in Chautauqua, the final addressof my life. q("i", arguments) I do not think so. Last edited on 13 September 2021, at 21:11, "Why We Must Reclaim The Bible From Fundamentalists", https://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=John_Shelby_Spong&oldid=3004716. "Christ must be served in every person," he said. The Bible tells me that every life is holy; the Bible tells me that every life is loved; the Bible tells me that every life is called to be all that it can be. From 1979 to 2000, he was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("author", [45659]); V. Gene Robinson was able to publicly thank the man he said are the shoulders on which (Robinson) stands.. 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