In the first gospel, Mark, the risen Christ appears physically to no one, but by the time we come to the last gospel, John, Thomas is invited to feel the nail prints in Christ's hands and feet and the spear wound in his side. When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. - John Shelby Spong. shortquotes.blog 1,000,000++ Short Quotes The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, p.12, Harper Collins. In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches. John Shelby Spong was the Episcopal bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000. John Shelby Spong Quotes. googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); He believed that theism had lost credibility as a valid conception of God's nature. I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. I just go beyond them. Prayer is not adult letters written to Santa Claus, and God is not some parent-like figure up in the sky who's going to take care of us. October 13, 2011. John Shelby Spong 2 I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. A.async = !0; John Shelby Spong is an influential public speaker, writer and media figure. I can only give away the love that I have received. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. He is as radically liberal as it is possible to be and still maintain a nominal identification with the name "Christian.". Are they people who God just didn't like? In addition, she is a rising senior at The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Phoenix, Arizona, where she most recently served as a breaking news reporter for The Arizona Republic, as well as a documentary producer for Arizona PBS. //]]> var ue_sid = "242-2972433-4130551"; Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. 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. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of the Rt. Williams described Spong's Twelve Points for Reform as embodying "confusion and misinterpretation". Weekly mailing, September 5, 2007. 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. I could not believe that anyone who has read this book would be so foolish as to proclaim that the Bible in every literal word was the divinely inspired, inerrant word of God. According to The Episcopal Diocese of Newark, Bishop Spong suffered a stroke before a speaking engagement in Marquette, Michigan, on Saturday, September 10, 2016. He received his Master of Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1955. Chautauqua Institution is a non-profit organization, dependent upon your gifts to fulfill its mission. _Q: [] Spong was born in North Carolina in 1931. The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years. So I ask you where hope is located, and you say, "You can't locate it.". init: function() { Have these people simply not read the text? The sin of Christianity is that any of us ever claimed that we had somehow captured eternal truth in the forms we had created. It is the book that is most often used at Christian funerals. He claims he is a Christian yet he champions causes that historic Christianity has often . In the first gospel, Mark, the risen Christ appears physically to no one, but by the time we come to the last gospel, John, Thomas is invited to feel the nail prints in Christ's hands and feet and the spear wound in his side. if (window.csa) { Because as he becomes self-conscious, hes no longer part of nature. } I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. John Shelby Spong Related Authors As a leading spokesperson for an open, scholarly, and progressive Christianity, Bishop Spong has taught at Harvard and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. 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 "Jack" Spongis a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church. [25] The notice was announced by the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Spong had once been rector.[26][27]. "Application": "GoodreadsMonolith", If God is the ground of being, then the only way I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that I can be, Spong said. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. By contrast, Phillip Aspinall, the Primate of Australia, invited Spong in 2007 to deliver two sermons at St John's Cathedral, Brisbane. Praying and living deeply, richly and fully have become for me almost indistinguishab le. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies. He held visiting positions and gave lectures at major American theological institutions, most prominently at Harvard Divinity School. What Im trying to do is develop a language that will enable us to talk about God beyond the, what I think, are sterile categories of theism and atheism. q("f", arguments) 1. All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. Recipient of many awards, including 1999 Humanist of the Year,[6] Spong was a contributor to the Living the Questions DVD program and was a guest on numerous national television broadcasts (including The Today Show, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, Dateline, 60 Minutes, and Larry King Live). I know rather that the sun, around which my planet Earth revolves, is a middle sized star in a galaxy called the Milky Way that has over a hundred billion other suns or stars within it. Q & A for 2-14-2013 electronic newsletter, A New Christianity For a New World, Last edited on 15 February 2023, at 00:06, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, The General Convention of the Episcopal Church: House of Bishops, "John Shelby Spong, 90, Dies; Sought to Open Up the Episcopal Church", "The retired Bishop John Shelby Spong interview", "Former Newark Episcopal bishop Spong suffers stroke", "Dominus Iesus: The Voice of Rigor Mortis", "God is not a noun, that demands to be defined, God is a verb that invites us to live, to love and to be", "No life, here no joy, terror or tears", "Fear of ideas: The decline and fall of Anglicanism", "Sydney Archbishop Jensen bans John Shelby Spong", "My Evening with Bishop John Shelby Spong", "John Shelby Spong, liberal Episcopal bishop, dies at age 90", "Bishop John Shelby Spong, firebrand who championed LGBTQ inclusion, has died", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Shelby_Spong&oldid=1139405551, This page was last edited on 15 February 2023, at 00:06. Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. I rather experience God as the source of life willing me to live fully, the source of love calling me to love wastefully and to borrow a phrase from the theologian, Paul Tillich, as the Ground of being, calling me to be all that I can be. It's like that crazy man down in Alabama who wanted to put the Ten Commandments in his courtroom. I believe that I live my life every day inside the reality of this God. 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. I operate with an emotional fearlessness, and I really feel music; I really feel songs. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. John Shelby Spong Quotes 1. [15], New Testament Catholic scholar Raymond E. Brown was critical of Spong's scholarship, referring to his studies as "amateur night". Are they people who no one prayed for? I'm a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly . It is not by pitching the old insights out but by journeying deeply through them into new visions that we are able to change religion's direction. 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. This self-denigration stuff - Jesus died for my sins - is nothing but a guilt message. } catch (err) { Contents 1 Quotes 1.1 Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991) 1.2 Resurrection: Myth or Reality? John Shelby Spong passed away at his home in North Carolina according to an announcement from the Richmond, Virginia parish he once pastored. Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. "[2], Spong served as rector of St. Joseph's Church in Durham, North Carolina, from 1955 to 1957; rector of Calvary Parish, Tarboro, North Carolina, from 1957 to 1965; rector of St. John's Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, from 1965 to 1969; and rector of St. Paul's Church in Richmond, Virginia, from 1969 to 1976. Rather "we are part of what God is and we are at one with all that God is." We. The 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. He was 90. It opens up all sorts of things that I've never thought about. My experience is my ability to perceive God, but the nature of God is beyond my ability to describe., The same thing is true of Christianitys fundamental doctrine, known as the Incarnation., That doctrine makes Jesus not unlike the comic strip character Clark Kent who turned out to be Superman in the skies, he said. www.huffingtonpost.com. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination. I was baptized as an infant. He calls for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines. "The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the. As the smell of incense filled the air, I knelt before three images of the Buddha, feeling that the smoke could carry my prayers heavenward. [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 way you become divine is to become wholly human. Now, that job belongs to everyone in the Christian faith who wishes to carry out his vision to fruition. I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being." John Shelby Spong Life Love God Day "Mother Nature is not sweet." And thats immoral. } ! The tour coincided with Hollingworth leaving the diocese to become the Governor-General of Australia. setDisplayBids: function() {}, The Bible is full of dreadful things. V. Gene Robinson was able to publicly thank the man he said are the shoulders on which (Robinson) stands.. I think one of the things we've got to look out for is human beings claiming that they know how God operates. 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