All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. No one can do that, Spong said. John Shelby Spong. He was a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author. John Shelby Spong was born on June 16 1931 at Charlotte, North Carolina, the elder of two boys. }; var source = getCookieWithoutJQuery("source"); Most of the noise comes from the shallow end. if (window.ue && window.ue.tag) { window.ue.tag('author:quotes:signed_out', ue.main_scope);window.ue.tag('author:quotes:signed_out:mobileWeb', ue.main_scope); } [CDATA[ When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. Spong's calendar had him lecturing around the world. var cookiePair = cookie.split('='); And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I'd be away every day of my life. Christianity has always been an evolving story. John Shelby Spong 27. Previously, she recapped the Chautauqua Lecture Series in 2019 and the Interfaith Lecture Series in 2018. By popular demand, here are his conservations with Tapestry from 2007 and 2009. Incarnation will never give us that.. apstag.init({ "https://":"http://";i+=f?g:k;i+=j;i+=h;c(i)}if(!e.ue_inline){if(a.loadUEFull){a.loadUEFull()}else{b()}}a.uels=c;e.ue=a})(window,document); Chautauqua Institution is a non-profit organization, dependent upon your gifts to fulfill its mission. The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. It doesn't. Gate tickets and other revenue cover only a portion of the cost of your Chautauqua experience. The sin of Christianity is that any of us ever claimed that we had somehow captured eternal truth in the forms we had created. Elaborating on this last idea, he affirmed that Jesus was adopted by God as his son (Born of a Woman 1992), and he says that this would be the way God was fully incarnated in Jesus Christ. Our English language really says if you're not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience. He was the eleventh Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, New York from 1988 until 2000. John Shelby Spong Quotes. 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). The ultimate meaning of the Bible escapes human limits and calls us to a recognition that every life is holy, every life is loved, and every life is called to be all that that life is capable of being. When charting a new reformation, we must engage in a task of getting even deeper into the vision of universalism, he said. Spong said this means human division must disappear. If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. John Shelby Spong Was Judas Iscariot a figure of history? The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("surface", "mw"); In a 2013 interview with Religion News Service, Spong spoke about his own spirituality and beliefs, which he said had grown deeper as he aged. 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. window.Mobvious = {}; [CDATA[ googletag.pubads().setTargeting("sid", "osid.a1fff312af8a1d2b3b241fa9193829a2"); !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)? A = p.createElement(s); There's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance. Prayer is being present, sharing love, opening life to transcendence. John Shelby Spong I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. 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. session: { id: "242-2972433-4130551" }, They amuse themselves by playing an irrelevant ecclesiastical game called "Let's Pretend." setDisplayBids: function() {}, Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people! The biblical texts that we Christians have used for centuries to justify our hostility toward the Jews need to be banished forever from the sacred writings of the Christian church. John Shelby "Jack" Spongis a retired American bishop of the Episcopal Church. Every day we present the best quotes! } "Why We Must Reclaim The Bible From Fundamentalists". You can't have a world where 50 percent of the people are dieting and 50 percent of the people are starving if you want stability. John Shelby Spong People, History, Real, Understood Generate image The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. In 2005, he wrote: "[I have] immerse[d] myself in contemporary Biblical scholarship at such places as Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Yale Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School and the storied universities in Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge. })(); Plenty of people out there think of me as the Antichrist or the devil incarnate because I do not affirm the literal patterns of the Bible. You cant have a world where 50 percent of the people are dieting and 50 percent of the people are starving if you want stability. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter. 25:30)? }, Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. The creeds were 3rd- and 4th-century love songs that people composed to sing to their understanding of God. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. There are more than 14 quotes written by John Shelby Spong on our site. Spong claimed that his writings evoked both great support and great condemnation from differing segments of the Christian church. I believe that is what the God experience does for us. googletag.pubads().disableInitialLoad(); He calls for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines. I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication. Thats where I think God is made visible.. 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. According to Spong, when Matthew said to go and make disciples of all nations, he placed words in the mouth of the risen Jesus. Our English language really says if youre not a theist, the only alternative is to be an atheist. If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. From this perspective, all human claims to possess objectivity, certainty, or infallibility are revealed as nothing but the weak and pitiable pleas of frantically insecure people who seek to live in an illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult. He called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines. Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. I experience God as the source of life calling me to live fully and thus to respect life in every form as embodying the holy. 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. " John Shelby Spong 84. return false; God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. // 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. "Whatever it was that people experience in Jesus has today come to be identified with medieval doctrines based on premodern assumptions that are no longer believable. [25] The notice was announced by the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Spong had once been rector.[26][27]. I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. God is also a source of love, Spong said. I was married before the church's altar; trained at the church's seminaries, ordained deacon and priest at age 24. When I stand in the presence of this God who inhabits the heart of life, I know just why I define myself as a joyful . Are they people who no one prayed for? The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel. } I operate with an emotional fearlessness, and I really feel music; I really feel songs. Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. The Bible says that women are property, that homosexuals ought to be put to death, that anybody who worships a false God ought to be executed, that a child that talks back to his parents ought to be stoned at the gates of the city. That is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. 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. googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); During Chautauquas nine-week summer season, the, Iconic Chita Rivera to provide Chautauquans with one of final Amp performances in 22, Incoming pastor Rt. googletag.cmd.push(function() { Our motto is: Don't quote it if you can't source it. John Shelby Spong 2 I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. "ObfuscatedMarketplaceId": "A1PQBFHBHS6YH1" if (window.Mobvious === undefined) { Hollingworth said that it was not an appropriate moment for Spong to "engage congregations in matters that could prove theologically controversial". From 1979 to 2000, he was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. 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 I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path Id walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. var googletag = googletag || {}; Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. if (a[a9]) return; It grew and developed year by year over a period of forty-two to seventy years. I spend my life studying that book, and every book I've written has in some sense been a book about the Bible, and that's what I mean by reclaiming its value and its essence for a world that no longer treats it literally and no longer reads it traditionally. I believe that God is very real. Tweets by @chqdaily Rev. Bishop John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal Church prelate whose liberal views rankled orthodox Episcopalians and others, died in his sleep Sunday morning, St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Morris. I was confirmed as an adolescent; I was active in my church's youth group and in my university student group. I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. if(cookiePair[0] === name) { 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. var ue_id = "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY"; And this came after I had written a book called "Living In Sin" on the whole gay. He was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey from 1979 to 2000. Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. //