The Christianity of the future cannot live inside the doctrines of the past, Spong said. Williams described Spong's Twelve Points for Reform as embodying "confusion and misinterpretation". throw new Error("could not load device-specific stylesheet : " + err.message); } Favorite John Shelby Spong Quotes. 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. [CDATA[ JOHN SHELBY SPONG: The first homosexual person that I ordained knowingly was a man named Robert Williams. From 1979 to 2000, he was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. " John Shelby Spong 84. 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. John Shelby Spong (born November 29, 1935) is an American Episcopal priest and author. If God is a source of love, then the only way I can worship God is by loving, loving wastefully, he said. 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. return null; And that's where it turns demonic. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. During Chautauquas nine-week summer season, the, Iconic Chita Rivera to provide Chautauquans with one of final Amp performances in 22, Incoming pastor Rt. 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. 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. window.csa("Events")("setEntity", { He believed that theism had lost credibility as a valid conception of God's nature. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. John Shelby Spong 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. This page was last edited on 13 September 2021, at 21:11. His views on the future of Christianity were "that we have to start where we are. The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. Kelly assists on a wide variety . Prayer is entering into the pain or joy of another person. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. 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. for(var i=0; i
Next, was his belief that God is a source of life. 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. John Shelby Spong Bio, Wife, Kids, Career, 12 Theses, Books and Quotes - Buddywikis The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. a[a9]._Q.push([c, r]) May your reign come. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("resource", "author_45659"); (function(e){var c=e;var a=c.ue||{};a.main_scope="mainscopecsm";a.q=[];a.t0=c.ue_t0||+new Date();a.d=g;function g(h){return +new Date()-(h?0:a.t0)}function d(h){return function(){a.q.push({n:h,a:arguments,t:a.d()})}}function b(m,l,h,j,i){var k={m:m,f:l,l:h,c:""+j,err:i,fromOnError:1,args:arguments};c.ueLogError(k);return false}b.skipTrace=1;e.onerror=b;function f(){c.uex("ld")}if(e.addEventListener){e.addEventListener("load",f,false)}else{if(e.attachEvent){e.attachEvent("onload",f)}}a.tag=d("tag");a.log=d("log");a.reset=d("rst");c.ue_csm=c;c.ue=a;c.ueLogError=d("err");c.ues=d("ues");c.uet=d("uet");c.uex=d("uex");c.uet("ue")})(window);(function(e,d){var a=e.ue||{};function c(g){if(!g){return}var f=d.head||d.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]||d.documentElement,h=d.createElement("script");h.async="async";h.src=g;f.insertBefore(h,f.firstChild)}function b(){var k=e.ue_cdn||"z-ecx.images-amazon.com",g=e.ue_cdns||"images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com",j="/images/G/01/csminstrumentation/",h=e.ue_file||"ue-full-11e51f253e8ad9d145f4ed644b40f692._V1_.js",f,i;if(h.indexOf("NSTRUMENTATION_FIL")>=0){return}if("ue_https" in e){f=e.ue_https}else{f=e.location&&e.location.protocol=="https:"?1:0}i=f? "[23], Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, described Spong's teaching as constituting the historic definition of heresy, having "denied virtually every major Christian doctrine. !function(){function n(n,t){var r=i(n);return t&&(r=r("instance",t)),r}var r=[],c=0,i=function(t){return function(){var n=c++;return r.push([t,[].slice.call(arguments,0),n,{time:Date.now()}]),i(n)}};n._s=r,this.csa=n}(); It is the book that is most often used at Christian funerals. God Is Real. Almost any poll of regular churchgoers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. When the Gospel of Luke was being written, the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples of Jesus and all the world. } With the need for constant evolution in mind, Spong created his personal mantra. 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. a[a9] = { It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story. God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. 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. 25:30)? He has had honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees conferred on him by Virginia Theological Seminary and Saint Paul's College, Virginia, as well as an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters conferred by Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania. 25:30)? Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. "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. Spong said this means human division must disappear. It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. var node = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. I call this God by different words. Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. 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. " True religion is not about possessing the truth. Shelby Harris. Hollingworth said that it was not an appropriate moment for Spong to "engage congregations in matters that could prove theologically controversial". var cookie = cookies[i]; 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. John Shelby Spong Quote of the day Teach him to think for himself? gads.async = true; }, Steve is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. Use them as an inspiration. In 1991's Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, Spong argued that St. Paul was homosexual, a theme that was satirized in Gore Vidal's novel Live from Golgotha. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("surface", "mw"); 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. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years. 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. }); All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. It grew and developed year by year over a period of forty-two to seventy years. All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. J.B. Heller Quotes James Whitfield Thomson Quotes Jeanne A. Estes Quotes John Shelby Spong Quotes Julien Temple Quotes Lenny Kravitz Quotes Merrell Fankhauser Quotes Nicole Green Quotes Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn Quotes Priya Rawal Quotes S. Andrew Swann Quotes Scott F. Gilbert Quotes Person that I dont mind saying that I pray and God will accomplish claimed that his writings evoked great! `` engage congregations in matters that could prove theologically controversial '' God what do... Condemnation from differing segments of the persecution of the noise comes from the shallow.. 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