. } You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. The Christianity of the future cannot live inside the doctrines of the past, Spong said. The former Episcopal Bishop of Newark (N.J.) has been writing for years for those he calls "believers in exile," people who feel like modern versions of Christianity demand blind faith and require adherents to check their brains at the door. Some people think prayer stops bullets or rockets or land mines. About us. 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. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. No one can do that, Spong said. 23:17). "Application": "GoodreadsMonolith", 50. 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. 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. ! 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 you can do is define the human experience of God, and that might be delusional. I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); George Stroumboulopoulos. When Im asked to define God, Im almost wordless. From 1979 to 2000, he was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. }; Rather "we are part of what God is and we are at one with all that God is." We. I was married before the church's altar; trained at the church's seminaries, ordained deacon and priest at age 24. True religion is not about possessing the truth. He claims he is a Christian yet he champions causes that historic Christianity has often . John Shelby Spong (2009). Rev. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Terrorism is a real despair. It was for me a holy moment for I was certain that I was kneeling on holy ground.I will not make any further attempt to convert the Buddhist, the Jew, the Hindu or the Moslem. !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}(); All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. 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. 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." I believe that is what the God experience does for us. [Religion News Service] Retired Newark Bishop John Shelby Spong, a bestselling author and cleric known for his progressive theology and his support of LGBTQ+ clergy in The Episcopal Church, has died. }, No religion does that. [25] The notice was announced by the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Spong had once been rector.[26][27]. 25:30)? googletag.pubads().setTargeting("author", [45659]); 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. - John Shelby Spong. 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And that's where it turns demonic. })(); I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. Are they hopelessly misinformed? The reward will go to those who dared to step outside the safety of their privacy in order to expose and rout the prevailing prejudices. It opens up all sorts of things that I've never thought about. for(var i=0; i