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. Many of the characters who appear in the pages of the Fourth Gospel are literary creations of its author and were never intended to be understood as real people, who actually lived in history. var ue_furl = "fls-na.amazon.com"; googletag.pubads().setTargeting("signedin", "false"); All you can do is define the human experience of God, and that might be delusional. apstag.init({ "https:" : "http:") + 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. For the reformation to work, Spong said creeds can no longer be used to bring Christians together. Prayer is being present, sharing love, opening life to transcendence. 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 Spong 1 Mother Nature is not sweet. If that is a requirement of my commitment to Jesus, I . 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. We must move beyond the now irrelevant dualistic patterns and discover the holy at the heart of the human. I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. "There is no longer Jew nor Greek. gads.async = true; })(); An Episcopal court ruled that homosexuality was not counter to its principles in 1996, and the church recognized same-sex marriages in 2015.[4]. As I look at the history of religion, I observe that new religious insights always and only emerge from the old traditions as they begin to die. February 7, 2019 You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.' John Shelby Spong/ freedom Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. 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. Incarnation will never give us that.. You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. He has also lectured at universities, conference centers, and churches in North . " John Shelby Spong 83. That's the thing we've got to get out from under. And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I'd be away every day of my life." -- John Shelby Spong #Accepted #Invitations "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. 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. A liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator, and author, he called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. 30 Quotes By "John Shelby Spong" For People Who Know Exactly How It Feels To Be Cheated On.The best 30 Quotes Of "John Shelby Spong" That Will Help Through Your Entire Damn Life. 14 "John Shelby Spong" Quotes And Sayings. The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, p.12, Harper Collins. ! Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. That is a paradigm shift of the first order. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I don't think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures. The God of the Hebrews is a God that human language, we're not even supposed to speak the holy name. (function() { window.csa("Events")("setEntity", { John Shelby Spong Quotes. There is no longer Jew nor Greek. That is not within the capacity of the human mind to embrace the nature of God.. } catch (err) { Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years. . 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. try { 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. function getCookieWithoutJQuery(name) { googletag.cmd.push(function() { var ue_mid = "A1PQBFHBHS6YH1"; 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. May your reign come. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture . And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose. They amuse themselves by playing an irrelevant ecclesiastical game called "Let's Pretend." The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. No one can finally say. He began by admitting he still has no way of knowing who or what God is. The Christian story did not drop from heaven fully written. "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. We've murdered them; we've burned them at the stake; we've run them out of town for something over which they have no control. Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. //]]> 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. I hope I am not ungracious if in return I remark that I do not think that a single NT author would recognize Spong's Jesus as the figure being proclaimed or written about. The Bible has lost every major battle it has ever fought. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. The tour coincided with Hollingworth leaving the diocese to become the Governor-General of Australia. 'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); Copyright 2018 Chautauqua Institution
I think that's not only tough, but ultimately disappointing to most people. 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. The Rt. setDisplayBids: function() {}, I prepare for death by living. The church is like a swimming pool. Spong said the only way his mission can be successful is if his mantra is carried out without any set of boundaries. Rev. Why dont we understand that? 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. Steve has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. googletag.pubads().enableAsyncRendering(); "Events.Namespace": "csa", Oh the Christian church has encouraged enormous immaturity among the peoples who are its primary adherence. It caused his followers to regard his teaching as worthy of being preserved. According to The Episcopal Diocese of Newark, Bishop Spong suffered a stroke before a speaking engagement in Marquette, Michigan, on Saturday, September 10, 2016. As far as we know, a creaturewho can: define life, contemplates its beginning, anticipates its termination and raise the question of its meaning, is a rare thing, he said. 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. Giving It All Quotes Page 34 Part 2 of the giving it all quotations list about premature-birth and baby-shower sayings citing John Shelby Spong, Eve Ensler and Milo Ventimiglia captions Now, the fourth gospel says that the moment that Jesus is glorified is the moment he's put to death on the cross, not the resurrection. [25] The notice was announced by the St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Spong had once been rector.[26][27]. //]]> V. Gene Robinson was able to publicly thank the man he said are the shoulders on which (Robinson) stands.. Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. 1. So I ask you where hope is located, and you say, "You can't locate it.". To me, neither option is worth pursuing. John Shelby Spong I Am 21st Century Child Am "I believe that God is very real. Shelby Harris. Top John Shelby Spong Quotes. 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. I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people. Let's pretend that we possess the objective truth of God in our inerrant Scriptures or in our infallible pronouncements or in our unbroken apostolic traditions. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension. 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. When the Gospel of Luke was being written, the Holy Spirit fell upon the disciples of Jesus and all the world. He is also Bishop of Newark in New Jersey [Ed. var stylesheet = document.createElement("link"); 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.. if (sourcesToHideBuyFeatures[i] == source) stylesheet.type = "text/css"; The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. John Shelby Spong is an American retired bishop of the Episcopal Church. 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. And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I'd be away every day of my life. John Shelby Spong Related Authors He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952. [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. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson he's considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both . 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. All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. It has been a wonderful trip, and I am sad it is coming to an end.. 12 Vaganova Ballet Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991), Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words), Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998), A New Christianity for a New World (2001), The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic (2013). I want to say something positively, something about the conclusion that I presently hold and bear witness to why I continue to be a member of this community.. I don't think so. If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. And thats immoral. I never really liked the Gospel of John because I never could find the humanity of Jesus in it. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. I don't think much about my physical body going off into the long, green fairways of Heaven to play golf. From 1979 to 2000, he was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. [22] Following Spong's death, Tooley told The Washington Times that "he [Spong] claimed that he was making religion relevant for a new generation who could not believe in the supernatural, often citing his daughters. q("f", arguments) } }; Spong said this means human division must disappear. The Christians tried to separate themselves from the Jewish crowd so they wouldn't be the recipients of the persecution of the Romans. John Shelby "Jack" Spong (June 16, 1931 - September 12, 2021) was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church. } Every day we present the best quotes! It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. John Shelby Spong Quotes. In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as heresy in the churches. I believe that God is very real. With the passing of retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong in September 2021, the movement known as Progressive Christianity has lost one of its most revered writers. 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. There is no one who has been braver and ready to take whatever came his way for saving the truth., At 2 p.m. on Thursday, June 28, in the Hall of Philosophy, Spong, retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, discussed Matthew, his mantra and his legacy during his last lecture of the week and his career, titled Universalism: The Future of Christianity and Why I Remain a Christian, for Week Ones interfaith theme, Producing a Living Faith Today?, Todays the day, Spong said. No religion does that. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. Spong proffers a third way, one that involves being "fully human." We are not really separated from God, he asserts. "[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. He was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey from 1979 to 2000. John Shelby Spong Was Judas Iscariot a figure of history? And I dont mind saying that I dont invalidate any of those paths. With the need for constant evolution in mind, Spong created his personal mantra. (function () { fetchBids: function() { [18], During a speaking tour in Australia in 2001, Spong was banned by Peter Hollingworth, the Archbishop of Brisbane, from speaking at churches in the diocese. 51. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("surface", "mw"); "My mind, my integrity, my intellectual questioning, and my God-experience all come together in this new image. There are more than 14 quotes written by John Shelby Spong on our site. I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile. // 12:34 ), `` sons of vipers '' ( Matt knowing who or what God a. Of heaven to play golf we 've got to get out from.. Can not say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created it is book! ; john Shelby Spong 1 Mother nature is not about the divine becoming human so as! 'S youth group and in my church 's youth group and in my university student group invite others to.! 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