The Fogg Lecture Series > Rev. John S. Spong
 The preeminent voice for liberal Christianity, John Shelby Spong, 70, was the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement last year. His admirers acclaim his legacy as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary lay person— he's considered a champion of an inclusive faith by many both inside and outside the Christian church.
His challenges to the church have also made Bishop Spong the most vilified of modern clergyman. The target of hostility, fear, and death threats, he has been called anti-Christ, hypocrite and the devil incarnate. In what may come as a surprise to his critics, his new book , A New Christianity for a New World, is a statement of Christian faith and love for the church. Calling himself " a joyful, passionate, convinced believer in the reality of God," he seeks not to create a new religion, but to reform the church he loves. "I am a Christian and will go to my grave as a member of this household of faith," he writes.
Bishop Spong challenges the church to move with him, convinced that if the church remains where it is now, the Christian faith will die. "I hold steadfastly to the truth of the assertion first made by Paul that 'God was in Christ'," he says. He yearns for the reformation, he says, so that his grandchildren too can say, "God is real to me, and Jesus is my doorway into this reality."
Since his retirement, Bishop Spong has taught at Harvard University, where he delivered the William Belden Noble lectures; and at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. In demand as a lecturer around the world, Bishop Spong just completed a tour to the U.K., Europe, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where he delivered lectures based on his new book to standing-room only crowds.
Bishop Spong is the author of several bestselling books which have sold more than 650,000 copies combined, including Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and Here I Stand, a memoir of his journey to the reasoned, loving Christianity he has preached for decades.
Bishop Spong has received numerous honors, including being named Quatercentenary Scholar by Cambridge University in 1992 and Humanist of the Year in 1999. His extensive media experience includes appearances on "60 Minutes," "Good Morning America," "Fox News Live," "Politically Incorrect," "Larry King Live," "The O'Reilly Factor," William F. Buckley's "Firing Line," and "Extra."
Bishop Spong lives with his wife, Christine Mary Spong, in Morris Plains, NJ.
On Tuesday, September 18, 2001 The Rev. John Shelby Spong, retired Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, NJ, spoke at First Parish Church of Norwell. The lecture topic was "A New Christianity for a New World."
Passages from Bishop Spong's books
Bishop John Shelby Spong
1. A major function of fundamentalist religion is to bolster deeply insecure and fearful people. This is done by justifying a way of life with all of its defining prejudices. It thereby provides an appropriate and legitimate outlet for one's anger. The authority of an inerrant Bible that can be readily quoted to buttress this point of view becomes an essential ingredient to such a life. When that Bible is challenged, or relativized, the resulting anger proves the point categorically. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism, (San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 5.]
2. What the mind cannot cannot believe the heart can finally never adore. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism, (San Fransisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 24.]
3. Biblical higher criticism is preserved in the particular enclave of academic Christian scholarship and is thought to be too unfruitful to share with the average pew-sitter, for it raises more questions than the church can adequately answer. So the leaders of the church would protect the simple believers from concepts they were not trained to understand. In this way that ever-widening gap between academic Christians and the average pew-sitter made its first appearance. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 12.]
4. At its very core the story of Easter has nothing to do with angelic announcements or empty tombs. It has nothing to do with time periods, whether three days, forty days, or fifty days. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 12.]
5. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long- range future of anyone. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 99.]
6. I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 237.]
7. If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus' resurrection, also is not believable. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (San Fransisco: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 238.]
8. The best way to lose all is to cling with desperation to that which cannot possibly be sustained literally. Literalistic Christians will learn that a God or a faith system that has to be defended daily is finally no God or faith system at all. They will learn that any god who can be killed ought to be killed. Ultimately they will discover that all their claims to represent the historical, traditional, or biblical truth of Christianity cannot stop the advance of knowledge that will render every historic claim for a literal religious system questionable at best, null and void at worst. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of Newark, NY, in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? pg. 22]
9. Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. 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 a illusion because reality has proved to be too difficult. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Both are doomed as viable alternatives for the long-range future of anyone. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of Newark, NY, in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? pg. 99]
10. They amuse themselves by playing an irrelevant ecclesiastical game called Let's Pretend. 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. [Bishop John Shelby Spong, Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of Newark, NY, in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? pg. 100]
11. 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. Have these people simply not read the text? Are they hopelessly misinformed? Is there a different Bible? Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and naivete? [Bishop John Shelby Spong]
|
