} At 82, retired and enjoying life, Bishop John Shelby Spong doesn't have to be the liberal enfant terrible whose pronouncements for gay rights and against traditional dogmas once . It is because of that early work that he did and all of the work that built on it that lets me wear a purple shirt today, said Robinson, who currently serves as Chautauquas vice president of religion and senior pastor. 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. g = p.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; John Shelby Spong Related Authors A lot of people hear me attacking their certainty. var gptAdSlots = gptAdSlots || []; His great-great-grandfather had emigrated to America from Kent, though the family name may . }, I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. And this came after I had written a book called "Living In Sin" on the whole gay. var googletag = googletag || {}; If God is the ground of being, then the only way I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that I can be, Spong said. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. From 1979 to 2000 he was Bishop of Newark. So if God is a source of life, then the only way I can appropriately worship God is by living fully.. Use them as an inspiration. Is there a different Bible? The more deeply I can be all that I can be, the more I can make God visible.. Learn more. He retired in 2000. 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. 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. The creeds were 3rd- and 4th-century love songs that people composed to sing to their understanding of God. //= 2; // retina display John Shelby Spong was the Episcopal bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000. Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. I don't see Jesus as rescuing the fallen; I see Jesus as expanding the potential of life. John Shelby Spong I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. It meant go beyond the boundaries that you directed in your biologically driven search for survival.. Every day we present the best quotes! return cookiePair[1]; googletag.pubads().setTargeting("signedin", "false"); Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. As a retired bishop, he was a member of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops. My sense is if the Episcopal Church can't stand challenge within its own ranks, then it is not a church I would want to be a member of anyway. It is the book that is most often used at Christian funerals. 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. "[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. var node = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; 51. It doesn't. Introducing John Shelby Spong the Rt. 25:30)? 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.. 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. node.parentNode.insertBefore(gads, node); Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. All you can do is define the human experience of God, and that might be delusional. var cookiePair = cookie.split('='); 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 do not think so. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story. The way you become divine is to become wholly human. 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. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. That's the thing we've got to get out from under. "The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the. . It is love that loves not because it has been earned. How tasteless and ill-bred it is! url = "https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/mobile/phone_images-9e9093f0cfddba8c2b1e815375d976a3.css"; 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. 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. I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. In a 2013 interview, Spong credited the Anglican bishop John Robinson as his mentor in this journey and said reading Robinson's writings in the 1960s led to a friendship and mentoring relationship with him over many years. if (isRetina) { Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. })(); I describe God as the source of life and the source of love and the ground of being. "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. "Events.SushiEndpoint": "https://unagi.amazon.com/1/events/com.amazon.csm.csa.prod", John Shelby "Jack" Spong (June 16, 1931 - September 12, 2021) was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church. throw new Error("could not load device-specific stylesheet : " + err.message); Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. And I have no reason to abandon it because it leads to where I want to go. That is not within human competence. return true; A = p.createElement(s); Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers. if(cookiePair[0] === name) { setDisplayBids: function() {}, If you look at history, every nation that has operated as if it spoke for God has become violently destructive. Almost any poll of regular churchgoers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. John Shelby Spong (born November 29, 1935) is an American Episcopal priest and author. We do not have to literalize their words to perceive their meaning or their intention to join in the singing of their creedal song. 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. I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. And the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and the Bible will lose. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way. If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. }); John Shelby "Jack" Spong (June 16, 1931 September 12, 2021) was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church. Ibid., p. 288. BrainyQuote has been providing inspirational quotes since 2001 to our worldwide community. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. window.csa("Events")("setEntity", { I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. (1994) 2 External links Quotes [ edit] 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. Weve got to deal with the fact that the church has been violently prejudiced against gay people. //
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