[7] Spong was the cousin of the United States Senator from Virginia William B. Spong Jr. There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrowminded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. John Shelby Spong Related Authors "Events.SushiEndpoint": "https://unagi.amazon.com/1/events/com.amazon.csm.csa.prod", 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension. "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of the Rt. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed. So I ask you where hope is located, and you say, "You can't locate it.". This self-denigration stuff - Jesus died for my sins - is nothing but a guilt message. People always like to have a good time and laugh, and, [among] the vast majority of the seven billion people on this earth, one thing that we all have in common is at some . The Bible tells me that every life is holy; the Bible tells me that every life is loved; the Bible tells me that every life is called to be all that it can be. It is not by pitching the old insights out but by journeying deeply through them into new visions that we are able to change religion's direction. No religion does that. node.parentNode.insertBefore(gads, node); Those ideas are absurd. I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. John Shelby Spong is an influential public speaker, writer and media figure. The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. No religion does that. " We walk into the mystery of God; we do not define that mystery. I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth. That is not within the capacity of the human mind to embrace the nature of God.. During Chautauquas nine-week summer season, the, Iconic Chita Rivera to provide Chautauquans with one of final Amp performances in 22, Incoming pastor Rt. Some people think prayer is telling God what to do. if (window.ue && window.ue.tag) { window.ue.tag('author:quotes:signed_out', ue.main_scope);window.ue.tag('author:quotes:signed_out:mobileWeb', ue.main_scope); } I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. Tweets by @chqdaily "//securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/tag/js/gpt.js"; [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. I don't think much about my physical body going off into the long, green fairways of Heaven to play golf. You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. It opens up all sorts of things that I've never thought about. Papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy are the two ecclesiastical versions of this human idolatry. He is representative of a stream of thought with roots in the medieval universalism of Peter Abelard and the existentialism of Paul Tillich, whom he called his favorite theologian. When the dust settles and the pages of history are written, it will not be the angry defenders of intolerance who have made the difference. By popular demand, here are his conservations with Tapestry from 2007 and 2009. 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. 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. John Shelby Spong (16 June 1931 - 12 September 2021) Introduction. window.Mobvious = {}; " John Shelby Spong 84. I think religion in general and Christianity in particular must always be evolving. Incarnation will never give us that.. 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. Are they people who God just didn't like? I don't see Jesus as rescuing the fallen; I see Jesus as expanding the potential of life. Matthew was not alone in his understanding of Jesus message. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("resource", "author_45659"); 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. John Shelby Spong 25. Gate tickets and other revenue cover only a portion of the cost of your Chautauqua experience. 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. Bishop John Shelby Spong (1931-2021) One of the Episcopal Church's most controversial liberal bishops, whom IRD frequently critiqued, has died. var ue_t0=window.ue_t0||+new Date(); God Is Real. ", Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. A liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator, and author, he called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines.[1]. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world. googletag.pubads().enableSingleRequest(); Spong, Resurrection . Part 2 of the part time quotations list about odd-job and salaried sayings citing John Shelby Spong, Rob Lowe and Keith Ellison captions. Are they hopelessly misinformed? " Live life to it's fullest, love wastefully, and be all we can be. Rather "we are part of what God is and we are at one with all that God is." We. I thought it presented Jesus as a visitor from another planet; in addition, Johns gospel is and has been interpreted as a document that fuels anti-Semitism in the church. He is also Bishop of Newark in New Jersey [Ed. What I'm 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 don't think so. I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people. The more deeply I can be all that I can be, the more I can make God visible.. No one can finally say. It calls us beyond our limits into the fullness of life - into a capacity to love people we are not taught to love - and into an ability to be who we are. I mean the kind of love that never stops to calculate, never stops to wonder whether the object of its love is worthy to its recipient. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. Our motto is: Don't quote it if you can't source it. 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. It meant to go beyond the boundaries of your religion, to go beyond your security system, to go beyond your fears. I'm a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly . 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. . _Q: [] He sees himself against nature. If you're really thinking prayer can stop rockets or bullets, you have to ask why some people do get hit by rockets or bullets. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. apstag.init({ Steve is an accomplished poet and social media expert based in Brooklyn, New York. if(cookiePair[0] === name) { Jerry Falwell says, on Pat Robertson's program, that the reason we got attacked on 9/11 is that we were accommodating the ACLU and abortion and homosexuals and feminists in America, so God smacked us down. But before he talked too much about the end, he went back to the Jewish roots of Matthews Gospel. John Shelby Spong 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. var url; a[a9]._Q.push([c, r]) And that's where it turns demonic. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. "ObfuscatedMarketplaceId": "A1PQBFHBHS6YH1" And I dont mind saying that I dont invalidate any of those paths. Favorite John Shelby Spong Quotes. "ebfg_email", "ebfg_sms"]; It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. 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. } else { All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. 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. My religious schizophrenia is at an end. 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. Robinson, who is the first openly gay priest to be elected bishop in Christendom, attributes the opportunity he had to serve as a leader in the church to Spong, who he said supported LGBT rights before it was popular. And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrow-minded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. }, If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. To me, neither option is worth pursuing. The Christian story did not drop from heaven fully written. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("gr_author", "false"); Spong said this means human division must disappear. window.Mobvious.device_type = 'mobile'; 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. There are more than 14 quotes written by John Shelby Spong on our site. 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. We must move beyond the now irrelevant dualistic patterns and discover the holy at the heart of the human. 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.. Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. Jesus becomes the captive of the hysterically religious, the chronically fearful, the insecure and even the neurotic among us, or he becomes little more than a fading memory, the symbol of an age that is no more and a nostalgic reminder of our believing past. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. 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. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. var googletag = googletag || {}; Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. If you begin to give people hope that there is a brighter future, there is a new tomorrow, then the people who were yesterdays terrorists become tomorrows elected officials and theyre part of the system. Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you dont have any freedom left, or youre going to build a world that doesnt create terrorists and that means a whole different way of getting along.. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. 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. Are they people who no one prayed for? function(a9, a, p, s, t, A, g) { Is there a different Bible? // [CDATA[ ! Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. "[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. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. googletag.pubads().disableInitialLoad(); How divine is the message that says for your finite failings you will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. As a retired bishop, he was a member of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops. 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. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. Oh the Christian church has encouraged enormous immaturity among the peoples who are its primary adherence. (wikipedia) Born On June 16, 1931. Spong described his own life as a journey from the literalism and conservative theology of his childhood to an expansive view of Christianity. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. -- John Shelby Spong #Giving "I go where I'm invited. It has been a wonderful trip, and I am sad it is coming to an end.. 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. Weve murdered them; weve burned them at the stake; weve run them out of town for something over which they have no control. 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. Can not say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created what to do particular must be. ) [ 0 ] ; Oh this age john shelby spong quotes heavenly ascension that finally exit this world a..., original sin or divine rescue who have not found in institutional religion a God big to. 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