And the way they did it was to say, the Jews killed our hero too. If I were a child of Tibet or of Arabia, I suspect the path I'd walk would be the Buddhist path or the Muslim path. God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. About us. In addition, she is a rising senior at The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism in Phoenix, Arizona, where she most recently served as a breaking news reporter for The Arizona Republic, as well as a documentary producer for Arizona PBS. googletag.enableServices(); By popular demand, here are his conservations with Tapestry from 2007 and 2009. throw new Error("could not load device-specific stylesheet : " + err.message); All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. Let me say that I consider myself a deep believer in the reality of God. Both papal infallibility and biblical inerrancy require widespread and unchallenged ignorance to sustain their claims to power. Weekly mailing, September 5, 2007. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. 14 "John Shelby Spong" Quotes And Sayings. No religion does that. It meant go beyond the boundaries that you directed in your biologically driven search for survival.. All we can ever say is how we believe we have experienced God, doing our best to dispel our human delusions. 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. '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 call this God by different words. Spong proffers a third way, one that involves being "fully human." We are not really separated from God, he asserts. He retired in 2000. Why dont we understand that? So I ask you where hope is located, and you say, "You can't locate it.". 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. [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. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("author", [45659]); function(a9, a, p, s, t, A, g) { I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. Because as he becomes self-conscious, he's no longer part of nature. Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. He believed in a more nuanced approach to scripture, informed by scholarship and compassion, which can be consistent with both Christian tradition and contemporary understandings of the universe. var url; 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. It grew and developed year by year over a period of forty-two to seventy years. googletag.pubads().disableInitialLoad(); I do not live in a world where people can walk on water, or still a storm, or take five loaves of bread and feed 5000 men plus women and children. It has not only to do with erasing human divisions, but about revitalizing our most cherished beliefs.. No one can finally say. Steve has a Bachelor's degree in creative writing from Farieligh Dickinson University and has contributed to many literary and cultural publications. There's an awful lot of biblical ignorance, and the church perpetuates that ignorance. John Shelby Spong People, History, Real, Understood Generate image The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. 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. Christianity has always been an evolving story. Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark's gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. 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. He sees himself against nature. Paul tried to explain to the Galatians what it meant to put on Christ in the verse that reads, For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.. Rev. God Is Real. It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. Spong said this means human division must disappear. I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. It opens up all sorts of things that I've never thought about. I was baptized as an infant. 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." It's just not easy enough to say that I pray and God will accomplish. "[24], Spong died in sleep at his home in Richmond, Virginia, on September 12, 2021, at the age of 90. Give us today tomorrow's bread. 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. var node = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; 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. Ibid., p. 288. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. John Shelby Spong, whose books have sold more than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. In the way that God brought oneness out of diversity, wholeness out of brokenness and eternity out of time, Spong realized the version of faith he wanted to spread. function isShowingBuyableFeatures() { It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension. I call this God by different words. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. You can't sing "Amazing Grace" without reminding yourself that the reason God's grace is amazing is it saves a wretch like you. "Walking into the Mystery of God" by John Shelby Spong, www.uua.org. John Shelby Spong has long been known as the "nightmare" of the more conservative element of the Anglican Church in America. 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. It meant to go beyond the boundaries of your religion, to go beyond your security system, to go beyond your fears. He called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines. 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. There is no longer male nor female. There was new openness to the supernatural. He was also a professor of Divinity at the General Theological Seminary in New York City from 1980 until his retirement . var sourcesToHideBuyFeatures = ["ebfg_gr", "ebfg_fb", "ebfg_fbm", "ebfg_tw", page: {requestId: "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY", meaningful: "interactive"} shortquotes.blog 1,000,000++ Short Quotes } _Q: [] 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. Prayer is entering into the pain or joy of another person. stylesheet.rel = "stylesheet"; } But I'm not fighting as the man he knew today, as a Gold. October 13, 2011. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Spong described his own life as a journey from the literalism and conservative theology of his childhood to an expansive view of Christianity. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("gr_author", "false"); I was married before the church's altar; trained at the church's seminaries, ordained deacon and priest at age 24. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. The Rt. Spong's calendar had him lecturing around the world. 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. // fetchBids: function() { He received his Master of Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1955. a[a9]._Q.push([c, r]) We must move beyond the now irrelevant dualistic patterns and discover the holy at the heart of the human. And this came after I had written a book called "Living In Sin" on the whole gay. var ue_id = "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY"; 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. There is a mistake in the text of this quote. Jesus exhorted people to love their enemies and to pray for their persecutors (Matt. For the reformation to work, Spong said creeds can no longer be used to bring Christians together. The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. "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. I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. I'm interested in penetrating the meaning of certainty. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. "CacheDetection.RequestID": "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY", Even in the widest variety of our humanity, in our deepest set of beliefs, there is no outcast in this community, he said. The Bible says that women are property, that homosexuals ought to be put to death, that anybody who worships a false God ought to be executed, that a child that talks back to his parents ought to be stoned at the gates of the city. A = p.createElement(s); } I learned early in life that you get places by having the right enemies. "The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the. 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. The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, p.12, Harper Collins. John Shelby Spong Quotes 1. var e = document.createElement("script"); e.src = "https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41mrkPcyPwL.js"; document.head.appendChild(e); return null; var source = getCookieWithoutJQuery("source"); 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. 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. That's sort of fourth-century Christianity that got turned into doctrines and dogmas that we've never been able to escape. That is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual. I believe that God is very real. The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel. A I don't think you can locate God or define God. An Episcopal court ruled that homosexuality was not counter to its principles in 1996, and the church recognized same-sex marriages in 2015.[4]. Tweet. session: { id: "242-2972433-4130551" }, John Shelby Spong Quotes. 12 Vaganova Ballet Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation. I believe God is real, but I believe God calls me beyond myself to take responsibility for my life and to try top work to allow other people to be themselves and to take responsibility for their lives. [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. if (a[a9]) return; Is there a different Bible? [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. If that is a requirement of my commitment to Jesus, I . It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story. John Shelby Spong is an American retired bishop of the Episcopal Church. Chautauqua Institution is a non-profit organization, dependent upon your gifts to fulfill its mission. JOHN SHELBY SPONG: The first homosexual person that I ordained knowingly was a man named Robert Williams. The final address of this week, the final address in Chautauqua, the final addressof my life. When charting a new reformation, we must engage in a task of getting even deeper into the vision of universalism, he said. [8], Spong's writings rely on Biblical and non-Biblical sources and were influenced by modern critical analysis of these sources (see especially Spong, 1991). John Shelby Spong is an influential public speaker, writer and media figure. Most of the noise comes from the shallow end. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. url = "https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/mobile/phone_images-9e9093f0cfddba8c2b1e815375d976a3.css"; 25:30)? John Shelby Spong 2 I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. John Shelby Spong Quotes. [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 was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. Define but I do n't want it upheld to the detriment of other people whole gay Seminary New! Toward the mystery of God did it was to say, the final addressof my life passed... 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Guilt, original sin or divine rescue gay john shelby spong quotes lesbian people is no longer be used to bring Christians.... Enemies and to pray for their persecutors ( Matt for gay and lesbian people is no longer of.

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