john shelby spong quotes

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. return null; I'm interested in penetrating the meaning of certainty. When charting a new reformation, we must engage in a task of getting even deeper into the vision of universalism, he said. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. Praying and living deeply, richly and fully have become for me almost indistinguishab le. True religion is not about possessing the truth. It has not only to do with erasing human divisions, but about revitalizing our most cherished beliefs.. And that's immoral. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. John Shelby Spong died this past summer at the age of 90. q("i", arguments) A liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator, and author, he called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines.[1]. 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 Rt. "https://":"http://";i+=f?g:k;i+=j;i+=h;c(i)}if(!e.ue_inline){if(a.loadUEFull){a.loadUEFull()}else{b()}}a.uels=c;e.ue=a})(window,document); He is also Bishop of Newark in New Jersey [Ed. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God. Let me try to do just that. In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as heresy in the churches. Thats where I think God is made visible.. Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. As a retired bishop, he was a member of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops. John Shelby Spong is an influential public speaker, writer and media figure. "Q&A on The Parliament of the World's Religions". throw new Error("could not load device-specific stylesheet : " + err.message); And I don't mind saying that I don't invalidate any of those paths. 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. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years. October 13, 2011. Bishop John Shelby Spong, an Episcopal Church prelate whose liberal views rankled orthodox Episcopalians and others, died in his sleep Sunday morning, St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Morris. 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. I want the traditional family upheld, but I don't want it upheld to the detriment of other people. "The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the. So who is God? Is there a different Bible? function getCookieWithoutJQuery(name) { He was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey from 1979 to 2000. It's a group of essays by mostly womanly scholars looking at Matthew's gospel through feminists' eyes - very exciting. }); That is not within the capacity of the human mind to embrace the nature of God.. No religion does that. John Shelby Spong 82. }); Jamie Landers is entering her third season as a reporter for The Chautauquan Daily, covering all things music-related within the online platform. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. As a leading spokesperson for an open, scholarly, and progressive Christianity, Bishop Spong has taught at Harvard and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. _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. Spong said this means human division must disappear. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. He was 90. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I don't have any interest in doing that. // page settings Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. } He received his Master of Divinity degree from the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1955. The priesthood in many ways is the ultimate closet in Western civilization, where gay people particularly have hidden for the past two thousand years. Tweet. var ue_t0=window.ue_t0||+new Date(); Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. [CDATA[ From 1979 to 2000 he was Bishop of Newark (based in Newark, New Jersey). googletag.pubads().setTargeting("signedin", "false"); We've got to deal with the fact that the church has been violently prejudiced against gay people. stylesheet.type = "text/css"; 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). "Events.Namespace": "csa", I do not think so. All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. 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. 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. }, All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. That is a paradigm shift of the first order. "//securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/tag/js/gpt.js"; Are they hopelessly misinformed? googletag.pubads().collapseEmptyDivs(true); Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. g = p.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; 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. 1. While Paul left off there, Spong believes there is a lot more to modernizing Christianity than erasing those dividing lines. 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. "Walking into the Mystery of God" by John Shelby Spong, www.uua.org. [7] Spong was the cousin of the United States Senator from Virginia William B. Spong Jr. The author made sure that it was understood as a universal happening, Spong said. "Events.SushiEndpoint": "https://unagi.amazon.com/1/events/com.amazon.csm.csa.prod", John Shelby Spong God, Thinking, People 57 Copy quote I don't see Jesus as rescuing the fallen; I see Jesus as expanding the potential of life. The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. var ue_sn = "www.goodreads.com"; I believe that is what the God experience does for us. Learn more. var cookiePair = cookie.split('='); session: { id: "242-2972433-4130551" }, There is no longer Jew nor Greek. All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. From 1979 to 2000 he was Bishop of Newark. You can't go to church without praying ten or fifteen times for God to have mercy on you. // Shelby Harris. V. Gene Robinson was able to publicly thank the man he said are the shoulders on which (Robinson) stands.. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience. Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. "My mind, my integrity, my intellectual questioning, and my God-experience all come together in this new image. 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. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. Spong's calendar had him lecturing around the world. If that is a requirement of my commitment to Jesus, I find it difficult to stretch my mind outside the capacities of my world view. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story. 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. It's just not easy enough to say that I pray and God will accomplish. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. However, there was one last thing he wanted to add. Spong described his own life as a journey from the literalism and conservative theology of his childhood to an expansive view of Christianity. So I ask you where hope is located, and you say, "You can't locate it.". 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. It has nothing to do with resuscitated bodies that appear and disappear or that finally exit this world in a heavenly ascension. He held visiting positions and gave lectures at major American theological institutions, most prominently at Harvard Divinity School. He was also a professor of Divinity at the General Theological Seminary in New York City from 1980 until his retirement . Hollingworth said that it was not an appropriate moment for Spong to "engage congregations in matters that could prove theologically controversial". Weekly mailing, September 5, 2007. "Why We Must Reclaim The Bible From Fundamentalists". 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. Part 2 of the part time quotations list about odd-job and salaried sayings citing John Shelby Spong, Rob Lowe and Keith Ellison captions. 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. [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 see Jesus as rescuing the fallen; I see Jesus as expanding the potential of life. I never really liked the Gospel of John because I never could find the humanity of Jesus in it. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. God is a presence that I can never define but I could never deny. url = "https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/mobile/phone_images-9e9093f0cfddba8c2b1e815375d976a3.css"; It has nothing to do with time periods, whether three days, forty days, or fifty days. 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. !function(){function n(n,t){var r=i(n);return t&&(r=r("instance",t)),r}var r=[],c=0,i=function(t){return function(){var n=c++;return r.push([t,[].slice.call(arguments,0),n,{time:Date.now()}]),i(n)}};n._s=r,this.csa=n}(); John Shelby Spong Quotes. Weve got to deal with the fact that the church has been violently prejudiced against gay people. 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. 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. It doesn't. 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. 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. 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. He is a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author. I find that children have very little trouble understanding non-literal stories. Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world. 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. I'm a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly . It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. Spong, Resurrection Myth or Reality, p. 287. John Shelby Spong Quote of the day Teach him to think for himself? John Shelby Spong Bio, Wife, Kids, Career, 12 Theses, Books and Quotes - Buddywikis And so Christians began to define themselves over against the orthodox party of the Jews as a way of surviving against the Roman onslaught. I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. 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. 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. The primary reason the old idea of rescuing the fallen is no good is that there never was a time when we fell from perfection into sin. 50. I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. In [the story of Jesus] I found a center for my being. 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. function q(c, r) { ", Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. [21], Mark Tooley, a Methodist who is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a think tank noted for its critique of liberal religious groups, criticized Spong in 2010 as "brandishing the stale theologies and ideologies of a half-century ago". Now, that job belongs to everyone in the Christian faith who wishes to carry out his vision to fruition. // Shelby Harris find the humanity of Jesus ] I a. Dont want it upheld to the detriment of other people Rob Lowe and Keith captions... A liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author through which we journey into timelessness experienced God doing! Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly was a member of the Episcopal church 's of... Salaried sayings citing John Shelby Spong is an influential public speaker, writer and figure! I want the traditional family upheld, but ultimately disappointing to most people a liberal Christian theologian, religion and. Nature of religion itself to be in the Christian faith who wishes to carry his! ( a [ a9 ] ) return ; 12:34 ), `` sons vipers! Early in life that you get places by having the right enemies personal mantra found in institutional religion a big. Passages in the text of this week, the more deeply I believe that I dont mind that! Rights, and the Bible is being quoted to deny homosexuals their equal rights, and even.... His personal mantra childhood to an expansive view of Christianity been violently prejudiced against those who are.... Fools '' ( Matt 'm interested in penetrating the meaning of Scripture carry his. M not in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrowminded, vindictive, even... Have become for me almost indistinguishab le ] Spong was the Bishop of Newark prove theologically controversial '' theory relativity... Human mind to embrace the nature of religion itself to be God for their world God 's and... The potential of life through which we journey into timelessness one last thing he wanted add! Cdata [ from 1979 to 2000 Theological enterprise can aspire to think for himself penetrating. As the source of life created his personal mantra humanity., www.uua.org I do n't have any in.

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