John Shelby Spong New Christianity:

John Shelby Spong

New Christianity: The Ministry of John Shelby Spong"

In a recent bible debate/commentary specifically associated with the issue of sexuality and literal bible translation John Shelby Spong a much revered member of what some call the New Christianity, Spong notes: "I don't see the bible as the word of God, I see the word of God as that which I hear through the words of the bible." ("Spong on Paul" NP) to explain this statement Spong tries to stress that the literal translation of the bible and many issues and acts within it are a reflection of the tribal upbringing or the adolescence of humanity and that learning from this document is imperative as both a lesson of what to do and a lesson of what not to do. Spong's message is that the bible has been taken to mean that it is a fixed assessment of the reality of humanity and God's love, and in reality as many "New Christians" point out there is no such message, and the importance of the document as Jay Bakker (the self proclaimed punk preacher and son of Jim Bakker and Tami Faye Messner) states, is the "red letters." Or those words that are most accurately edified as the actual words of Jesus, whose message is unanimously associated with the unconditional love of God and the forgiveness that he is capable of. ("Punk Preacher holds judgment" NP) Though as of yet, Jay Bakker has not come out as strongly as Spong on many issues he does agree with him on the fact that judgment is a destructive aspect of the human condition. Jay is frequently sighted as saying things like, do your best to love each other and love the Lord but "come as you are, not as you should be." (Bakker & Brown NP)

The message of Spong's ministry and his calling can be summed up in these statements as Spong has unilaterally stressed that the problem with Christianity has always been and remains to be a vision of a God and as scripture that is simply to small. For this Spong has frequently been a victom of hatred and expulsion. To some this is seen as the church cleaning house while to others it is seen as the valuable expression of a particular message of Jesus. "Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for their's is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." ("Holy Bible KJV" Mat: 5:10, 11,12) These words are by the way, red letter words, and are said by Jesus as the core of his ministry of the Sermon on the Mount. Though some may argue that bearing false witness does not constitute that which should be protected by the love of Jesus, and yet Spong, nonetheless endures, as a beacon of the teaching of patience, tolerance and the every loving and forgiving God. One writer describes Spong and the other "new Christians" as having a new idea of a broader god, one that is inclusive of possibility, rater than restriction and limitation.

God cannot be neatly separated from the world, or marshalled into a corner of reality marked 'formal religion'. Nor is God's work kept alive by organisations acting in God's name. God is much larger than our organisations, and the divine work and mission far exceeds the boundaries of any institutional aspiration or religious assumption. This message needs to be sent to the institutions loudly and clearly, and it is heartening to see Bishop John Shelby Spong, 165 among others, engaged in precisely this kind of work. Spong challenges the churches with this important corrective, 'Your God is too small'. Apparently, Spong pinned this notice to the doors of churches in his area in New Jersey. If the traditional churches are dying, it is partly because their image of God is too narrow, too small and too human. Some think that because traditional practices are diminishing God is being diminished by this process. This represents a narrowly human and anthropocentric perspective on the experience of God. What may be falling into decline is an out-of-date image of God that Tacey 195) "has held God away from life, and thus withheld life and vitality from God. Religion has a responsibility to expand its sense of mission and relate more fully to the world."

Tacey 196)

The ministry of Spong has often revolved around his preaching of tolerance, with regard to homosexuality. Spong has in fact been an instrumental force in the acceptance of openly gay parishioners and even ministers in his own Episcopal faith.

Spong 48) in an observational statement from his autobiographical work Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love, and Equality, Spong writes extensively of homosexuality and really personal choice in general.

Where cultural acceptance was present, homosexuality emerged from the shadows and expressed itself quite creatively. Where cultural opposition and persecution were heavy, homosexuality tended to be repressed, denied, and deeply closeted. (Spong 316)

What is clear is that Spong is repeatedly brought to bear for these words and actions regarding this hot button topic but his message is so much broader than this single idea of acceptance and the greater love of God. His message and his calling have been to challenge the strict ideas of the faith as one that has allowed itself to pass judgment, when it is clear that this is not the work of man.

On the very first page of Spong's work, is an interesting commentary on human judgment. In the text are a series of extreme responses to Spong's writings, in one he is hailed as having "less integrity than a whore," because even whores appreciate their clients, and Spong accepts a wage (as a minister) while at the same time constantly challenging and affronting the Christian faith (in the opinion of some) and in another statement Spong is worshipped for his candor and strength and even called a prophet. Spong's point in leading the reader of his book into his autobiography this way is to stress to his many readers that opinions and receptions to his ministry have almost always been extreme. From very early in his ministry Spong found it his calling to make faith relevant. In so doing he assumes that his extreme reception in the world was born. To Spong the source of his love/hate relationship with the public can be sources directly to the fact that he calls upon people, with sometimes very extreme espousing of opinion, i.e. "Paul was a repressed homosexual," ("Spong on Paul," NP) to bring to the public the necessity to deal with the present. The issues that are plaguing the world are real and they are in need of address and they very much include questions and answers that many people would simply choose to ignore, if they were given the choice.

Spong takes a very strong stand on prayer, as well, and in his book one can see that the demands of the thinking preacher were extreme, but you can also see that through this crisis of faith Spong demonstrated or at least illuminate one of his core values as a minister and a thinker. "I would address this issue in the way I had learned to address all other issues-I would walk into it and through it; I would never again seek to ignore the problem or dodge the questions." (Spong 191-192) the diologue with self, that makes up the passages of the work, explain that on a visit to a very sick friend/parishioner Spong and the terminally ill woman had had a deep meaningful conversation that transcended the postures of their particular social positions. When Spong rose to leave, he instinctively asked his friend if she would like him to say a prayer with her, she agreed and the prayer was said. At the close of the prayer Spong realized that the prayer had simply been an expression of expectation and the that the words of the prayer were much less meaningful than the conversation had been between these two unmasked people. This was just after he took the position as the Bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal diocese of Newark, New Jersey, a position he held for just over 20 years. The scene left him wondering if the deep meaningful conversation was actually the prayer and the prayer was simply, "empty God talk." (Spong 191-192) What transpired was a crisis of faith that left him believing as one commentator puts it that prays are; "adult letters to Santa Claus." (Tooley 45) Spong's point though satirized by Tooley, a strong critic of Spong, is that unless prayers are meaningful and honest they have little meaning and that praying is an empty act. (Spong 191-192)

Like many other issues, prayer is one he has faced head on, and it is an issue that is topical and relevant to many people today, as revivals for faith and prayer occur all over the nation in an ebb and flow of social and cultural opinion. As Spong has closed his career as a formal minister, retiring from the bishop position in 2000 have has become even more controversial than ever before:

Spong believes in a transcending reality at "the very heart of life" that presses toward life and wholeness. He describes God as the "Ground of Being" and "universal presence" that undergirds all life and is present in all that is. He regards heaven as a symbol standing for "the limitlessness of Being itself," describes Jesus as "a God presence" whose burning awareness of God made him a doorway to divine reality, and believes that the divine source of life calls human beings to live fully, love wastefully, and have the courage to be. Spong describes his project in classic liberal terms -- walking the "razor's edge between orthodox overbelief and losing the 'Christ experience'..."I do so not because I reject the church, but because I am convinced that if we stay where the church now is, the faith that we profess as Christians will surely die. The floods of creedal distortion have destroyed our fields, contaminated our groundwater, and made our faith-assertions of yesterday unlivable places for us today. No matter how deeply we fear to move, there is no alternative." (9)

Dorrien 456)

Dorrien also offers one of the most concise and enduring contextual summary of just how extreme Spong has been in his prolific writing career.

Spong's books specialize in provocative assertion. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (1991) suggested that Paul was a repressed, guilt-ridden homosexual. Born of a Woman (1992) suggested that the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke were constructed to refute the charge that Jesus was illegitimate, stressed that all virgin birth stories are legends, and speculated that Jesus might have been married to Mary Magdalene. Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (1994) noted that Paul and Mark made no case for a physical resurrection of Jesus, argued that Matthew didn't either, and highlighted the discrepancies in the gospel resurrection narratives.

Dorrien 456)

Having been received by his reading public, in the same sort of love hate relationship he had always had on the more personal aspects of scripture, Spong moved discuss even more core issues of faith and Christianity, i.e. putting the bible in context of its time, as a work of Jewish faith steeped in tradition and Liberating the Gospels (1996) interpreted the gospels as deeply Jewish liturgical works organized on the model of the Jewish liturgical year, showed that the synoptic passion narrative relies heavily on Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, and contended that Luke is dependent on Deuteronomy.

Dorrien 456)

One of his final works, put him in a sense over the top of tolerable for many Christians as he claimed the faith is based upon a system of belief and practice that is almost if not entirely outdated and ridiculous and that if the faith does not change it will likely fade away.

Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998) asserted that the church's ancient creeds "have become empty and meaningless to this generation because the way we perceive the shape of reality has changed so dramatically." The virgin birth story is refuted by the eighteenth century discovery of the egg cell, the spatial imagery of the ascension story makes no sense after Copernicus and Galileo, and the Bible abounds with unbelievable miracle stories.

Dorrien 456)

To a very large degree, Spong demonstrates the ability and nerve to effectively ask questions and challenge long held beliefs of the nature of faith, tradition and the way one should dissect the faith from tradition and build itself anew.

Spong insists that he writes out of his faith commitment as a Christian, not to create controversy: "But where this faith has been corrupted into literalized propositional statements, I have become its exposer and its critic. I have come to see the controversy that ensues not as negative and not even as destructive to the church. I regard it rather as a positive sign of health and vitality. It represents a faith tradition in ferment, simultaneously dying and being resurrected." (8)

Dorrien 456)

Spong is a strong and adamant exposer of fundamentalism and of falling back on traditions that have no relevance to the present day or the current state of the world. His beliefs about the reality of God are anti-theist to say the least but worth expressing even to the most conservative of his opponents,

It is not the human description of the reality of God that is important and must be protected. Human descriptions, no matter how deeply sanctified by the passage of time, are not reality.... [R]eality itself... can only be pointed to; it can never be captured by human words." (300) His book [Liberating the Gospel]...is a radical reconstruction of the Gospel story, viewing all but Jesus's life and death as efforts by the first (Jewish) Christians to find "the means to process this experience [the 'primal experience of Easter'] adequately." Ibid., p. 308.

Lesnick 173-174)

Again the outspoken preacher states his sentiment about the reality of God and even theism:

The God of the biblical story has become inoperative," Spong recently announced. "Theism became all but irrelevant with laws of cause and effect that governed the natural universe." He says he is trying to save the church by making it relevant but admits that if Christianity were to fade away, "I don't think it would be a disaster."

Tooley 45)

Spong has never been silenced in his expression of opinion, but these words spoken after his 2000, retirement are clearly an example of how his opinions are building even more controversial steam now that he is no longer wearing the official robes of the church.

Tooley, again a strong critic of Spong in fact intones that Spong's ministry and official position as a bishop of the Episcopal church made him the voice that he has become.

What has made Spong unique and successful are three things. He is a bishop in the...prestigious Episcopal Church. His message is focused around homosexuality at a time when cultural leaders are intent on exploding any assumptions of a normal or natural sexual order. and, unlike most liberal church leaders, he does not pretend to be a nice man. Spong does not waste time employing the buzzwords of full inclusion and mutual tolerance. He thinks traditional religious people are neurotic, stupid and "immature" -- and he does not hesitate to say so.... Last fall, Spong addressed the annual conference of the "Jesus Seminar" an association of clergy and academics who are as collectively media-savvy...gaining attention for their "discoveries" about what no longer is valid in the Christian faith....united against a common enemy: the God of the Bible. "A supernatural deity who lives beyond the sky watching over this planet keeping a record book for final judgment and periodically invading the earth has become unbelievable," Spong told an applauding crowd. "The security found in the Christian tradition that we are in possession of divine truth revealed directly by this theistic God in either Scripture or tradition has been obliterated." Spong was not diplomatic. "The whole Christian enterprise is tottering," he insisted

Tooley 45)

Though one must read between the lines of Tooley's scathing endijtment of Christion revisionism and Christian academia, the statements made by Spong are worth repeating, and the extreme distaste Tooley feels for his pronouncements translate to a revisionist as, not heretical but "real" or at least worth thinking about, which has always and will always be Spong's greatest goal and mission. Spong simply says things that others are not willing to say, even though there are at least a few people out there thinking it.