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. pubID: '3211', adServer: 'googletag', bidTimeout: 4e3, params: { aps_privacy: '1YN' } As the smell of incense filled the air, I knelt before three images of the Buddha, feeling that the smoke could carry my prayers heavenward. John Shelby Spong was born on June 16 1931 at Charlotte, North Carolina, the elder of two boys. I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. var stylesheet = document.createElement("link"); 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." He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile. 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. No religion does that. There is no longer Jew nor Greek. "CacheDetection.RequestID": "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY", (function(e){var c=e;var a=c.ue||{};a.main_scope="mainscopecsm";a.q=[];a.t0=c.ue_t0||+new Date();a.d=g;function g(h){return +new Date()-(h?0:a.t0)}function d(h){return function(){a.q.push({n:h,a:arguments,t:a.d()})}}function b(m,l,h,j,i){var k={m:m,f:l,l:h,c:""+j,err:i,fromOnError:1,args:arguments};c.ueLogError(k);return false}b.skipTrace=1;e.onerror=b;function f(){c.uex("ld")}if(e.addEventListener){e.addEventListener("load",f,false)}else{if(e.attachEvent){e.attachEvent("onload",f)}}a.tag=d("tag");a.log=d("log");a.reset=d("rst");c.ue_csm=c;c.ue=a;c.ueLogError=d("err");c.ues=d("ues");c.uet=d("uet");c.uex=d("uex");c.uet("ue")})(window);(function(e,d){var a=e.ue||{};function c(g){if(!g){return}var f=d.head||d.getElementsByTagName("head")[0]||d.documentElement,h=d.createElement("script");h.async="async";h.src=g;f.insertBefore(h,f.firstChild)}function b(){var k=e.ue_cdn||"z-ecx.images-amazon.com",g=e.ue_cdns||"images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com",j="/images/G/01/csminstrumentation/",h=e.ue_file||"ue-full-11e51f253e8ad9d145f4ed644b40f692._V1_.js",f,i;if(h.indexOf("NSTRUMENTATION_FIL")>=0){return}if("ue_https" in e){f=e.ue_https}else{f=e.location&&e.location.protocol=="https:"?1:0}i=f? John Shelby Spong (born November 29, 1935) is an American Episcopal priest and author. V. Gene Robinson was able to publicly thank the man he said are the shoulders on which (Robinson) stands.. "ebfg_email", "ebfg_sms"]; I believe that is what the God experience does for us. It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. "[24], Spong died in sleep at his home in Richmond, Virginia, on September 12, 2021, at the age of 90. A I don't think you can locate God or define God. That is a paradigm shift of the first order. 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. But the fact is I can no more abandon the literal patterns than I could fly to the moon. A.async = !0; 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. } Theism is dead, I joyfully proclaim, but God is real. There are more than 14 quotes written by John Shelby Spong on our site. 5:44) and never to call others by demeaning or hurtful names (Matt. -- John Shelby Spong #Giving "I go where I'm invited. "ObfuscatedMarketplaceId": "A1PQBFHBHS6YH1" Jesus could not have imagined such an idea as Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. JOHN SHELBY SPONG: The first homosexual person that I ordained knowingly was a man named Robert Williams. For the reformation to work, Spong said creeds can no longer be used to bring Christians together. })(); But I'm not fighting as the man he knew today, as a Gold. Rev. 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. There was new openness to the supernatural. Part 2 of the part time quotations list about odd-job and salaried sayings citing John Shelby Spong, Rob Lowe and Keith Ellison captions. We were told in the Second Commandment we could make no images of this God, and I don't think that means just building idols, I think that means also trying to believe you've captured God in your words, in the Creeds, in the Scriptures. " True religion is not about possessing the truth. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. He was the eleventh Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, New York from 1988 until 2000. Chautauqua Institution is a non-profit organization, dependent upon your gifts to fulfill its mission. 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. In 2000, Spong was a critic of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Roman Catholic Church's declaration Dominus Iesus, because it reaffirmed the Catholic doctrine that the Roman Catholic Church is the one true Church and that Jesus Christ is the one and only savior for humanity. [10], Spong was a strong proponent of the church reflecting the changes in society at large. Tweets by @chqdaily God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. "The older I get, the more deeply I believe but the. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotes in the bullet points above are from Kitchen, "The Future Church and Bishop John Shelby Spong," p. 17. There's a Psalm that says "Happy will you be when you take your enemy's children and dash their heads against the stones." Spong said the only way his mission can be successful is if his mantra is carried out without any set of boundaries. I don't think that's the case. Christ must be served in every person, he said. Prayer is entering into the pain or joy of another person. It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. var ue_id = "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY"; If that is a requirement of my commitment to Jesus, I . And I have no reason to abandon it because it leads to where I want to go. }); if(cookiePair[0] === name) { John Shelby Spong was the Episcopal bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000. The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. I want the traditional family upheld, but I dont want it upheld to the detriment of other people. He retired in 2000. googletag.enableServices(); When charting a new reformation, we must engage in a task of getting even deeper into the vision of universalism, he said. Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. page: {requestId: "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY", meaningful: "interactive"} 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. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson he's considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both . Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. John Shelby Spong I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. 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. Death is ultimately a dimension of life through which we journey into timelessness. "There is no longer Jew nor Greek. God Is Real. This self-denigration stuff - Jesus died for my sins - is nothing but a guilt message. I just go beyond them. Spong claimed that his writings evoked both great support and great condemnation from differing segments of the Christian church. 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. Every day we present the best quotes! No religion does that. 14 "John Shelby Spong" Quotes And Sayings. John Shelby Spong passed away at his home in North Carolina according to an announcement from the Richmond, Virginia parish he once pastored. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. 12 Vaganova Ballet Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation. 23:33), "blind fools" (Matt. The way you become divine is to become wholly human. 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. Almost any poll of regular churchgoers will reveal that their favorite book in the New Testament is the Gospel of John. The audience that I try to reach are members of what I call the church alumni association. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("author", [45659]); If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed except by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. 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. Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people! It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Previously, she recapped the Chautauqua Lecture Series in 2019 and the Interfaith Lecture Series in 2018. 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. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter. It is simply a fact of his upbringing, along with a personal desire to continue being a disciple of Jesus. There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrow-minded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. That is not what most Christians have been taught to think, but it is factual. It caused his followers to regard his teaching as worthy of being preserved. Next, was his belief that God is a source of life. And that's where it turns demonic. Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. It is not necessarily words addressed heavenward. All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. Sometimes, you're just in the wrong place at the wrong time. 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. googletag.pubads().setTargeting("sid", "osid.a1fff312af8a1d2b3b241fa9193829a2"); My mantra is intended only to be my statement at this time, of where I am today (and) the place of which I have arrived on what might be the last days of my journey, he said. I was taught that women were by nature in inferior to men, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. 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. '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 note: he retired years after this article was first written]. Shelby Harris. John Shelby Spong Quotes 1. 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. 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. , 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. Is there a different Bible? John Shelby Spong is an American retired bishop of the Episcopal Church. 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. But the irony was that as he was making his case, modernity was ending and postmodernity starting, and his rationalist perspective became pass. The ultimate meaning of the Bible escapes human limits and calls us to a recognition that every life is holy, every life is loved, and every life is called to be all that that life is capable of being. The Christianity of the future cannot live inside the doctrines of the past, Spong said. "Bishop John Shelby Spong On: The Resurrection" The Christian Faith was born in the experience that we have come to call Easter. [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. I don't see Jesus as rescuing the fallen; I see Jesus as expanding the potential of life. I think the first self-conscious person must have shaken in his boots. Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. for(var i=0; i