"Bishop Spong is the leading voice within modern progressive Christianity, attempting to make Christianity relevant to today's world," said Dixon Sutherland, director of Stetson University's Institute for Christian Ethics. He went on to declare, "The exposure of students to probably the most formative leader of progressive thinking within Christianity today is an important part of our educational mission."
That fascinating little piece of advertising is found at the website of Stetson University, a private university located in DeLand, Florida.
Of course, that introduction of retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong is a bit understated, since the bishop is known throughout the world for having denied virtually every major doctrine of the Christian faith, and has become something of a parody of theological liberalism.
What makes the Stetson University announcement all the more interesting is the fact that Bishop Spong was invited to the university in order to deliver a lecture on human sexuality and then to serve as the major speaker for the university's "Twentieth Annual Florida Winter Pastors' School." According to the on-line registration form for the conference, the event sold out.
The bishop's visit to Florida caught the attention of the Orlando Sentinel. In an article written by reporter Loraine O'Connell, Spong is quoted as stating: "Sex without any sort of loving relationship is always wrong. It's appropriate only inside commitment. What's the level of commitment? For me, it's marriage." The reporter was fully aware that this might sound like Bishop Spong was abandoning his endorsement of pre-marital sex, so she quickly corrected any misunderstanding. "Spong's fans needn't fear that he's backpedaling. Although marriage is his preferred level of commitment, he says, expecting young people to remain celibate until marriage isn't realistic. Teaching them to treat sexuality with respect is."
Over the last twenty years or so, the Right Reverend John Shelby Spong has served as a minstrel for postmodern Christianity. After serving from 1976 to 2000 as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, New Jersey, Spong hit the lecture circuit and has become a media personality and provocateur. His books garner immediate media attention, though his methodology of theological sensationalism is running out of steam. Now that he has denied virtually every imaginable doctrine revealed in the Bible, there must be very little room for further denial.
In successive books, Spong has denied the incarnation, the miracles as recorded in Scripture, the virgin birth of Christ, a salvific purpose for the crucifixion, the bodily resurrection, and an entire series of truths long cherished by the church. He sees the Bible as an essentially human book that is filled with foibles and faults, and thus argues that it is not to be taken seriously as God's authoritative message to the church.
"The God I know is not concrete or specific," Spong has written. "This God is rather shrouded in mystery, wonder, and awe. The deeper I journey into this divine presence, the less any literalized phrases, including the phrases of the Christian creed, seem relevant. The God I know can only be pointed to; this God can never be enclosed by propositional statements."
Thus, Spong denies the authority and truthfulness of the historic Christian creeds and has been about the task of revising, remodeling, and transforming Christianity into an entirely new system of faith and meaning.
Biblical Christianity simply makes no sense to Bishop Spong. "The biblical account of Jesus' return to heaven was based upon the ancient idea that the sky was the abode of God and that it was 'up.' A literal ascension makes no sense to those of us who live on this side of Copernicus, Galileo, and the space age. Indeed, the very word up is a meaningless concept in our time."
In Spong's view, God is largely a human construct. He has abandoned theism--the basic belief in a personal God--and has moved "beyond theism" to embrace "new God images." In Why Christianity Must Change or Die, the bishop explained: "There is no God external to life. God, rather, is the inescapable depth and center of all that is. God is not a being superior to all other beings. God is the Ground of Being itself. And much flows from this starting place. The artifacts of the faith of the past must be understood in a new way if they are to accompany us beyond the exile, and those that cannot be understood differently will have to be laid aside. Time will inform us as to which is which."
