My Journey Out of Homophobia

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 25 November 2010 2 Comments
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Question

I have read and reread Eternal Life: A New Vision over and over again. Each reading "breaks another code." Yesterday, I was reading the "preface." I was really grooving with you, understanding from your simple talk how you came to write the book. Then I chanced on your description on how a reading of John brought the idea of "Oneness" home to you. That was so beautiful. I love the simplicity of your words. That is what keeps me going back to your book. I have it on my Amazon Kindle so it is always "at hand." The Kindle doesn't use page numbers; it shows the percentage of the volume read to the point that you are at. The dialogue between 49% and 52% speaks to me.

That aside, though my recent reading of your "aha moment" with John 4 really grabbed me. I felt I was in an intimate conversation between you, Jesus and the Samaritan. I live the oneness, it is my everyday life. I didn't realize this sense of divinity until I found you, thanks to a Charlotte Talks interview with Mike Collins that my wife heard and referred to me, that I had been thinking this way all of my life. The uniqueness of my experience of finding your writings is that you have enabled me to see the truth I have always known in print. It is so therapeutic for one to see his own thoughts in print. So, I thank you for allowing yourself to be an instrument of my revealing myself to myself. You won't remember me in human terms; perhaps you do in the spirit. You and I had a short aside in one of our breaks during your presentation in Hendersonville, North Carolina recently.

Answer

Dear John,

Thank you for your letter, your thoughts and your comments on my book Eternal Life: A New Vision. I am glad we have met even if it was, as you say, just an aside in Hendersonville. I really do enjoy the Congregational–United Church of Christ there. It is one of the more exciting churches in America that I have ever visited. The present pastor, Richard Weidler and his immediate predecessor, David Kelly, are, in my opinion, largely responsible for that.

I am now working almost exclusively on the Fourth Gospel. It is a diligent study and quite fascinating to focus so completely on one major book of the Bible. Scholars of all stripes have worked on John. I do not know where this study will lead. If it is to be a book, it would not come out until 2014 and at my age this seems like a real challenge.

I hope our paths cross again.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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