Why I Value Valentine’s Day and How I Lost my Hat on Broadway

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 17 February 2011 2 Comments
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Question

I am retired, 79 years old, and am an active member of my local United Methodist Church in Springfield, Oregon. I regret that I could not attend your seminars held in Eugene, Oregon, because I have read most of your books and thoroughly enjoy hearing your lectures.

Recently I read the book, Godly Play, by Jerome W. Berryman. He has an interesting approach to Christian Education for children, but what struck me was his discussion about the basic questions of existence. Those questions each person must face alone. He lists these four: death, the threat of freedom, unavoidable aloneness and the need for meaning. I think I can make a case for Christianity providing answers to these questions, but I would like to learn about your answers (although I realize that full answers would take a book to cover the topic fully).

Answer

Dear Robert,

Thank you for your letter. I am impressed with Godly Play and when I was still an active bishop, I watched it being used very effectively in a number of churches.

All religions address the basic anxieties of life particularly mortality, purpose and meaning. There is great unanimity among all human religious traditions in the human questions they each seek to address. The differences among these great world religions are in how these questions are answered. All human answers come out of our acculturation and they reflect the wide varieties of human cultural experience. I could not in the space of a response to a letter do justice to how I as a Christian, or Christianity itself, might respond, but those are the themes that permeate my books. In my most recent publication, Eternal Life: A New Vision, I seek to take on most of these issues directly.

John Shelby Spong

 

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2 thoughts on “Why I Value Valentine’s Day and How I Lost my Hat on Broadway

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