SYRIA, POISON GAS, MISSILE STRIKES AND PEACE?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 19 September 2013 2 Comments
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Question

I work for the Dorset police here in Dorset, England. I do not come from a Christian family although I did attend a Methodist Sunday School as a boy. I have been searching to try and make sense of the Christian message and many of the complex questions that the Bible throws up. I have read a number of your books and I have to say that they are the first publications that make any sense to me. The question of the death of Jesus being a method of atonement from original sin has always been a major block to faith for me. I have in the past completed the Church of England’s Alpha courses, but the answers given by well-meaning clergy have never made any sense to me. The literalist view of the Bible in this modern day and age doesn’t aid understanding. I am halfway through your latest publication relating to the Fourth Gospel. I feel for the first time a sense of enlightenment with the view that the life of Jesus was to show us the vision of what we can be and to assist as a gateway into the mystical union with God. This at least gives a real purpose to Jesus’ life and work. My question is where can I, and others like me, go from here. I have yet to find a church organization that isn’t governed by restrictive creeds and regulations? If we do find a new faith and belief, where and what should the next stage be to becoming all that we are meant to be? Is it enough just to believe in a private and individual way? Do we need to find a group of like-minded people with similar views or is it sufficient just to go it alone? I am coming up to London with a good friend of mine in October to hear you lecture in Streatham. I am really looking forward to seeing you. Any advice you can give me on my “where next” question would be gratefully received.

Answer

Dear Mike,

Thank you for your letter. I have great respect for those who serve as policemen in England. I have a nephew, who is a Special Forces policeman in Devizes, which is very near you. I shall look forward to meeting you at the October lecture in Streatham. Maybe I can get him to come and introduce him to you.

Many parts of the established Church of England are in fact moribund. Someone observed that rigor mortis would be too lively a word to describe many of its congregations. This Church, out of which my Episcopal Church has come and to which we are still related, sings from a hymnal entitled “Hymns Ancient and Modern,” but “modern” barely gets to the 19th century. It is burdened with the structures of yesterday, with patronage and with a hierarchy so bound to the establishment that its leaders do not realize how out of date it is. Traditionally this Church was divided into three groups that were affectionately designated “high and crazy, broad and hazy and low and lazy.” The high and crazy group is more catholic than the Pope. They chant the mass, use incense on every occasion and employ a variety of worship traditions to make sure the 13th century liturgical forms will not be disturbed. Like their Roman Catholic cousins, this “high and crazy” group does not generally care for women priests.

The “low and lazy” group is made up of the evangelicals who still seem to believe that God wrote the Bible and therefore that it must be inerrant. They offer salvation and the bliss of heaven only to “true believers,” i.e. those who agree with them. They publish what is surely the worst church paper I have ever read called “The Church of England Newspaper.” They seem to me to reserve their passion for church fights to the task of saving the Church of England from the pollution of both homosexuals and women, because they think the Bible defines gay people as evil or “deviant” and women as subservient. The Alpha course is a product of this “low and lazy” way of thinking in the Church of England.

The “broad and hazy” group used to be the ones who gave the Church of England its flavor and its entertainment value. This group takes religion somewhat less than seriously, but they don’t reject it because it is part of what it means to be English. They also want an institution in which their babies can be “christened,” their children married and themselves buried, not so much because these things are inherently of great value, but because that is the proper way to do things, the English way.

As secularism rises, this broad group has, however, essentially given up religion so that all of England’s fierce religious disputes are now between the “high crazies” and the “low lazies.” Both of them tend to bore thinking people.

In England there is a group called the Progressive Christian Network, originally headed by the Rev. Hugh Dawes, one of the most creative priests I’ve ever known. It is now headed by the Rev. John Churcher, an outstanding and brilliant Methodist clergyman. They sponsor and support study groups in all parts of the UK. A constituent part of the Progressive Christian Network is the progressive wing of the United Reformed Church of England, a merger originally between English Congregationalists and English Presbyterians. This Church has produced some great leaders, including Fred Kaan, whom I regard as perhaps the greatest Christian hymn writer of the 20th century. This Church has also sponsored national conferences called “Free to Believe,” where they have encouraged lay people to wrestle with the real questions that Christians living in the 21st century need to face if Christianity is to live and be relevant.

So my advice to you is to seek contact with a group associated with the Progressive Christian Network of the UK and begin to work with one of its groups. Perhaps some members of that organization, reading this response to your question, will get in touch with you directly or through this column if they prefer.

I look forward to meeting you in October and thank you for your letter. You are the kind of person toward whom my whole life’s work is directed.

Live well!

John Shelby Spong

 

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