Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded)

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 15 September 2016 18 Comments
Please login with your account to read this essay.
 

Question

I am a member of a United Methodist Church in Wheaton, Illinois. Over the years, I have taught many adult classes and would, in that process, include many of Bart Ehrman’s offerings in the Great Courses series. Currently, my class has six sessions of his course: After the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers, remaining and I had planned to present these this coming fall. I received a call from our Director of Care Minister, who is the scheduler for adult classes. She asked me to cancel this class because some persons, (unknown to me), but who are not members of the class, had complained about it. Earlier our senior pastor had mentioned to me that I should be “sensitive” to others’ feelings about this class and presumably, about Bart Ehrman,

My question: What is your professional opinion about the credibility and qualifications of Professor Bart Ehrman and what is your opinion about his scholarship as evidenced in his books and in his Great Courses classes?

Answer

Dear Cliff,

I know Bart Ehrman and believe him to be a competent scholar of the first order. His expertise is in the period of early Christian history more than it is in scripture studies per se. I have listened to all of his classes in the Great Courses series and have appreciated his insights, controversial as some of them well may be. Dr. Ehrman challenges the popular, but not substantiated, assumption that there ever was such a thing as “Orthodox Christianity. He demonstrates, rather powerfully, that there were originally “many Christianities” long before what came to be called traditional orthodoxy emerged with power as “The One True Faith.”

I suspect that what you are now hearing is not an objection to Bart Ehrman’s scholarship, but rather the fact that in one of his recent books, he stated that he was no longer a believer. He now calls himself an atheist. He has had an interesting history, starting in one of the most conservative and fundamentalist parts of the Christian Church. In my opinion, he is still processing his life experience. He has much to teach us all. No one has to agree with either his current faith position or with any of his conclusions; his scholarship is still impressive. In the book in which he said that he was no longer a believer, I have an endorsement on the back cover. In that endorsement I said I had come to a very different conclusion, but that I still had a great respect for his work. I do.

John Shelby Spong

 

Comments

 

18 thoughts on “Charting a New Reformation, Part XXXV – Thesis #10, Prayer (concluded)

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on this website.

    Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.