Dear Jack,
When I learned of your stroke in September, I was en route to the fourth Common Dreams Conference in Brisbane, Queensland. Having no details at that point and being a half-a-planet away, I was anxious about having to endure the uncertainty of this news on my own. I needn’t have worried, though. As it turns out, I couldn’t have found myself in a more supportive and equally concerned crowd anywhere in the world
“My goal in life is to pray without ceasing”.
Bishop John Shelby Spong
In his book A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How A New Faith is Being Born, Bishop Spong addresses multiple issues worthy of further consideration especially because the coming year 2017, marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and Spong is rightly calling for a Reformation today.(1) I suppose it is worth mentioning that I have been doing the same as in my book A New Reformation: Creation Spirituality and the Transformation of Christianity which contains the 95 theses that I pounded at Luther’s church in Wittenberg at Pentecost season in 2006 in response to Cardinal Ratzinger making himself pope, a practice I repeated five years later at Cardinal Law’s Basilica of Maria Maggiore in Rome on a Sunday morning in protest of his cover-up for pedophile clergy in his previous assignment as archbishop of Boston.
Attila the None – The headlines are pretty clear. Both Pew Research Center and the Public Religion Research Institute have told us that people, especially young people, aren’t so much avoiding church as not even thinking it is relevant. In this American election year, those who identify as the Nones – people who state on census forms that they have no religious affiliation – have been declared the largest “religious” voting bloc in the country. Those seated in the pews of mainline, Protestant America can no longer assume they have the strong political voice they once did.
I need to speak candidly with you about hospitality, perhaps the most iconic of Christian values and one of the easiest to go on attributing to the historical Jesus in spite of how much else has been stripped away from his biography. We need to discuss this because of the scary things people have been saying about refugees, about Black men, about what can be done to women. Because of the people who are bleeding in the streets.
I am really not comfortable writing this article. There is a sense I am writing an obituary and nothing could be further from the truth. Bishop Spong is a beloved friend and he is apparently doing well in his recovery. I suppose I am a little nervous knowing that he will be reading what I write and we already have a history about this. For those who do not know, I am the President of ProgressiveChristianity.org. and we have been publishing Bishop Spong’s weekly articles for over six years now. About a two years ago I had dropped him a line indicating that his contract was running out and wondered what his plans were. Be assured, I wanted him to extend the contract but we needed to know. I do not remember exactly what I wrote but I may have written something like, “Jack, I know you are approaching your 85th birthday, but thought we should get this cleared up.”
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