Charting a New Reformation, Part IX – An Evolving God inside an Evolving Christianity
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on January, 28 2016Today, I conclude the discussion of the first of my twelve theses posted on the internet in my hope to “Chart a New Reformation.” I began with the crucial …
Charting a New Reformation, Part VIII – God –“Not a Being but Being Itself” (Cont.)
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on January, 21 2016It was a 6th century Greek philosopher named Xenophanes who wrote: “If horses had gods, they would look like horses.” Xenophanes was pointing to the reality, which all of …
Charting the New Reformation, Part VII – Re-Imagining God: Not a being, but Being-A Place to Begin
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on January, 14 2016In the light of our expanded knowledge, God, understood theistically, turned out to be our own creation in which we human beings tried to fit God into words that …
Charting the New Reformation, Part VI – Building the Case for the Death of Theism: The Impact of Freud
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on January, 7 2016First there was the revolution in astrophysics led by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo. In that revolution, the comfortable assumption that God lived just above the sky, watching over us, …
Charting the New Reformation, Part V – Building the Case for the Death of Theism: Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on December, 31 2015In the growth in knowledge about the shape and size of the universe, God was dislodged from the realm we called heaven and in that process God was rendered …
Charting the New Reformation, Part IV – Building the Case for the Death of Theism: The Copernican Revolution
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on December, 24 2015The laws by which the world operates have not changed since the dawn of time, but the way human beings explain and understand those laws has changed dramatically over …
Charting the New Reformation, Part III – The Twelve Theses
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on December, 17 2015“Time makes ancient good uncouth.” The poet, James Russell Lowell, who wrote these words, understood the difference between an experience and the way that experience is explained. So important …
Charting the New Reformation, Part II – The Burning Necessity
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on December, 10 2015The Bible is not the “word of God!” It never has been. No one who has ever read the Bible in its entirety could possibly defend that suggestion. This …
Charting a New Reformation, Part I – The Background
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on December, 3 2015On October 31, 1517, so the story goes, a solitary monk named Martin Luther approached the great doors of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, on which he planned to post …
On the Separation of Church and State
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on November, 26 2015(Publisher’s note: On November 9th 2015, in Washington, D. C. the national organization known as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, held …
France, November 2015, the Struggle to be Human
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on November, 19 2015The plan appears to have been carried out by a group of eight people, three of whom were brothers. The attack seems to have been developed in Belgium in …
Re-Creating Easter VIII: Conclusion – Easter Dawns
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on November, 12 2015Something happened! Lives were changed. God was redefined. Liturgies were reshaped. New holy days were born. Whatever Easter was, it constituted a transformative moment. It is easy to understand, …
Re-Creating Easter VII: The Internal Process
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on November, 5 2015Peter had so clearly wanted to be loyal to Jesus following his arrest. The story is told that he tried to follow Jesus into the courtyard of the high …
Re-Creating Easter VI: The Dawning of the Resurrection
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 29 2015We have now explored our sources, looking where we could beneath the literal words of the biblical texts. We have come to four conclusions. First, whatever the Easter moment …
Re-Creating Easter V: How did Easter Dawn? What was the Context?
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 22 2015We are told, but only in Luke’s gospel, that when Cleopas and his traveling companion returned from Emmaus to Jerusalem to share their experience of the risen Christ …
Re-Creating Easter IV When? The Question of Time
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 15 2015Life-changing “revelations” may well be timeless, but the one receiving these revelations is always bound in time. These insights invade time at a particular moment. We seek now to …
Re-Creating Easter III: Where? The Location in which Easter Dawned
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 8 2015Revelation and insight do not occur in a vacuum. They always come through a person. They have the effect of expanding the being of the recipient by opening his …
An Open Letter To the Moderator of the United Church of Canada: The Rt. Rev. Jordan Cantwell
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 1 2015Dear Moderator Cantwell,
I write with some alarm at what is happening in the United Church of Canada, a church that I have long admired. I recall your history. …
Re-Creating Easter II: Who Stood in the Center of the Easter Moment?
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September, 24 2015Who was the person who stood in the center of the most dramatic moment in Christian history, the experience we call Easter? Who was it who first saw the …
Re-Creating Easter Part I: The Background
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September, 17 2015It was the noted author Jim Bishop, more than a generation ago, who first created a series of books that chronicled the minute-by-minute narratives of what turned out to …
A Wedding that Changed a Community
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September, 10 2015The couple stood holding hands before the altar where they would soon take their vows to “love, honor and cherish” each other forever. The congregation was in place ready …
Windsor, England – A Confrontation Over the Meaning of Resurrection
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September, 3 2015On one stop near the end of my lecture tour of Europe during this summer, I confronted a person whose question drove me back to the series I had …
Engaging the Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August, 27 2015“Resurrection-Denying Preacher to Return to Scotland.” That was the headline of a story published in the Glasgow Herald about a week before I was scheduled to lecture in the …
Paris in the Spring – Part II, The Book Launch
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August, 20 2015We continue today the chronicle of how my books came to be published in French. In Part I, I described how the translator and the publisher came together. Today …
Paris in the Late Spring: Part I, A Publication
Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August, 13 2015Imagine waking up on your birthday in Paris, France. It is mid-June, the air is fresh, and the sun is warm. You can smell the croissants baking. You are …