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 2015

The 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 II – The Burning Necessity

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on December, 10 2015

The 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 2015

On 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 2015

The 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 2015

Something 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 2015

Peter 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 2015

We 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 IV When? The Question of Time

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 15 2015

Life-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 …