Charting a New Reformation, Part VIII – God –“Not a Being but Being Itself” (Cont.)

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on January, 21 2016

It 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 VI – Building the Case for the Death of Theism: The Impact of Freud

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on January, 7 2016

First 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 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 …

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 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 V: How did Easter Dawn? What was the Context?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 22 2015

We 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 II: Who Stood in the Center of the Easter Moment?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September, 24 2015

Who 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 …

Windsor, England – A Confrontation Over the Meaning of Resurrection

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on September, 3 2015

On 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 …