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 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 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 …

Re-Creating Easter III: Where? The Location in which Easter Dawned

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on October, 8 2015

Revelation 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 …

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 …

Resurrection: A Reality or a Pious Dream? Part X The Story of the Ascension

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on July, 9 2015

“Ideas Have Consequences.” That was the title of a book that I was required to read early in my theological education. It was not a profound book, but its …

Resurrection: A Reality or a Pious Dream, Part IX Luke: Physical, Non-Physical or Both?

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on June, 25 2015

Today, I want to focus on the ambiguity found in the conflicting aspects of Luke’s two resurrection stories in more detail and in more depth. It will help …

Resurrection: A Reality or a Pious Dream, Part VIII: Luke – Mystery Recedes – Literalism Grows

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on June, 18 2015

When we come to Luke, the third gospel writer and, counting Paul, the fourth biblical witness to the meaning of Easter, we discover a dramatic shift in the language …

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