Prayer is being present, sharing love, opening life to transcendence. I don't see Jesus as rescuing the fallen; I see Jesus as expanding the potential of life. Showing 1-30 of 46 "God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. JOHN SHELBY SPONG: The first homosexual person that I ordained knowingly was a man named Robert Williams. He looks at the vastness of the universe and it looks hostile. 5:22), yet he called his enemies a "brood of snakes" (Matt. Previously, she recapped the Chautauqua Lecture Series in 2019 and the Interfaith Lecture Series in 2018. I might define God quite differently from the way some people in the Christian faith would do so, but I do not doubt the reality of that experience. I do assert that one prepares for eternity not by being religious and keeping the rules, but by living fully, loving wastefully, and daring to be all that each of us has the capacity to be. function getCookieWithoutJQuery(name) { I admire our ancestors, whoever they were. } "Whatever it was that people experience in Jesus has today come to be identified with medieval doctrines based on premodern assumptions that are no longer believable. I was taught that it was okay to hate other religions, and especially the Jews, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. for(var i=0; i John Shelby Spong Bio, Wife, Kids, Career, 12 Theses, Books and Quotes - Buddywikis He was a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author. "ebfg_email", "ebfg_sms"]; " Live life to it's fullest, love wastefully, and be all we can be. Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. "Events.Namespace": "csa", He has also lectured at universities, conference centers, and churches in North . John Shelby Spong Quote of the day Teach him to think for himself? Integrity and honesty, not objectivity and certainty, are the highest virtues to which the theological enterprise can aspire. shortquotes.blog 1,000,000++ Short Quotes By contrast, Phillip Aspinall, the Primate of Australia, invited Spong in 2007 to deliver two sermons at St John's Cathedral, Brisbane. So who is God? I believe God is real, but I believe God calls me beyond myself to take responsibility for my life and to try top work to allow other people to be themselves and to take responsibility for their lives. It was never, even in the New Testament, a finished story. "Application": "GoodreadsMonolith", He sees himself against nature. [8], Spong's writings rely on Biblical and non-Biblical sources and were influenced by modern critical analysis of these sources (see especially Spong, 1991). God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. [Religion News Service] Retired Newark Bishop John Shelby Spong, a bestselling author and cleric known for his progressive theology and his support of LGBTQ+ clergy in The Episcopal Church, has died. John Shelby Spong passed away at his home in North Carolina according to an announcement from the Richmond, Virginia parish he once pastored. It meant to go beyond the boundaries of your religion, to go beyond your security system, to go beyond your fears. John Shelby Spong Quotes. I experience God as the source of life calling me to live fully and thus to respect life in every form as embodying the holy. }, All Things Quotes Page 253. God is not a noun, that demands to be defined, God is a verb that invites us to live, to love and to be. He was the eleventh Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, New York from 1988 until 2000. According to Spong, when Matthew said to go and make disciples of all nations, he placed words in the mouth of the risen Jesus. He is also Bishop of Newark in New Jersey [Ed. I know rather that the sun, around which my planet Earth revolves, is a middle sized star in a galaxy called the Milky Way that has over a hundred billion other suns or stars within it. I think that's not only tough, but ultimately disappointing to most people. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. In the fall of 1988, I worshipped God in a Buddhist temple. Spong's calendar had him lecturing around the world. g = p.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; Tweets by @chqdaily "It is with great sadness that we announce the death of the Rt. There was new openness to the supernatural. He was a liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator and author. And thats immoral. Rev. True religion is not about possessing the truth. There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrow-minded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. Prayer is entering into the pain or joy of another person. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years. J.B. Heller Quotes James Whitfield Thomson Quotes Jeanne A. Estes Quotes John Shelby Spong Quotes Julien Temple Quotes Lenny Kravitz Quotes Merrell Fankhauser Quotes Nicole Green Quotes Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn Quotes Priya Rawal Quotes S. Andrew Swann Quotes Scott F. Gilbert Quotes When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. As far as we know, a creaturewho can: define life, contemplates its beginning, anticipates its termination and raise the question of its meaning, is a rare thing, he said. There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. 12 Vaganova Ballet Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation. "//securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/tag/js/gpt.js"; 12:34), "sons of vipers" (Matt. Are they blinded by a combination of ego needs and navet? To me, neither option is worth pursuing. The way that I see Christianity is that its role is to enhance the life of every person. Christianity is, I believe, about expanded life, heightened consciousness and achieving a new humanity. The Bible interprets life from its particular perspective; it does not record in a factual way the human journey through history. if(cookiePair[0] === name) { Let me try to do just that. page: {requestId: "TXPX0XF032R2WV9SNJQY", meaningful: "interactive"} I do not live in a world where people can walk on water, or still a storm, or take five loaves of bread and feed 5000 men plus women and children. Whatever diminishes life is evil, and whatever enhances life is good. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God." John Shelby Spong When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. I cannot say my yes to legends that have been clearly and fancifully created. "ObfuscatedMarketplaceId": "A1PQBFHBHS6YH1" -- John Shelby Spong #Giving "I go where I'm invited. return null; var gads = document.createElement("script"); John Shelby "Jack" Spong (June 16, 1931 September 12, 2021) was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church. I think the best way to view the Gospels is to view them as a magnificent portrait being painted by Jewish artists to try to capture the essence of a God experience that they believe they had with Jesus of Nazareth. And I dont mind saying that I dont invalidate any of those paths. That identification means . I call this God by different words. Because that's when you get religious wars and persecutions and burning heretics at the stake. My sense is if the Episcopal Church can't stand challenge within its own ranks, then it is not a church I would want to be a member of anyway. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. 23:17). How divine is the message that says for your finite failings you will be cast into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson he's considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both . var url; February 7, 2019 You learn that you either are going to have a police state where you don't have any freedom left, or you're going to build a world that doesn't create terrorists - and that means a whole different way of 'getting along.' John Shelby Spong/ freedom And all I can tell you is if we accepted every invitation we had, I'd be away every day of my life." -- John Shelby Spong #Accepted #Invitations "When I grew up in the South, I was taught that segregation was the will of God, and the Bible was quoted to prove it. No religion does that. Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. That is not within the capacity of the human mind to embrace the nature of God.. In academia, I discovered that issues and insights, commonplace among the scholars, are viewed as highly controversial and even as 'heresy' in the churches. It is not by pitching the old insights out but by journeying deeply through them into new visions that we are able to change religion's direction. I think that anything that begins to give people a sense of their own worth and dignity is God. If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter. fetchBids: function() { (wikipedia) Born On June 16, 1931. John Shelby Spong (born November 29, 1935) is an American Episcopal priest and author. Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people! 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Weve murdered them; weve burned them at the stake; weve run them out of town for something over which they have no control. John Shelby Spong Quotes. I thought it presented Jesus as a visitor from another planet; in addition, Johns gospel is and has been interpreted as a document that fuels anti-Semitism in the church. The question must also be raised as to whether we have the actual words of Jesus in any Gospel. He is as radically liberal as it is possible to be and still maintain a nominal identification with the name "Christian.". Jesus was undeniably a figure of history. Spong, Resurrection . John Shelby Spong Quotes 1. Inequality for gay and lesbian people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state. That is a paradigm shift of the first order. [21], Mark Tooley, a Methodist who is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a think tank noted for its critique of liberal religious groups, criticized Spong in 2010 as "brandishing the stale theologies and ideologies of a half-century ago". John Shelby Spong 25. If God is the ground of being, then the only way I can worship God is by having the courage to be all that I can be, Spong said. John Shelby Spong is an American retired bishop of the Episcopal Church. Prayer is what I am doing when I love wastefully, passionately and wondrously and invite others to do so. I'm a bloodydamn Helldiver with an army of giant, mildly . " John Shelby Spong 2. It has been a wonderful trip, and I am sad it is coming to an end.. It is not about closed minds, supernatural interventions, a fallen creation, guilt, original sin or divine rescue. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. 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