John Shelby Spong

[[File:Bishop John Shelby Spong portrait 2006.png|thumb|165px|John Shelby Spong in 2006.]]{{christianity|1}}
'''John Shelby Spong''' {{lived|1931|2021}} was an [[United States|American]] former [[Episcopalian]] [[bishop]] and [[liberal]] [[Christian]] [[author]] whose writings call for a new interpretation of Christianity relevant for the 21st century.

==Reform== 
Perhaps his most critical (and critiqued) book is ''A New Christianity for a New World : Why Traditional Faith Is Dying and How a New Faith Is Being Born''.  In it, he outlines twelve points of reform that make him seem downright [[rational]]:

# [[Theism]], as a way of defining [[God]], is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
# Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand [[Jesus]] as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
# The Biblical story of the [[Teleology|perfect and finished creation]] from which [[human]] beings fell into [[sin]] is pre-[[Darwin]]ian [[mythology]] and post-Darwinian nonsense.
# The [[virgin birth]], understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
# The miracle stories of the [[New Testament]] can no longer be interpreted in a post-[[Newton]]ian world as [[supernatural]] events performed by an incarnate deity.
# The view of the [[crucifixion|cross as the sacrifice]] for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
# [[Resurrection]] is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
# The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-[[Copernicus|Copernican]] space age.
# There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our [[Argument from morality|ethical behavior]] for all time.
# [[Prayer]] cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
# The hope for [[afterlife|life after death]] must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
# All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on [[race]], ethnicity, [[gender]] or [[sexual orientation]], can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or [[discrimination]].<ref>List shamelessly ripped from {{wpl|A_New_Christianity_for_a_New_World#Twelve_points_for_Reform|Wikipedia}}.</ref>

===Reception===
Of course, his biggest critics are [[theologian]]s and [[apologist]]s.  While he never goes so far so as to reject God or the teachings of Jesus altogether, many [[atheist]]s find him tolerable as his views eschew any notions of condemnation, [[damnation]] or [[Biblical literalism]].  [[Richard Dawkins]] even credits Spong with this observation in ''[[The God Delusion]]'':

{{cquote|"Those who wish to base their [[morality]] literally on the Bible have either not read it or not understood it".|||John Shelby Spong, ''The Sins of Scripture''}}

==References==
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[[Category: Authors]]
[[Category: Liberals]]
[[Category: Ministers]]

Categories:  Authors,  Liberals,  Ministers