John Spong is a retired Espiscopalian bishop. He is a self-proclaimed Christian who believes the relgion needs an overhaul on things such as the resurrection of Christ, homosexual marriage and defintion of divintiy.
Here is a link to his hompage
http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/index.html
and a qoute from this thread
http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/reform.html
Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th century by nailing to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 the 95 Theses that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. 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.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for 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.
12. 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.
So I set these theses today before the Christian world and I stand ready to debate each of them as we prepare to enter the third millennium.
I read a qoute in a UU lecture by John Bohman in which he qoutes from J Spong's book "why Christianty must change or die"
the qoute says
"I would choose to loathe rather than worship a diety who required the sacrifce of his son." We are not born in sin. We do not need to have the stain in our orginal sin wahed away in baptism. We are not fallen creatures who will lose salvation if we are not baptized."
(contents taken from http://www.uucava.org/sermons/Big_Answer_Christianity_121502.htm)
I work with about 40-60 christians between two jobs. I would say that overall --well over 85 % plus are very moral and virtueous people with a sense of magnamity when it comes to community. But all of them, without exception get tripped-up between the coils of bibical dogma and societal morality that is independant of Christianty.
Could Spong be onto something and if the paradign were to shift for Christanity or portions of it in the direction of Spong's list would Christians be able to live more spirtual moral lives WHILE being congurent with their Christian beliefs?
Here is a link to his hompage
http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/index.html
and a qoute from this thread
http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/jsspong/reform.html
Martin Luther ignited the Reformation of the 16th century by nailing to the door of the church in Wittenberg in 1517 the 95 Theses that he wished to debate. I will publish this challenge to Christianity in The Voice. I will post my theses on the Internet and send copies with invitations to debate them to the recognized Christian leaders of the world. My theses are far smaller in number than were those of Martin Luther, but they are far more threatening theologically. The issues to which I now call the Christians of the world to debate are these:
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. 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.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for 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.
12. 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.
So I set these theses today before the Christian world and I stand ready to debate each of them as we prepare to enter the third millennium.
I read a qoute in a UU lecture by John Bohman in which he qoutes from J Spong's book "why Christianty must change or die"
the qoute says
"I would choose to loathe rather than worship a diety who required the sacrifce of his son." We are not born in sin. We do not need to have the stain in our orginal sin wahed away in baptism. We are not fallen creatures who will lose salvation if we are not baptized."
(contents taken from http://www.uucava.org/sermons/Big_Answer_Christianity_121502.htm)
I work with about 40-60 christians between two jobs. I would say that overall --well over 85 % plus are very moral and virtueous people with a sense of magnamity when it comes to community. But all of them, without exception get tripped-up between the coils of bibical dogma and societal morality that is independant of Christianty.
Could Spong be onto something and if the paradign were to shift for Christanity or portions of it in the direction of Spong's list would Christians be able to live more spirtual moral lives WHILE being congurent with their Christian beliefs?