Jesus for the Non-Religious (Hardcover)

by John Shelby Spong (Author)
Key Phrases: theistic definition, theistic deity, religious anger, Yom Kippur, Second Isaiah, Jesus of Nazareth (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Spong, the iconoclastic former Episcopal bishop of Newark, details in this impassioned work both his "deep commitment to Jesus of Nazareth" and his "deep alienation from the traditional symbols" that surround Jesus. For Spong, scholarship on the Bible and a modern scientific worldview demonstrate that traditional teachings like the Trinity and prayer for divine intervention must be debunked as the mythological trappings of a primitive worldview. These are so much "religion," which was devised by our evolutionary forebears to head off existential anxiety in the face of death. What's left? The power of the "Christ experience," in which Jesus transcends tribal notions of the deity and reaches out to all people. Spong says Jesus had such great "energy" and "integrity" about him that his followers inflated to the point of describing him as a deity masquerading in human form; however, we can still get at the historical origin of these myths by returning to Jesus' humanity, especially his Jewishness. Spong so often suggests the backwardness and insecurity of those who disagree with him that his rhetoric borders on the fundamentalist. His own historical and theological reconstructions would be more palatable if he seemed more aware that he too is engaged in mythmaking. (Feb. 27)
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Product Description

Writing from his prison cell in Nazi Germany in 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German theologian, sketched a vision of what he called "religionless Christianity." In this book, John Shelby Spong puts flesh onto the bare bones of Bonhoeffer's radical thought. The result is a strikingly new and different portrait of Jesus of Nazareth—a Jesus for the non-religious.

Spong challenges much of the traditional understanding that has for so long surrounded the Jesus of history, from the tale of his miraculous birth to a virgin, to the account of his cosmic ascension into the sky at the end of his life. Spong questions the historicity of the ideas that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that he had twelve disciples, and that the miracle stories were meant to be descriptions of supernatural events. He also speaks directly to those contemporary critics of Christianity who call God a "delusion" and who write letters to a "Christian nation" and describe how Christianity has become evil and destructive.

Spong invites his readers to look at Jesus through the lens of both the Jewish scriptures and the liturgical life of the first-century synagogue. Dismissing the dispute about Jesus' nature that consumed the church's leadership for the first 500 years of Christian history as irrelevant, Spong proposes a new way of understanding the divinity of Christ: as the ultimate dimension of a fulfilled humanity. Traditional Christians who still cling to dated concepts of the past will not be comfortable with this book; however, skeptics of the twenty-first century will not be quite so certain that dismissing Jesus is the correct pathway to walk. Jesus for the Non-Religious may be the book that finally brings the pious and the secular into a meaningful dialogue, opening the door to a living Christianity in the post-Christian world.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: HarperOne; 1 edition (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060762071
• ISBN-13: 978-0060762070
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #103,824 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

138 of 146 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and thought-provoking analysis, March 6, 2007

By	Archangel "Archangel" (Cumberland, RI USA) - See all my reviews

I have enjoyed all of Bishop John Shelby Spong's books. This latest addition weaves together Bishop Spong's interpretation of how the gospel stories came about and how they should be viewed by the contemporary Christian. He makes a compelling argument that much of what appears in the gospels represents a reformulation of pre-existing Jewish folklore as expressed in the Old Testament in an attempt to understand the significance of the historical Jesus. I especially enjoyed his chapter that discusses how the Christian church will ultimately fail if it continues to struggle to hang on to old and outdated interpretations that even the faithful no longer take seriously.

I had hoped that Bishop Spong would further develop what it was about the Jesus of history that made the writers feel compelled to wrap Jesus's story in such complex mythology. The latter parts of the book I felt were weak in this regard. His premise is that a man like Jesus who transcended the boundaries of prejudice, stereotype, and other human frailties was deemed to be a reflection of God and consequently became wrapped into the mythology of the Jewish Old Testament. To my mind, there must have been more than that. There have been other great men of history (Gandhi comes to mind) that did not produce the impact that Jesus Christ did. I could not help feeling that there must have been something more to the Christ story...much more to make the evangelists go through the trouble that they did to produce the gospel stories of this great man.

Despite this shortcoming, I found the book to be well-written, informative, and very interesting. I highly recommend it for Progressive Christians. Orthodox Christians will not like this book and I look forward to their reviews that will undoubtably follow.

122 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars History vs Story--Which comes first?, April 5, 2007

By	Donald W. Blosser (Goshen, IN.) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

John Shelby Spong is an excellent theologian, making faith possible for persons for whom integrity of belief is important. He argues that NT events from the life of Jesus are not based in actual happenings but are creations by NT writers drawing from OT images that are then applied to Jesus and his ministy. Thus, Spong is able to dismiss virtually all historical references in the gospels. This reviewer is thoroughly familiar with the theological meaning of mythology (PHD in NT studies from St. Andrews Univ. Scotland), and agrees with many of the conclusions that Spong reaches, but I prefer to see a core element of historical data which led the NT writers to return to the OT for religious language that will describe the event and input meaning to it. They see events in the life of Jesus with OT history and in order to tell the story they use Ot imagery and language. Thus Spong is correct in challenging specific details in the story telling, but for me, he is far to quick to dismiss far too much of the gospel data.
We agree that Jesus was an historical figure--but I do not believe Spong has done his research in extra-biblical data that provides evidence that could be understood to document events particularly from Luke's gospel.
Spong's book might be very helpful for persons looking for theological meaning in the Jesus story, but too much data surrounding that ministry is dismissed as creative story telling. I began making a list and quickly found 25 things that Spong dismisses as having no historical identity (no star, no Bethlehem, no Judas, no 12 disciples, no burial in a tomb, no cleansing of the temple, etc.etc). I agree that the stories are embellished via oral tradition with the early centuries, but I continue to believe these stories developed out of an actual event that did happen, but that we should not insist on exact historicity in all details as the story is told.
Spong is an excellent challenge to Evangelical-Fundamentalist literalism in Biblical story telling (for that clearly lacks intellectual credibility) but I wish he would have toned down his strident "slash and burn" approach to all historical rootage in the biblical life of Jesus.
This book is a very important challenge to the "literal text with a spiritual meaning" so prevalent in American Christianity. It will speak to persons who long for a theological image of Jesus preaching a desperately needed message about justice, reconciliation, compassion and personal integrity that calls persons to be all they can be, and to live with freedom and grace for all humanity.

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Jesus for the rest of us!, June 4, 2007

By	Don Smith (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) - See all my reviews

Tired of Bible-thumpers, door-to-door evangelists and televangelists? Ashamed to call yourself a Christian because people will think you're a bigoted know-nothing? Do you have a deep attachment to the man Jesus but wouldn't be caught dead in a church? Well, take hope!

Jack Spong has thrown religious clutter overboard in this exciting new book and allowed people of the 21st century to see the wonder and awe which Jesus' original followers must have experienced in his presence. Not superman just a super man!

In the first third of the book, Spong, dismantles all the man-made supernatural rubbish layered on the human Jesus. The reasons why the early Church did these things are many and varied but "modern" scholars, over the past 150 years or so, now know that things like the virgin birth and bodily resurrection were NOT things that the earliest followers of Jesus would have recognized as having anything to do with what Jesus was about.

The middle third of the book focuses on how and why the original evangelists made Jesus look like the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy and/or a figure of importance like Moses or David. Most of us read this stuff in the Bible and just assume that it's "history" but once again, Spong points out that modern scholarship recognizes this as interpretive material to make Jesus the next logical step for Jews and eventually Gentiles in God's "plan" for us.

The final third of the book is really the pinnacle of Spong's thinking regarding where people of a spiritual inclination (Christian or otherwise) can go with this de-mythologized human Jesus. We don't need to grovel before a God and thank a God for getting Jesus killed so that in some bizzare way we think/believe that Jesus' blood washes away "original sin" that most of us don't even think/know we've got! Rather we, like the original followers of Jesus, need to see something "God-like" in the way in which Jesus lived and died.

If, as Spong argues, God can provisionally be described as "the source of love, the source of life, and the ground of being" then in Jesus we have seen someone who loves wastefully, enhances being and exhorts us to live fully. This is not just some New Age bumper sticker. This is a challenge for all of us to follow in Jesus' footsteps and create the world that we know God would want. Confronting injustice, corrupt power and killing prejudice can get us crucified, too - but that is the path of Jesus.

Don't bother reading this book if you're a "born again" Christian - it'll just make you mad and confuse you. But, if, like me, you see beauty and richness in the Christian tradition and the man Jesus DESPITE all of the ugliness of institutional religion (now and in the past) this book is a MUST read.

Highly recommended.