Customer Reviews

Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks To Believers In Exile A New Reformation of the Church's Faith & Practice

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In this, his latest theological work, Bishop John Spong systematically delves into contradictions and conflicts between biblical literalism and modern society. He spotlights the uneasy mix between traditional Christian faith and a modern world-view: contrasting the seven-day creation story with fossils dating back billions of years: the understanding of Earth as but one planet in one galaxy of millions are just two examples of the major shifts in the world view that have taken place since the birth and death of Christ.

For those espousing Biblical literalism and fundamentalism, this book will read like utter heresy. For the true atheist, perhaps, it will seem like goody-goody wishful thinking. Yet, throughout it all, Spong clings to the notion that God is Love, God is Life, God as the ultimate Source of All, and urges people, Christians or not, to examine their beliefs and enter into discussion and dialogue about what Christianity and religion mean in the world today, and for the next millennium. Even when I disagree with Bishop Spong's conclusions, he makes me reevaluate my own faith, and thus both stimulates and refreshes it. I am grateful for this book, even as it disturbs me.

This book is awesome! I had only gotten a few pages into it and already I felt like Spong must have somehow tapped directly into my brain! He speaks to the many, many people out there who feel disenfranchised by a Christianity that keeps serving up ancient fairy stories that are impossible for anyone with a critical (no, make that functioning) intellect to accept. He asks a lot of the questions we are asking; dares to speak the truth about the anger, defensiveness, and politicism that have characterized the Church; and liberates Jesus from the doctrinal straightjacket the Church has encased him in.

No, Spong doesn't really provide *answers*--but I think that's the point. So often people who question are told, basically, to shut up and believe because shutting up and believing is what faith is all about. Spong replies that questioning and reformulating is healthy. I agree with him wholeheartedly that unless Christianity wakes up and starts reexamining itself, it is going to die. Thinking people will dismiss it as a useless relic because it will be so inadequate for their everyday lives. It's happening that way now.

I highly recommend that anybody with any spiritual life whatsoever read this book! It is extremely thought-provoking (which is probably why the fundies can't stand it), and no matter what belief system you arrive at, you need to arrive there informed.

As one who has read Bishop Jack Spong's writings for years, I am continually amazed at the lack of understanding accorded his books. This latest work is a prime example.

If the critic goes back and READS the book, he or she will soon catch on that Spong is not attacking historic Christianity...but is questioning its cliches. He is, in a sense, nailing his own Theses on the Cathedral door for DISCUSSION, not slavish acceptance.

I have disagreed with Jack Spong on much, if not most of what he has written over the years. He has always made me think, often gets by blood pressure up a bit (but rarely as much as most of those Christian authors we find on the shelves in the local "Bible Bookstore" who haven't printed a new idea in decades, but still manage pump out their quick reading, simplistic, royalty grabbing tomes).

I have no doubt of Spong's individual and unique relationship with Christ. I have no doubt as to his compassion, and desire to work with the tough questions so that the Christian life NEVER fears to ask, and attempt to answer ANY question. Good man, good book. Read carefully, thoughtfully and prayerfully!

John Shelby Spong is an original thinker, a profound theologian and philosopher. His work is a brilliant defense of the value of a God and Christian mythology for the modern soul. Spong articulates a rationale for religion and why a belief in God has been so important historically and psychologically. His death of theism theology reflects the culmination of Christian existentialism advanced by his teacher and mentor Paul Tillich. Unlike Tillich, whose primary audience was his fellow theologians, Spong audience is his congregants and those he calls "believers in exile." While Spong proclaims the death of theism, he also proclaims that God is alive and well in the postmodern world.

My problem with Spong's theology, a criticism he acknowledges is valid, but with which he disagrees, is that the religion he has described is not Christianity. Spong has written a Gospel for Unitarianism or for Christian Humanists, but he has not described Christianity. Spong makes a valiant effort to demonstrate in this book, and apparently to an even fuller extent in his earlier writings, that his anti-theism theology is consistent with the earliest Christian witnesses and writings, but his attempt to exorcize the last 1900 years of Christian writings and dogma is simply not credible.

I've always believed that the Jesus of the Gospels bears little resemblance to the historic Jesus, in much the same way that the George Washington taught in elementary schools is not the same as the historical George Washington or that the Martin Luther King, Jr. we honor is an idealization of the actual man. I am prepared to say that a person may describe themselves as a Christian if they believe that the goodness and god-like example of Jesus represents the divine spirt of God, but I don't see how one can be an Episcopalian or a Catholic or a Baptist or a Methodist or a member of any other traditional Christian sect, without believing in the divine (although not necessarily virgin) birth of Jesus, his bodily resurrection, and the existence of an afterlife.

Consider the analogous situation of a Jew who believes in the Torah and takes pride in Jewish history, culture and religion, but does not keep the dietary laws or works on the Sabbath. Certainly this person is a Jew by any acceptable definition. But a synagogue may not describe itself as an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, nor may a Rabbi describe himself as an Orthodox Jew, unless it requires its congregants to obey the dietary laws and refrain from working on the Sabbath, or in the case of the Rabbi, he obeys these laws. So I am at a loss to understand how Bishop Spong can remain a ecclesiastic leader in the Episcopal Church or how he can preside at baptisms, funerals, lead worshipers in prayers from the book of Common Prayer, or administer Communion.

I also cannot join Spong in his leap of faith. A lot of what he says bridges a gap between modern knowledge and man's psychological needs. It explains why religion and a belief in God is important and it also explains why some of us who can?t get there feel a void. But for me the bottom line has not changed: The only rational alternative to theism is atheism or, at best, agnosticism. Both of which, I might add, appear to be more consistent with Spong's theology than the theology of the Church he serves. Nonetheless, both these alternatives and Christianity (as well as most other western and eastern religions) can and frequently do share the same conclusions as to what is morally right and wrong and what constitutes good and evil.

What I find in this book is a valid and well-supported argument to support the conclusions I have already come to in my own Christian experience. Spong explores most of the major concerns of Christian faith: the nature of God, the identity of Jesus Christ and the meaning of his cross and his resurrection, the purpose of prayer, the basis for morality, the existence of an after-life, and the role of the church. With thoughtful credibility Spong demythologizes each tenet yet provides a basis for their continued validity as a path (not necessarily the path) to God for modern seekers. Whether or not you agree with Spong's conclusions, it is difficult to read this book without recognizing him as a man of raw courage, profound spirituality, determined faith, and deep compassion.

Spong must have been reading my mind. He clearly articulates all the doubts I have long felt and lets me know that I am not alone in this. Many churches seem to only reluctantly discard outdated doctrine - one example given is that it wasn't until 1991 that the Catholic church officially acknowledged that Galileo was right (and the Bible is clearly wrong) regarding the nature of the earth and solar system! (some fundamentalists still don't seem to accept that!) I have often thought - as Spong suggests - that most churches expect me to "check in my brain at the front door". I cannot do this, so I sit through church services thinking "are they for real?"

Spong encourages those of us just starting down the path to go to the next level. He lets us know that it ok to use our God given power of reason to question everything and anything that the church traditionally teaches. He provides historical context to show us where the current teachings came from, then presents alternative views. Some point out that his teachings are really not that new - and they may be right for those well read on liberal "theology" - but they were new and refreshing ideas to me.

An example of how he takes it to the next level: I have long ago dismissed the idea of a theistic God sitting like a king in heaven somewhere. But still the church teaches the doctrine of Trinity as a core concept that must not be questioned. But as Spong points out - of what good is the concept is God in "3 persons" once you have discarded the idea of God as a personal being.

What of virgin births and physical resurrections from the dead? Who hasn't sat in the pews at Christmastime and felt a little like the kid who still wants to believe in Santa Claus, but deep down knows its make believe! Spong assures us that these questions are not only ok, but are essential for healthy spiritual growth. He offers a useful alternative context in which to consider these biblical accounts.

He raises the same questions I have asked myself often about worship and prayer. Is God so vain that he sits around basking in the adulation of his "subjects". Of course not - but our hymns and prayers tend to do just this. He could do better to address the subject of prayer a little more deeply.

I believe Spong gets a little too skeptical when discussing miracles - he dismisses them all as implausible. I tend to believe that there is some power deep within us where the human and divine touch and mingle that has the power to bend the "rules" of nature and result in miracles. I believe there is some evidence of this in real life. But this is his book and his belief - I do not need to agree with him 100% to be able to learn and enjoy.

He does get a little bitter at times when describing the institution of the church - but his anger is not directed at any indivdual - just the institution itself.

Whether you agree with Spong or hatefully discount his words, this book has extreme merit. If only to challenge the mind to open itself. I've read through many reviews on Amazon and they are as polarized as our nations people are today. One even called Jesus a Republican, which clearly indicates this reviewer is severely out of touch with the Bible's teachings.

The nay-sayers to Spong's work merely suffer from fear of a deeper truth, which is, none of us knows for certain what the truth is. No matter what you believe, it is all based on faith, not fact. And no matter how strongly you believe in your position, it is unlikely you will sway the other side. So why bother? You are responsable for your own soul, not mine.

This book challenges the reader to look beyond the conditioning of traditional views. Some will grow from it, others will detest it. If only because they cannot tolerate the question this book forces them to ask...."who am I without these old beliefs?"

I lived in his diocese for quite a few years, and when I first became a Christian--specifically a very conservative Roman Catholic--in 1998, I thought Bishop Spong was out of his mind: a lunatic and willing tool of the worst of the various PC agenda-ists running around the Northern New Jersey area. Yet the longer I hung around the Roman Catholic Church the more convinced I was that I belonged in the Episcopal Communion where the thought control wasn't and isn't quite as over-the-top as what I discovered in the RCC; and where there were indeed men and women like Bishop Spong attempting to blow off the cobwebs of antiquated modes of thinking and relating to a tradition sadly in need of renovation. When you buy an old house you cut through the layers of paint to get back to the brickwork. That, I think, has been part of Bishop Spong's project for the last few years: to return Christianity to its sense of spiritual beauty, and also to change its sense of the salvific from one demanding a worship of the omniscient and omnipotent Big Daddy with a carrot and stick into one inviting us into a community of sharing and love that embodies the love of Jesus who in his human life embodied the qualities of God that human life requires for spirituality. That kind of love has nothing to do with gender, sexual preference or privilege. It has everything to do with what is best in ourselves. Bishop Spong is a heretic if you have an entrenched stake in the system as it stands now, or if you are so wrapped up in your need for God the Big Daddy that you cannot imagine a life of responsibility. At times he goes a bit wild in his interpretations of Christian symbolism, as in how one receives Communion. But I would rather reject his interpretations after being provoked to consider them than to be told that This Is How It Is And You'd Better Do It This Way Or Else.

In this very honest and courageous book Protestant bishop John Shelby Spong tries to wipe clean Christian theology of all mythological, superstitious, or idolatrous elements. He does succeed in showing how much of current theology and tradition is meaningless, but he consistently goes too far. For example in one of his most interesting arguments he explains how the dogma of Christ's divinity was created: First, the earliest New Testament writer, Paul, declared that Jesus became divine at the cross. Subsequent writers moved the moment in which Jesus became divine back to the time of his baptism, then of his birth, and finally the latest writer, John, moved the divinity of Jesus back to the beginning of all time. A similar account is given for the appearance of the concept of the Holy Spirit. So far so good, but suddenly, as if the previous discussion had made it necessary, Spong makes away with the dogma of Trinity itself. It may be true that Christian dogma was created in a messy, all too human fashion, but this does not mean that the end result must be wrong and made away with. Trinity is the Christian vision of God, and is brightly beautiful and deeply meaningful for many people. Spong suggests that it should be abandoned without really explaining why.

Over and over again he abstracts important concepts beyond recognition, and I would say beyond relevance for almost everybody. For example he decries the "theistic God". Theism is not a commonplace concept, I had to look it up. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica "Theism is the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one supreme or ultimate reality of which one may also speak in personal terms." I have no problem with this, and I don't see why the fact that the idea of theism has been abused means that theism is false. Spong himself has a completely impersonal view of God as the "Ground of All Being". It is difficult to have such an abstract entity be the Creator, so this fundamental aspect of God is simply not mentioned in the book. How does one pray to the Ground of All Being? Spong rightfully criticizes the view of prayer as the means to get God's attention and intervention according to our needs, but then he makes away with prayer altogether, declaring that prayer is living in God; but prayer without communication is not prayer at all. In another passage he claims that the concept of heaven does not make sense anymore because today we can fly in the sky and astronauts have penetrated outer space, so there is no place for a physical abode of God called heaven. Some Christians held the primitive view that heaven was a place somewhere above the
clouds, and from this Spong deduces that heaven does not exist! He seems to believe that if an idea has been used in error then the idea itself must be in error. So he ends up again and again throwing out the baby with the bath water.

In this book Spong equates Christianity with Christian theology and tradition. The title of the book should be (and would make more sense if it were): "Why Christian theology and tradition must change or become irrelevant". In a similar vein he equates the concept of God with the concept of belief in God. That is why over and over again he writes that God might die. Of course this makes no sense at all, God and death are incompatible concepts; what he is talking about is that faith in God may die. All of this makes for a confusing and jarring reading.

By equating Christianity with dogma and tradition Spong is led to believe that if these were fixed in the ways suggested in the book then Christianity would grow through its current crisis. Being a religious leader himself, he thinks that dogma and tradition, the two pillars on which religious institutions base their spiritual leadership, are now the problem and if transformed they will become the solution. He thinks that the main reason why so many educated people today turn from Christianity and find so little relevance of Christ's message in their lives is that Christian theology is difficult a believe in this time and age. There is another view, which is not discussed at all in this book: Christianity is becoming less credible because of the hypocrisy of the people who call themselves Christians. Many people think: even the leaders of Christian institutions are not making a clear effort to live according to Christ's message, so why should I? Theology is fine and good, particularly on a satisfied stomach, but Jesus has called us to love each other - not to create a more credible theology. Spong's book may be valiant and revolutionary, but in the end it only reinforces the idea that dogma and tradition is what matters, not people and how they live.

This is an excellent book and will make you think a lot, especially if you are a believer. Very highly recommended.

John Shelby Spong wrote this book for people who could no longer accept the standard Christian theology. That certainly includes me, so I read his book with great interest. In many ways he mirrors my own thinking, but his long ecclesiastical background as an Episcopal Bishop gives us different vantage points.

Spong says the old concept of a theistic God is no longer useful in a modern world. God is not a person who lives in the sky and tinkers with our lives and sits in judgment. The steady march of knowledge about the vastness of the universe and our puny place in it has made that God obsolete. Spong is at his best when he is tracing the biblical roots of this God and showing how they arose, not out of any divine revelation, but were the natural product of the tribal societies with whom they originated.

I loved his chapter on "Jesus as Rescuer" in which he demolishes the doctrine that "Jesus died for our sins." He goes on to argue against the Virgin Birth and Immaculate Conception, showing how, to people of the time, a sinless Jesus needed sinless progenitors. I was amused at his discourse on the Ten Commandments, as he actually pronounces some of them "immoral." That's pretty heavy stuff. I was brought up Catholic, and I don't think the Catholic Church will be following Bishop Spong into rejection of these long-standing Christian ideas. I don't know much about Episcopalians (a church started by a king who wanted to divorce -- make that murder -- his wife!) but it seems to me these doctrines are the lever used to control people and perpetuate the church. The church will never let them go.

That brings me to my differences with Spong. He continually uses the word "worship;" he uses the word to mean the activity that goes on inside churches. It seems to me he has hung onto this word because there is no meaningful word for the hodgepodge of activities that occur inside church buildings. As to the word itself, surely a God who is in all of us and who encompasses the vast universe has no need to be worshiped. The whole idea of worshiping God is also obsolete, along with the other concepts Spong so deftly kills off.

I think he also misses the mark in his discussion of prayer. He asks why someone who is prayed for should recover from their illness while someone who is not prayed for does not recover. What kind of a God would be so influenced? What is wrong with this analysis, in my opinion, is the inclusion of God, who does not have to be involved in what we call prayer at all. Just as we do not need to worship God, neither do we need to petition him/her. Prayer, I believe, is really an aspect of non-local consciousness. It is a type of psychic phenomena if you will, a way one mind or spirit reaches out to another. The question is not who we pray TO but who we pray FOR. We touch the other person or event with our spirit or inner energy. Prayer can be studied scientifically (to some extent) and studies have been done that seem to indicate prayer works.

In the same way, Spong does not offer us much in his discussion of life after death. While I like a lot of what he said about the value of what we do in this life, the real question is what happens when we die. Christian doctrine on this has emphasized the divine judgment which separates the good from the bad, relegating us to heaven or hell. Spong traces the theological roots back to the theistic God who is like a good parent, and the way these concepts of the next life were used by the church to control behavior in this life.

But is the concept of life after death totally bound up with reward and punishment? I think not. Today we have much evidence from Near Death Experience (NDE) and Out of Body Experience (OBE) and the testimony of mystics like Robert Monroe. There is a mini boom in contacting the dead (consider the popularity of John Edward's "Crossing Over") and millions of people accept these sources as proof that our spirits go on after we "cross over." Again, where is God? He/she does not have to be in this equation either. The evidence seems to indicate that we take our emotional baggage with us to the other side, and we continue to grow spiritually in this new realm.

I also need to mention his attitude toward Jesus. Of course as a priest and bishop, Spong has had Jesus contiually in his life, and to say Jesus is just an interesting character in some ancient and unverified stories would be too painful. But Spong is willing to relegate many items in the Bible to mythical status, so why does he accept some (not all) of what is said about Jesus? Even interpreting the unacceptable (the birth in a stable, attended by three wise men, for instance) in new ways is hedging on whether anything written about Jesus is true. I agree that Jesus as described in the New Testament has much to offer. But how can we know what really happened thousands of years ago when the only testimony was written years later and has the bias of its time? Spong will not eliminate Jesus from his belief system, but many others who haven't spent decades in liturgical orthodoxy will.

So do all these transformations of the old Christian ideas mean there is no God? Not at all. I agree generally with Spong in his conclusions, but he is tied to his ecclesiastical past in a way that I am not. While I think churches have contributed to society by bringing people together and creating social bonds, and often doing good works, I cannot see how they can go on when the basic reason for their existence -- their theology, including Jesus -- can no longer be believed. Spong concludes his book by saying "I expect to enter even more deeply into the reality of the God in whom I have lived and moved and had my being." Amen to that, but it does not require a church.