[Dialogue] 12/15/16, Spong/Roger Wolsey: I and many others stand upon Bishop Spong's shoulders

Thu Dec 15 07:22:27 PST 2016

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I, and many others, stand upon Bishop Spong's shoulders
We continue this week with guest author Roger Wolsey, United Methodist Pastor and author.

It’s accurately said that “we stand on the shoulders of giants” and John Shelby Spong is one of mine. Bishop Spong has been a tremendous influence on my life as a pastor who is also a theologian and writer. Though we’re not of the same denomination, we are birds of a feather and kindred spirits. We share similar vocational callings. We give a damn about Christianity and its capacity to serve as a source of healing and prophetic transformation in a world that sorely needs those things. And, we care enough about the lineage we’re part of to critique the hell out of it – literally – to help separate the wheat from the chaff in ways that help the faith to be relevant and meaningful in this new millennium.
I first discovered Spong’s writings the summer before I started seminary in 1992. My home church, Hamline UMC in St. Paul, MN, had book discussion group called “The Phoenix Group” comprised of people who had fallen away from conventional Christianity and some forward thinking member of that group invited us to read the book that established Spong’s fame and renown – “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism.”
Without the benefit of having started my work at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, CO, the book blew me away with its boldness and its avoidance of pulling any punches. It sensed that Bishop Spong was a veteran of numerous experiences of seeing the Church at its worst. I was impressed by his owning of his stances. As a Minnesotan, who grew up with the value of “nice,” I found myself blushing for how strident and crass some of his rhetoric was. It was clear that he wasn’t seeking to make friends within certain quarters of the Church family. It was obvious that he was done suffering fools kindly and that he was prepared to be estranged from some people. I’d never seen anything quite like this before in the reading I’d done to that point in life.
Informed by the critical insights of Rescuing the Bible – along with my earlier degree in philosophy – I hit the ground running at Iliff and blazed my way through my coursework with a a passion to de-and re-construct the faith in ways that made sense to me and my generation (X).
Though not on any required reading lists, his book Born of a Woman: a Bishop Rethinks the Birth of Jesus was in the seminary bookstore. I devoured it in the Spring of 1993 and wished I’d read it in the fall of 1992 – before I preached my early sermons as a student pastor – as the insights from it completely changed my understanding of Mary. Instead of reducing my faith in Christianity, Spong’s debunking the false notion that Mary was a virgin, and backing it up scripturally, increased my appreciation of how the scriptures were formed, via processes of midrash, and helped me to celebrate how Jesus’ truly ordinary, and arguably even shameful, entry into the world was a kick-ass declaration of God’s actual glory – including a feminine glory – and the miracle of turning something chaotic and embarrassing into something – someone – who would grow-up to forever change the world – for those who let it.
After seminary, Spong again rocked my socks with his book “Resurrection: Myth or Reality”. I read it in 1995 and it greatly informed how I preached my Easter Sunday sermons throughout my career as a pastor. Spong clearly showed how a belief in a physical resurrection of Jesus is not at all necessary in order to be a good and faithful Christian follower of Jesus. Indeed, it was an encounter with a spiritually resurrected Jesus that the apostle Paul had on his way to Damascus, and if that was good enough for Paul, it’s jolly good enough for me. I can relate to this view of things. I too have had spiritual encounters with the Risen one. I too have experienced new life and resurrections from my many failures and face-plants in life. Belief that those can happen is what matters. Furthermore, this text helped me to be more aware about the anti-semitism that has colored Christianity over the years – and how Christians can become better Christians by learning more about the Jewishness of Jesus, the Jewishness of all the authors of all of the texts in the Bible, and the Jewishness of early Christianity. My reading of Spong’s next book “Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible With Jewish Eyes” only increased this.
I then found myself becoming caught up in my work as pastor, as a husband, and as a political activist – especially seeking to do what I could to prevent the U.S. from waging that senseless war in Iraq. I eventually divorced and felt called to write my own book, “Kissing Fish: Christianity for people who don’t like Christianity.” I had become increasingly more informed by the writings of John Cobb, Jr; Marcus Borg; and John Dominic Crossan and felt moved to offer an introduction to progressive Christianity from a Gen X perspective. During those years, it struck me that Spong, like one of my other mentors, Dr. Delwin Brown, was still more in the camp of liberal Christianity than thoroughly in the arising movement of progressive Christianity. In the same way that Lee Strobel’s “The Case for Christ” was one of the last efforts of conventional evangelical evangelism, I felt that Spong’s works were largely late expressions of liberal Christianity; i.e., a bit too beholden to science, and not quite enough embracing of paradox, Mystery, and the possibility of personal relationship with God.
It was only after I’d published my book that I got around to reading Spong’s books: A Christianity for New World, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Living in Sin?, and Here I Stand. The reading of those texts has both confirmed and challenged my assessment of his theology. I’ve come to realize that I was too quick to label him and put him into a box. While it is true that Spong’s rhetoric – e.g., “God is not a noun, that demands to be defined, God is a verb that invites us to live, to love and to be” – can be ironically over-stated, and notably dualistic (either/or) polarizing – not values in progressive Christianity as I understand it. It’s also the case that his views defy easy categorization and are highly nuanced and have evolved over the years. Spong is very much a fellow progressive Christian. Indeed, he’s one of our movement’s founding-parents. I’ve been blessed by his boldness, brashness, and uncompromising commitment to his integrity. Here he stands – and here I, and many others, stand upon his shoulders.
About the Author
Rev. Roger Wolsey is an ordained United Methodist pastor who directs the Wesley Foundation at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is author of Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity ; The Kissing Fish Facebook page ; Roger’s Blogs on Patheos “The Holy Kiss”
Read the essay online here.

Question & Answer
Bob From Fresno, California, writes,

Question:
The Bible speaks of God addressing particular people, e.g. Abraham, Moses, Elijah and Nathan directly. Other people claim that God has spoken directly to them. How do you account for or explain that?
Answer:
Dear Bob,
In a word very carefully!!
I think we need to heed the wisdom of the man who said, "When I speak to God it is called prayer. When God speaks to me it is called paranoia."
People who have a deep sense of vocation do feel that God is directing their lives and so they might well refer to that by saying, "God spoke to me and called me to this vocation." That, however, must be understood metaphorically not literally.
Does God have vocal cords that enable the Divine One to speak? Does God have a larynx through which words can be formed? Does God speak in Hebrew, Greek or English? Does God have a heavenly accent? Literalism gets silly when we ask such questions. When Moses at the burning bush felt the call from God to go to Egypt to seek freedom of the Jewish people from slavery, was that a literal happening? Was it external? Could it have been photographed or recorded? Or was it internal, subjective, and seen only with the eyes of the mind? People, who claim that they have visions, hear voices or who believe that they bring messages from God are either mentally unbalanced or deceptive, since they appear to need external validation for their internal yearnings. Either way they need to submit their insights to a larger community for both judgment and validation. Great harm has been done to too many people as the direct result of such claims. I distrust them almost 100%!!
~John Shelby Spong

Read and Share Online Here

Announcements

A Journey into a New Christianity Through the Doorway of Matthew's Gospel.

In Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy, Spong annotates the Gospel of Matthew and so provides a blueprint for the Church’s future—one that allows the faithful to live inside the Christian story while still embracing the modern world.

Click here to read more or purchase book
Please send your notes of get well to Bishop Spong addressed to admin at progressivechristianity.org and we will forward them on for you. 

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