First a song
Then commentary from a man of the cloth
Morrison: What do you make of the theology which is pretty quite prominent these days in America, which is there is one guaranteed way not to go to hell; and that is to accept Jesus as your personal saviour.
Spong: Yeah, I grew up in that tradition. Every church I know claims that ‘we are the true church’ – that they have some ultimate authority, ‘We have the infallible Pope,’ ‘We have the Bible.’… The idea that the truth of God can be bound in any human system, by any human creed, by any human book, is almost beyond imagination for me.
I mean, God is not a Christian. God is not a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindi or Buddhist. All of those are human systems, which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honour my tradition. I walk through my tradition. But I don’t think my tradition defines God. It only points me to God
Random thoughts 
Bishop Spong is a bit of a controversial figure within the Anglican Church, Mak. There are many who feel he’s not a believer . . I find him quite enlightening; he’s definitely an open-minded fellow in many ways.
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He’s fascinating, truly. Im amazed no one has excommunicated him, lol.
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I’ve spoken to some Anglicans and they think he ought to be! I remember listening to him on the radio – probably twenty years ago now – and thinking that his ideas were quite radical.
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Not that radical. Similar views have been seen here in Aotearoa New Zealand in all the mainstream denominations for decades before Spong appeared on the scene. Professor Lloyd Geering has been promoting a secular nontheist form of Christianity since the 1960s. He holds New Zealand’s highest honour, the Order of New Zealand, for his services to religion. Can you imagine the current US administration honouring Spong’s service to religion 😊
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Ha, ha Barry! We’ve also got our own ‘radical’ here – an atheist minister by the name of Gretta Vosper. She’s still a minister in the United Church of Canada, albeit a controversial one. 🙂
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Perhaps Geering has had more influence here as he was Dean of Knox theological college when his views came to national attention in 1967. In this country there are more Christians who are nontheists or non-realists than there are fundamentalists yet for some reason when non-Christian discuss Christianity the assumption is that all Christians hold fundamentalist beliefs. Seems pointless to me :}
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Barry, you always forget you live in some island away from the rest of us. If we were talking evolutionary terms, we would say, yours branched off and evolved differently. Many Christians in many places hold onto fundamentalist beliefs
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Perhaps it’s an island thing as I believe the UK is not far behind us. The other island nation about the same size as NZ and the UK – Japan also has a very pluralist view of religion.
Or it could be because this country was settled just at the end of the Enlightenment, but before the rise of fundamentalist backlash, which started in the US and then was exported world wide. We had freethinkers as political and social leaders way back in the 1860s. Has America ever had free thinkers and/or atheists in top political roles?
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America has treated her freethinkers not too well. They have only been vocal in academia. Not in the political scene
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Instead of free thinkers they choose Trump. No wonder they’re in such dire straights
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Haven’t you heard, Trump is god chosen. The best thing that had happened to the evangelical Christians.
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I see that he’s appointed himself King of Israel and second coming of God, which is odd considering the Jews are still waiting for the first coming.
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I saw that. And he wants to increase US territories to include Greenland when he can’t even take care of Puerto Rico
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Seems he’s got into quite a huff when his offer was declined so has cancelled his visit to Denmark. The bloke lives in cloud cuckoo-land.
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That was the craziest thing I have read. Does he consult with anyone before he tweets.
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He’s God, so he doesn’t need to
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One thing I can’t wait to see is what happens in November next year. Or the debates with whoever will be the Dems nominee
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You’re assuming his calls to “lock her up” and “send them back” don’t become more than just rhetoric. And I no longer have confidence that it won’t happen.
Or he might find a suitable excuse ban debates, or “discover” a national emergency that requires delaying the election for a year or ten, or …
I think the guy is crazy enough and with enough cronies in the legislature and judiciary, and a big enough loony support base to make an attempt to circumscribe the electoral process. The only thing predictable with him is his unpredictability.
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I think with Mitch on his side, he can do anything, even the unthinkable.
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Mak … there is waaaay too much truth in that statement! *shudder*
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There is Mitch, Barr and Gorsuch (?) Which represents the justice department, the courts and the legislature. There is a bumpy ride ahead
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How many are awake at 3:00 in the morning?
Mustn’t forget. He’s bigly smart so anything he says or tweets is full of wisdom. Who needs censorship?
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He tweets at 3am? He needs sleep
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He does that later in the morning. Rumor has it that he doesn’t “report in” until around 11:00 in the morning for his “presidential” duties.
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He should just say at the end of the year he is not running. He already has his name in the history books at the 46th(?)
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An atheist minister! You fellows push it
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There are plenty of non-theist clergy and congregations here. Whether or not they would accept being called atheists might be another matter 🙂
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If there are any non theist clergy here, they don’t say so openly
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I’m sure there will be a few. I just goes to show how fear is perhaps the most powerful weapon in the fundamentalist armoury.
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Over time, there will be non theist ministers. Fear is a good thing. It keeps the church collection box full
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The current US administration is god sent. Spong would be unwelcome
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For a religious man, his ideas are quite radical. He takes the bite off religion. If he was a member of my church, I would be behind his excommunication.
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He is fascinating.
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I like him too. He makes religion as preached superfluous
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Like all Christians, spong creates his own religion. And he wants his god to be everyone’s god.
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I know. This is all well and good, and Spong is certainly far more copacetic than a Jerry Falwell or the typical right wing rabid foamer, but it all sounds like Deepak-Chopra level woo to me. He still does not answer the question: why does there need to be “A God”? Why does he assume the universe has a “Purpose” (even if his purpose is more aligned with what many of us want to believe in?)
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That’s a leap that is difficult to make. He already makes his religion woo but can’t take the courageous step of denouncing it in toto
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Perhaps he doesn’t spell it out as clearly as Lloyd Geering, but if you read his works, you’ll realise that there is no need for there to be a God.
It’s essentially a useful label on which to place values and experiences. Neither Spong nor Geering make any claim that God is something outside of the human condition. If you like, God (or gods) are optional. They won’t think less of you for finding the concept less than useful, any more than you should think less of them for finding religious metaphors helpful for them and like thinkers.
You’d also realise that any “purpose” the universe might have is one that we create individually and/or collectively. The universe has no intrinsic purpose. Geering certainly doesn’t believe it does, and from what I know of Spong, neither does he. Again if the concept isn’t useful or helpful to you, there’s no point in using it.
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spong is just one more human being who wants to pretend he’s special.
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At least his god is not damning anyone to hell nor does it want us to be children, that is, born again. That’s a religion I could support
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My god is the Great Golden Boot. He points you to look down at the floor and bend over; then he kicks you in the ass with His Great Golden Boot until He gets you to do as He wants. I like my god, but He does make my ass sore.
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You have a good god. All you should do is teach it to kick other asses, not yours
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He’d do well being a hedge fund manager.
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He would be fired
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God alledgedly created polio and tetanus that inflict little children and have caused terrible havoc among people who would have deserved something better. Or possibly allowed them to be created by some other means and did nothing. Since then this god has remained in hiding from the most of us and does nothing while powerhungry men have and do abuse power in all of his names for thousands of years. Yes, we do need to grow up and see, that hidden gods, that allow mindless evil and insurmountable harm are not worthy of our attention. We need to fix things.
In the undying words of Pat Benatar: “Hit me with your best shot!”
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But, but, all this suffering is BEAUTIFUL, dontcha see? Saint Mother Teresa assures us that the suffering of Jesus is a lovely thing! /sarc
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And you can get a Nobel for convincing people suffering is good while you are glob trotting first class
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Definitely, Raut, we need to fix things. This god took great care to ensure cholera, typhoid survived the flood so we can die of disease. That’s how much he loved us
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Good one, rautakyy!! 🙂
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[…] just came across a post that included a quote from Bishop John Shelby Spong where he […]
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