When I stand in the presence of this God who inhabits the heart of life, I know just why I define myself as a joyful . There are passages in the Gospels that portray Jesus of Nazareth as narrowminded, vindictive, and even hypocritical. "[2], Spong served as rector of St. Joseph's Church in Durham, North Carolina, from 1955 to 1957; rector of Calvary Parish, Tarboro, North Carolina, from 1957 to 1965; rector of St. John's Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, from 1965 to 1969; and rector of St. Paul's Church in Richmond, Virginia, from 1969 to 1976. I think religion in general and Christianity in particular must always be evolving. All religion seems to need to prove that it's the only truth. The Bible tells me that every life is holy; the Bible tells me that every life is loved; the Bible tells me that every life is called to be all that it can be. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952. That's sort of fourth-century Christianity that got turned into doctrines and dogmas that we've never been able to escape. Although he has been a Christian his entire life, he does not believe it makes him superior to anyone. googletag.enableServices(); Now they are people who have not found in institutional religion a God big enough to be God for their world. That is not within human competence. I rather experience God as the source of life willing me to live fully, the source of love calling me to love wastefully and to borrow a phrase from the theologian, Paul Tillich, as the Ground of being, calling me to be all that I can be. Apologetic explanations do not develop unless there is a reality that has to be explained and defended. Above all, words must be recognized as symbolic pointers to truth, not objective containers of truth. And this came after I had written a book called "Living In Sin" on the whole gay. www.huffingtonpost.com. I'm not in the comfort-giving business. I live on the other side of Charles Darwin and I can no longer see human light as having been created perfect and falling into sin, I see us rather emerging into higher and higher levels of consciousness and higher and higher levels of complication. But before he talked too much about the end, he went back to the Jewish roots of Matthews Gospel. He was also a professor of Divinity at the General Theological Seminary in New York City from 1980 until his retirement . These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies. Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. } I don't think that's the case. It meant to go beyond the boundaries of your religion, to go beyond your security system, to go beyond your fears. Theism is dead, I joyfully proclaim, but God is real. It's a group of essays by mostly womanly scholars looking at Matthew's gospel through feminists' eyes - very exciting. I am trying to understand what it means to be a Christian without being religious. [CDATA[ If I could not move my search beyond angelic messengers, empty tombs, and ghostlike apparitions, I could not say yes to Easter. It appears to be in the nature of religion itself to be prejudiced against those who are different. } John Shelby Spong 26. Matthew was not alone in his understanding of Jesus message. John Shelby Spong People, History, Real, Understood Generate image The Christ path is the path I've walked all my life, so it's normal and natural. [9], A prominent theme in Spong's writing was that the popular and literal interpretations of Christian scripture are not sustainable and do not speak honestly to the situation of modern Christian communities. //
Demurrage Fee For Cars In Nigeria,
James Roberts Obituary Florida,
Johnny Carson On Michael Landon Death,
Articles J