Spong on Evolving Christianity

[_Roger Morrison]

From his latest news letter. Quite a "Revelation"!?!? Thoughts, comments, for or against?

Only by convincing human beings of their fallen, sinful states could the church's message of divine rescue be possible. In the theology, liturgies and hymns of the church the sense of sin and depravity was drilled into the human consciousness. No Christian was allowed to escape the chronic sense of unworthiness. Throughout history the Church has trafficked in guilt, the gift, we note, "that keeps on giving." Christian theology begins not with the love of God, but with human sin and its fall. When we sing of God's amazing grace, we discover it is amazing only because it saves a "wretch" like you and me. Our liturgies pronounce us "miserable offenders," people in whom there is "no health" or wholeness, those not worthy to gather up the crumbs from the divine table. Worshippers are made to say "Have mercy on me" constantly. The church has told babies that they were "born in sin" and thus must be baptized lest they perish, and that as adults that they can do nothing good without God. It is a debilitating message and it comes at us from every corner of church life. Protestants are told that "Jesus died for your sins;" Catholics are told that the mass reenacts the sacrifice that Jesus made for their sinfulness. Both are little more than guilt messages. One sometimes wonders how congregations absorb this negativity so passively or why it has any appeal.

From the insights of psychiatry we now know the powerful truth that people who are abused, hurt and violated tend to become those who abuse, hurt and violate. It should not surprise us, therefore, to find in Christian history a pattern of constant and consistent victimization. Victimized people must always have a victim onto whom their defined negativity can be transferred. That is why the Christian Church throughout its history has always had a "designated victim" who could be publicly persecuted, someone to absorb the self hatred that this understanding of God forced us to bear. First it was the Jews and we Christians made anti-Semitism a shameful fact of history. Then it was the heretics whom we burned at the stake with clear consciences. Then it was the scientists who keep whittling away at our certainty. Next, in rapid succession, it was people of color whom Christians enslaved, segregated, dehumanized and isolated; then it was women who were forced to accept second class status; and finally, it was the homosexual persons, who became the newest victims of our guilt-laden religion. Our definition of homosexuality as "a deviant, immoral and evil lifestyle" justified our hostility. Darwin's ideas threatened this strange, hostile theology on which the Christian Church built its power. Homosexual prejudice is thus only the newest battleground on which the church seeks to preserve its view of life and to justify its continued negativity toward its human victims. It is no wonder that resisting Darwin and repressing homosexuality elicits both the energy and the anger that it does in Christian circles today.

What is really going on underneath the church's attempt to defeat evolution and to repress homosexual persons is a struggle between a dying theology, based on false premises and manifesting itself in centuries of abuse, and a new, human, celebratory theology that is struggling to be born. In this new theology the call of the Christ figure is not to rescue the sinner so that the sinner can become the abuser of others; it is rather to empower us to become so fully human that we do not need a victim to victimize, but can become a new humanity, people who are not struggling to survive, but who are capable of giving our life and love away. A fully human Jesus, a new way besides sacrifice to view the cross and a new meaning to be found in the earliest Christian creed that in Jesus God has been engaged will be the hallmarks of this new theology. It is time for the Christian Church to make this shift in a conscious way.

John Shelby Spong

[_Roger Morrison]

Looks like folks in this state of glory already know this. Halleluiah!! Maybe i best send this upstairs to those with their heads in the clowds?? Roger

[_the road to hana]

What do you think about it, Roger? Maybe if you want to have a discussion about it it would help if you'd take a particular point to discuss or explore.

[_Roger Morrison]

What do you think about it, Roger? Maybe if you want to have a discussion about it it would help if you'd take a particular point to discuss or explore.

Thanks Hana, i never looked at it that way. Took it foregranted all would know i agree with Spong. Seems to me to be little doubt that Spong, and others with this point of view, are speaking truth that will eventually change religious-society from self-loathing, and heaven-bent to escape the effects of man's fallen state, to one of self-acceptance and personal/group responsibility for community affairs, here and now.

Pretty difficult for young people, educated beyond secondary school, and/or Sectarian Colleges to accept biblical myths, tales and legends as anything other than that. Genesis, a man swallowing & spewing fish, a Tower built that threatened "God", global flood, Abraham as the father of nations et al...

The time has past to teach such nonsense as "truth and light". To retain any respect, and positive influence on the lives of humanity, it behooves EVERY Christian Church to admit such teaching are not--and never were--meant to be taken literallly... As I see it. And you? Warm regards, Roger

[_Yong Xi]

I would like to think that Chrisitanity will evolve into something as suggested by Spong. Certainly, it will for some. I have doubts, however, that this is likely for most Christians anytime soon. Spong guts Christianity of the magic and the supernatural which seems to be elemental to it's mass appeal.