Now that I have your attention, rest assured there’s a little more to it than that. Yes kids, It’s time once again for a regular Tildology feature, Q&A with Bishop John Shelby Spong:

Larry Hester from Denver writes:

You recently suggested that the split in Christianity today is between those who assert yesterday’s religious explanations and those who find no meaning in yesterday’s religious explanations and give up on religion altogether. If that is so, is Christopher Hitchens’ book, God Is Not Great, a message from the religiously disillusioned? If so how do those religious people who defend the past deal with that book?

Dear Larry,

If I understand your question correctly, let me begin with three declarative statements:

1. Religion must always be questioned

2. Theism can be abandoned without abandoning God

3. Christopher Hitchens’ book is a real asset to the current debate.

Now just let me put some flesh on each of those statements.

Since human beings are creatures of both time and space, and since we know from the work of Albert Einstein that time and space are relative categories that expand and contract in relation to each other, then we must conclude that any statement made by anyone, who is bound by time and space, will never be absolute. There are no propositional statements, secular or religious, that are exempt from this principle. Words reduce all human experiences to relativity. That is why every religious formula must be questioned; that is why no word of any book is inerrant; that is why no proclamation of any ecclesiastical leader is infallible; and finally, that is why no religious system or institution can ever claim to possess the true faith. Religion is a journey into the mystery of God. It is not a system of beliefs and creeds and when it becomes that, it always becomes idolatrous and begins to die.

Theism is not God. It is a human definition of God that assumes that God is a being, perhaps the “Supreme Being,” supernatural in power, dwelling outside the world (usually thought of as above the sky), who periodically invades the world in miraculous ways to answer human prayers or to effect the divine will.

It is my sense that this definition of God has been mortally wounded by the successive blows of Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, just to name a few. I do not believe, however, that this means that God has been mortally wounded even if the theistic definition of God has been.

Suppose God is not defined as “a being,” but is simply experienced as a power, a presence. Then describing that experience is quite different from claiming to know who or what God is. Then the question is, “Are we delusional or is this experience real?” I think God is real and I believe we are in the process of defining our God experience in a new way that will replace the dying theistic definition of the past.

Finally, Christopher Hitchens’ book, God Is Not Great, is a description of the theistic God of the past who is dying. The theistic God certainly appears in the Bible and is guilty of many things that are genuinely immoral, like killing the firstborn male in every Egyptian household, stopping the sun in the sky to allow more time for Joshua to slaughter the Amorites and ordering genocide against the Amalekites through the prophet Samuel. Christians need to remember that it has been the theistic God who has been responsible for the development of such things as anti-Semitism, the Inquisition, and the oppression of people of color, women and homosexual persons. This deity has also been perceived as justifying war, fighting crusades and creating slavery. Let us agree with Christopher Hitchens that this God is not great. We need to challenge Christopher Hitchens’ assumption, however, that this is the only way we can think about or conceptualize God.

I think of the God experience as the power of life, love and being flowing through the universe and coming to consciousness in human self-awareness alone. I therefore feel that by living fully, loving wastefully and being all that I can be I can make the God experience visible. I also believe that it is my Christian vocation to build a world where all people have a better chance to live, love and to be. It is when I do these two things, I believe, that I am engaging in the essence of worship.

- John Shelby Spong

To read more by the good bishop go here to subscribe to online content. Or visit your bookseller of choice for more by Spong and Hitchens, including:

and

Posted: June 22nd, 2008 under Godlessness, John Shelby Spong, Religion.
Comments: none

Tild sez: First we go for months without posting a word from the good bishop, and now we have two Spong posts in the span of a couple of weeks. Go figure. Anyway, this Q&A showed up in my email a few days ago, and even tho it’s brief, in it JSS makes a particularly important statement. Enjoy.

Spong Q & A about the public face of Christianity in America

Paul Kennedy from Honolulu, Hawaii writes:

Have you read Letter to a Christian Nation, by Sam Harris? If so, I think many of us would like to learn what you think of his seemingly well thought out arguments in condemnation of religion.

Dear Paul,

I think Sam Harris has a great deal to say to America and I am pleased that he is writing. People need to hear the criticism of an honest atheist who is not afraid to speak his mind about what Christianity has come to mean to him. The public face of Christianity in America is already something with which I do not want to be identified. So many people who call themselves Christians are aggressive, hostile, closed minded and insensitive to anyone with whom they disagree. The public face of the Christian Church today is still both anti-female and anti-homosexual. Yesterday the public face of Christianity where I grew up was pro-segregation and anti-black. I reject the Christianity that Sam Harris rejects. The big difference is that I am aware of another and quite different Christianity. Sam Harris does not appear to be so. When I wrote A New Christianity for a New World, I tried to spell out what that different Christianity might look like. I believe it makes for a far greater and richer dialogue to engage the criticism of Sam Harris than to do what so many Christians seem to me to do, namely to search the Scriptures to find a way to give biblical authority to their latest prejudice.

- John Shelby Spong

~

Posted: February 10th, 2008 under Godlessness, John Shelby Spong.
Comments: none

More Spong, too interesting to pass up. To sign up for weekly new content from the Bishop, go here.

Shades of Dear Abby: In this recent Q&A, Spong advises a poor schmuck whose wife of 25 years wants to leave him because he told her he doesn’t believe in God any more..

B. from the Internet writes:
“I first encountered your religious philosophy and/or beliefs watching your lecture on University of California Television about one year ago. I have read several of your books and find your thoughts to be the best and most sensible in understanding the Christian faith. However, about three to four years ago I made the decision to become an atheist based on reading two books by John A. Henderson, “God.com” and “Fear, Faith, Fact and Fantasy.”

I kept this secret from my wife and even told her that your views made the most sense to me and your religious philosophy gave me hope that there might even be a Higher Power. However, about three months ago, I read Sam Harris - “The End of Faith” and since that time have felt very comfortable with being an atheist. Moreover, I have taken several college level audio CD courses in religion and philosophy, read several books by Elaine Pagels, studied the findings of the Jesus Seminar, studied several essays and books by Thomas Sheehan, Rudolph Bultmann and Robert Funk. None of which has changed my mind.

The point I am trying to get to is: My wife has always been a Born Again Christian and early in our marriage of 25 years, we attended the churches of her faith and those of my original faith - Lutheran. Both of my parents are Lutheran. The other night after a very pleasant evening out, we got into a discussion about going to church again and I told her I was an atheist. She almost made me stop the car and let her get out because she would not be yoked to a non-believer. We are still together and have tried to talk through this but she is having great difficulty in accepting my decision. We are scheduled to see a marriage counselor that we both liked when we had some problems in our marriage about 10-15 years ago at her suggestion and my total agreement.

Is there any insight or advice you might provide to help us work through this situation? I do not want to be divorced much less separated. Fortunately, we do not have any children. But I am deeply alarmed that she might consider separation because I am not a Christian. I did ask her what if I had chosen Islam, Jewish or even a Taoist belief what would she have done. She said, ‘Well, at least you would believe in something.’ ” Dear B.,

You did not sign your name so I have used the first initial of your email address to preserve your anonymity. Thank you for sharing your personal story with me. First let me say that I consider atheism a profound religious point of view that ought to be honored. The atheist is not saying there is no God for nobody can finally make that statement. What the atheist is saying is that there is no God like the one I have grown up with - that God is not capable of being God for me. The word atheist means literally “no theist.” Theism is the overwhelmingly human definition of God perpetrated largely in the western world by the Judeo-Christian faith tradition. Theism defines God as a being, sometimes called the Supreme Being, supernatural in power, dwelling somewhere external to the world and periodically invading the world to split the Red Sea, to impose the divine will, to bless or to punish or to answer prayers. This definition of God has been largely destroyed by the intellectual revolution that began in the 16th century with Copernicus and continues in our day with discoveries of DNA, the dimensions of space and so many other things. The theistic God is now largely unemployed for everything that we once thought God did, is now explained with no reference to God at all - Tsunamis, hurricanes, sickness, death, etc. So if atheism means, “I do not believe in a theistic God,” it is a religious statement and you have much company in the modern world. Some in this company are conscious that is who they are, while others are largely unconscious of the fact that they have made that decision. They simply act it out.

If your claim of atheism means that you know all there is to know about God and the world and have decided that there is no room in the universe for God understood in any manner, then you are as closed-minded as the most rabid fundamentalist.

In regard to your wife and your marriage, other issues are clearly operating and seeing a counselor is a wise thing to do. Be aware of and sensitive to the fact that for many people religion is a major part of their security system. They cannot function without it. To disturb that security system becomes an intolerable threat to the person hiding behind its walls. Only when you understand that will you understand how it is possible that your wife might leave a 25-year marriage because you can no longer live inside the boundaries of what you perceive the belief in God requires. So much of what we human beings are is beneath the level of the conscious. Most of our fears are there. When you disturb that level you get surprising and most often irrational responses. They are symptoms not causes. A 25-year marriage is worth working to save. I hope you both will do that. I send you my hopes and best wishes.

– John Shelby Spong