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

Tild sez:  It’s been too long since we last checked in on two of our favorite persons of faith, retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong and Benedictine Sister Joan Chittister.

As you probably know by now if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I am a fallen-away Lutheran; indeed, a fallen-away follower of organized religion of any stripe.  As always, my intent in presenting these essays is not to proselytize, but to highlight and amplify progressive voices in the Christian community that are too often drowned out by the Robertson-, Dobson-,  Hammond- or Phelps -led choruses of cockamamie christianists.

~ 

Spong Q&A on Nonsensical Fundamentalism

Kenneth Jacobson from Frazee, Minnesota, writes:

[Word] has been received that a California Episcopal Diocese (San Joaquin) has reached the second stage in voting to leave the national Episcopal Communion over the issue of homosexuality. The media is describing the anti-gay position as biblical, the pro-gay as being against Bible teaching. After reading Living in Sin and The Sins of Scripture, I cannot believe that it is that simple. Reporters are not doing their job of careful investigation.

* Have these biblical stories and texts that are quoted to support the anti-gay position ever been read, analyzed, thoroughly debated, and defended in bishops’ conferences? These are supposedly intelligent people who respect scholarship. How can they support exclusion on such flimsy evidence?
* Am I wrong to think this struggle among Episcopalians might be a healthy thing, and that resistance from the highest levels might be a way of teaching and illuminating facts and reality, exposing the prejudice for the evil it is?
* Where is all this going? What could or should be done to bring about a rational and acceptable result? Your thoughts and your comments would be very much appreciated.

Dear Kenneth,

It is not fair to expect secular journalists to be biblical scholars, nor should it be anticipated that they would spend the necessary time to research the issue. It is for that reason that they tend to accept uncritically the oft-repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti-gay. If these people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also pro-slavery and anti-women.

There is also a widely accepted mentality that if the Bible is opposed, the idea must be wrong. That is little more than nonsensical fundamentalism. The rise of democracy was contrary to the “clear teaching of the Bible.” as the debate over the forced signing of the Magna Carta by King John of England in 1215 revealed. The Bible was quoted to prove that Galileo was wrong; that Darwin was wrong; that Freud was wrong; and that allowing women to be educated, to vote, to enter the professions, and to be ordained was wrong. So the fact that the Bible is quoted to prove that homosexuality is evil and to be condemned is hardly a strong argument, given the history of how many times the Bible has been wrong. I believe that most bishops know this but the Episcopal Church has some fundamentalist bishops and a few who are “fellow travelers” with fundamentalists

The Bible was written between the years 1000 B.C.E. and 135 C.E. Our knowledge of almost everything has increased exponentially since that time. It is the height of ignorance to continue using the Bible as an encyclopedia of knowledge to keep dying prejudices intact. The media seems to cooperate in perpetuating that long ago abandoned biblical attitude.

That is not surprising since the religious people keep quoting it to justify their continued state of unenlightenment. That attitude is hardly worthy of the time it takes to engage it. I do not debate with members of the flat Earth society either. Prejudices all die. The first sign that death is imminent comes when the prejudice is debated publicly. The tragedy is that church leaders back the wrong side of the conflict, which is happening today from the Pope to the Archbishop of Canterbury to the current crop of Evangelical leaders. That too will pass and the debate on homosexuality will be just one more embarrassment in Christian history.

- John Shelby Spong

 

~~~

What about the ones who are both sexist and racist?

By Joan Chittister
Created Jan 18 2008 - 07:49
From Where I Stand by Joan Chittister, OSB January 18, 2008
Vol. 5, No. 19

One of the more interesting dimensions of the current presidential campaign is that we may all need to wrestle now with the question of which is more prevalent in US society — racism or sexism. This is an alternative that strikes me as a very strange question to begin with, frankly. After all, all races have a male-female question since all men of all races have been raised in the historical mythology of male superiority. All males, any males, everywhere. Which means then that discrimination is also true for all women, any women, anywhere.

As the United Nations Population Fund report puts it:

“At the dawn of the 21st Century, humanity continues to witness massive human rights violations in the form of discrimination and violence against half of the world’s population. The unequal status, freedoms and opportunities afforded to women and girls exist to a greater or lesser degree in every society and country of the world and regrettably, all too often taken for granted as “normal” aspects of society and human relations.”

In fact, we are only beginning to discover that sexism is based on a bad biology that has been theologized. Women, women were told by men,, were physically smaller and therefore secondary human beings, that their single purpose was obviously for pregnancy and child-rearing, that they were more emotional and therefore less rational — read “less capable, less adequate” — than men.

As a result, physical size was confused with intellectual competence and spiritual development, child rearing trumped intelligence for women but not for men, and hard-heartedness was more important than compassion in governance. Which may, from at least one perspective, be true if the town is surrounded by hungry lions and rampaging elephants.

But, in the end, one argument silenced common sense everywhere. Sexism, we were meant to believe, was simply built into the human race by God. There was nothing we could do about it. It was “God’s will” for women.

Everywhere, exceptions were used to prove the rule: a queen here, a cowgirl there, a woman athlete, a couple women scholars. These were all women who could, they said, “think like a man,” or throw a ball “like a man,” or lead a government “like a man” but who were then, of course, always the exceptions, never the norm. The norm was male.

Racism on the other hand is universal, too — meaning found to some appreciable and determining degree in all cultures. The difference is that where racism is concerned, there is no universally acclaimed superior race as males were/are argued to be, by nature, over women. In fact males of all colors have been seen as the “natural” leaders, the superior beings, the social elite from tribe to temple everywhere.

Not so for women.

Nevertheless, where issues of either racism or sexism are concerned in a global society, in a world characterized by seeping borders and compulsory education and open universities, ideas are beginning to change. And society is changing with them. Our commitment to the biological or social notions of inferiority — either racist or sexist — is reversing itself everywhere and theology is struggling to cope with it.

As St. Augustine says, however, we are in “the already but not yet” moment in history. People still live in one of two mental universes everywhere. Or worse, maybe, we’re all living in both of them at one time. Like here, for instance.

Enter the 2008 electoral process and let the confusion begin.

One of the most amusing but least funny of all the analyses of campaign politics to date was the comparison of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton before the Iowa/New Hampshire primaries.

The criticism of Clinton was that she was hard and cold. She appealed to strategy and reason, it seems. She didn’t laugh right or smile right or talk in the right register. She wanted to discuss particular programs and experience instead of being more “likable.” She wanted to talk about the problems we’re having and what she thought would fix them.

Obama, on the other hand ironically — appealed to the heart. He wanted to talk about the need for change. He appealed to good old-fashioned Americanism, the melting pot, can-do (Yes, we can!) world of national unity and compassionate vision.

There was no applause for her rationality, no criticism of his sensitive and stirring appeals, no acknowledgment of her concern for people- problems, no derision of his vocal register.

He was, that is, what every woman is afraid to be: emotional. And not a word of criticism came from it.

And then the change: When asked how she felt about being criticized for being unemotional, she said, “It hurts my feelings.” And, to their eternal credit, the audience laughed.

And when she lost in Iowa, they asked her why she stayed in the race when she seemed to be losing so much ground so quickly and with tears in her eyes, she said, “(What happens to this country) is personal to me …” And the country blinked.

Apparently, the old categories of hard vs. soft, rational vs. emotional and who is allowed to be them is shifting in the wind.

So now the argument is emerging that some women leaders — the few of them that history provides us — haven’t been so good. So why haven’t we heard any of them argue, on the other hand, that we shouldn’t elect a man because all the male leaders we’ve had around the world, over the ages, then and now haven’t been so good either.

Obviously, the old reasons for why we do or don’t elect someone aren’t as convincing, aren’t as certain anymore as they used to be.

Maybe we ought to just start listening to what our candidates say about how they will do all the things they promise to do and then, male and female, female and male, make up our own minds — whatever their color, whatever their sex — whether what they’re promising is necessary, is doable, is important to us or not. In fact, maybe we ought to just listen to them to see if they’re really promising anything or not.

From where I stand, how people vote is becoming less and less important than why people vote for the candidates they do.

The analysts tell us, for instance, that people voted for George Bush because they saw him as “likable,” as someone you’d “want to have a beer with.” Al Gore, it seems, wasn’t the pub-crawling, beer-drinking type. He was “stiff,” we said. And as a result, we turned down a potential Nobel Peace Prize winner for a winsome warrior. Five years of war later and over 600,000 Iraqi and almost 4,000 U.S. military dead, makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

This time it could even be worse. We could turn down a good president now simply because the candidate is either a gender we don’t like or a color we don’t accept.  Then, what we’ll get from voters who are both sexist and racist at the same time, I shudder to even imagine.

–Sr. Joan Chittister

~

Posted: January 25th, 2008 under 2008 Presidential campaigns, Barack Obama, GLBT, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Joan Chittister, John Shelby Spong, Religion.
Comments: none

Tild sez: We haven’t checked in with retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong for a while.  Here’s the latest Spong Q&A to show up in my email box: 

Katherine Edman from Mason, Ohio, writes:
” Thank you so much for your series on the rise of fundamental Christianity. I particularly enjoyed the essay that described the Five Fundamentals and the one on the First Fundamental - the inerrancy of the Bible. I have wondered whether the Bible itself ever claims to be the inerrant word of God. I recognize the difficulty of this question, since the Bible itself is a hodgepodge of many books that have been bundled together over the ages. What I have found, however, is that discussing biblical scholarship with fundamentalists usually gets me precisely nowhere. They are unwilling to recognize that Moses could not have written the Torah, or that the gospels were written years after Jesus’ death. They continue to believe that the books of the Bible arose more or less intact in that particular order and mystically assembled themselves into a unit. They insist that the obvious contradictions or factual errors are just our misunderstanding of “the Word.” They propose that the “texts of terror” have been misinterpreted to justify the social evils of slavery, racism, and sexism, or - worse - fundamentalists continue to quietly believe that these social evils are indeed ordained by God! So, I want to take the argument back into their court. I want to challenge the fundamentalists to prove to me, via the Bible, that the Bible actually claims to be the inerrant word of God. If the Bible itself doesn’t claim it, why do they believe such an outlandish claim? And my question to you is: does the Bible anywhere make this claim?”

Dear Katherine ,
The immediate and short answer is no, though fundamentalists will quote various texts (like II Timothy 3:16) to prove it does. The problem with that text is that when it was written there was no such thing as the Bible as we now know it. The New Testament had not yet come into being. The fact is that even to ask the question the way you did makes a presupposition that is quite fundamentalist and thus plays right into the hands of this absurdity - for even if a particular book of the Bible were to contain that claim, the author of that book would have had no idea that his work would someday be included in a book called the Bible. The various texts that together we Christians now call the Bible were written over more than a thousand years between about 1000 BCE and 135 CE. It was not a single book by a single author but rather 66 separate books (and even more if we count the Apocrypha), written by a variety of authors. None of these authors believed that someday their words would be invested with either holiness or inerrancy. When the authors of the books that we now call the New Testament referred to scripture (Matt 12:10, 15:2,3, Luke 4:21, 22:27 and John 2:22, 7:38, 3:42, 10:35, 12:18, 17:12, 19:24, 19:28, 19:36-37, 20:9, and even the author of II Timothy to which I referred to earlier), they are referring only to the Hebrew Scriptures, since at that time there was no New Testament.
It is noteworthy that when the author of II Timothy wrote that all “scripture is given by inspiration of God,” he was referring to the Old Testament since again, at that time, there was no such thing as the New Testament.

So the claim that the Bible is the inerrant word of God is itself a non-scriptural term and indeed was imposed on the texts of the Bible at a much later time to meet the need of church leaders to have an ally in their struggles to clarify their authority. If the “Word of God” agrees with me then clearly my position is the correct one. There arose from that corruption of both truth and rationality the incredible number of abuses about which I have spoken so often in this column from biblically-endorsed racism, sexism and homophobia to biblically-endorsed war, persecution, and torture. Hope this clarifies your concern.

– John Shelby Spong

~~~

Posted: May 5th, 2007 under General, John Shelby Spong.
Comments: 3

OK, so lately we’ve seen the latest in a long line of bozos seeking to return us to the Dark Ages by bashing Copernicus, not to mention all other science that doesn’t fit with said bozo’s belief in the Bible as literal truth. Cripes, here we go again. Didn’t we settle this about 500 years ago? It really makes me wonder if it’s true, that old saw about there being nothing new under the sun..

And BTW, don’t you forget, sinners - - per Congressman Warren Chisum (R-Ye Olde Bizarro Faerie-land), that sun revolves around the earth, dammit!

Well, to put that nothing-new talk to rest, try out this kinda new-sounding concept : Evolving Christianity.

Consider that some people are witnessing an evolution, a re-invention of their beliefs as science reveals more and more about the nature of humanity and the nature of the universe.

Whoa, nellie. Am I saying that spiritual beliefs can evolve with expanding scientific knowledge? Am I saying that all physical laws, all science, the entire universe itself doesn’t have to conform to a static interpretation of, oh, say, some 2000-year-old belief system? Am I saying that scientific knowledge can illuminate and elucidate and thus sometimes reconfigure the meaning of our spiritual beliefs? Yikes. Sounds pretty damn progressive to me. Cue the retired Episcopal bishop….

We haven’t heard from John Shelby Spong in a while, so let’s take a look at this Q&A about Evolving Christianity that arrived in my inbox a few days ago:

Steve Langley from the Internet writes:
“I am a 63-year-old man who was raised in the Pentecostal Church until I rebelled and forced my way out at about age 14. I subsequently have lived my life with the existence of God as an open philosophical question to me and with utter contempt for all religious structures and teachings. I have always thought they were self-serving as institutions and for the people who wrap themselves in those teachings.

I once had a conversation with two doctors who were both raised in the same Muslim faith. One remains devout in the most human way. The other has drifted from the religion of his birth. He now believes that ‘democracy’ is the best religion. I have thought about his concept and your teachings as I have read them in your newsletter and several of your books. Democracy, in its purest form, and the Christ experience as you ponder and teach it. What a marvelous concept. In a pure democracy there would be neither ‘man nor woman’ nor any other of the differences that exist now in our world and religions. For me, my recent reading of your teaching on Paul and the scripture quoted above seems to make ‘democracy’ and humanity the best religion. As for the Christ experience and your teachings not just of faith but humanity in the Christ experience, it is something I have started to think about. I must thank you for a lifetime of faith, work and all that goes into it so that one day I might pick up your writings, read them, and begin to think about WHY AM I HERE DOING THE GOOD ‘CHRISTIAN DEEDS’ IN MY LIFE WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF RELIGION OR EVEN A BELIEF IN GOD BECAUSE I BELIEVE THEY ARE RIGHT?? Maybe there is a new Christianity that would reveal itself in me, but perhaps not in my lifetime. Thank you for reaching out to people like me. I look forward to each newsletter.”

Dear Steve ,

Thank you for your letter and a description of your pilgrimage. You are certainly traveling in the same direction that I find myself walking. I think faith is a journey to be undertaken not a set of propositions to be believed.

Religion always seems to begin in childlike immaturity in which God is portrayed as a being, supernatural in power, eager to bless, protect and care for us in our childlike fear. As we mature, the need for the parent God fades and the divine, as being itself or as that experience of transcendence, comes into focus. The boundary between humanity and divinity also fades and the two seem to penetrate each other, making the way into the divine and the journey into self-awareness quite similar. The goal of the Christian life then becomes not rescue from the bondage of sin, but expansion into a deeper sense of what it means to be human.

This approach represents, I believe, a significant shift in consciousness. It also makes it clear that the content of the traditional religious myths is no longer operative. Facing the end of traditional religious systems, we fear that nothingness dwells at the heart of life and that drives us to create security systems to protect us from our fear. Some are religious and they always claim to possess inerrant truth or to be guided by an infallible authority. Others seek to lose themselves in the pursuit of the idols of alcohol, drugs, sex, wealth and pleasure. Still others sink into the despair of being alone in an impersonal universe. I believe there is a better option.

My sense is that the Christianity of the future must be willing to let go the content of yesterday in a far more radical way than people have yet imagined, but to do so without sacrificing the experience that created yesterday’s content. Only then can we begin the slow and laborious task of developing new content to make sense of the eternal experience of being human.

Long after fundamentalist churches have moved away from their excessive but uninformed zeal and long after Benedict XVI has discovered that no one can return to the Middle Ages without committing intellectual suicide, a still, small voice will speak and a new reformation will begin on the edges of yesterday’s religious systems and slowly begin to make its way into the center of our reality. I live for that day.

– John Shelby Spong

You and I may not be on the same path of spiritual evolution as Spong and Steve here, but isn’t it beneficial to know that some self-identified Christians are?

This has been a Tild Public Service Announcement. Thanks for your attention.

Posted: February 18th, 2007 under General, John Shelby Spong, Religion.
Comments: 2

So how were your family gatherings over the holidays?   

Here’s all you need to know about mine:  My sister and her husband inhabit the same time warp/Bizarro World as Digby’s relatives.  In other words, the Cloud Cuckoo Land they live in is primarily political, not religious, so any painful lulls in the conversation at our Christmas/New Year’s get together at my sister’s house weren’t brought on by strictly religious insanity per se, but by the new copy of  Billo’s latest magnum opus Culture Warrior displayed prominently under the Christmas tree   …and the knowledge that it wasn’t a gag gift. 

Other families experience faith-based warfare, not only during  the holidays but all year round.  Case in point:

      
From the mailbag of retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong:

Monika from Toronto writes:
“My husband and I really enjoyed Sins of Scripture. We were both raised Catholic and now belong to what you so accurately refer to as the Church Alumni Association. My family consists of Polish immigrants, so they are what I call ‘fundamentalist Catholics.’ Think Irish Catholic…it is that sort of fervor and dedication to the Church and the belief that the Catholic Church is the only true Church. The Poles are not different.

We are now facing a dilemma. We did not get married in a Catholic Church, which you can imagine caused a lot of grief. We have ‘lost’ some family members as a result, who are no longer speaking to us. We just had our first baby, and the pressure is on to have him baptized immediately.

We have gently told my family that there will be no baptism. They are beside themselves. It is one thing to deny ourselves the Kingdom of Heaven they say but to cast our own child into the pit of hell because of our own sin and stupidity, well, it is unforgivable in their eyes. Friends of my father have urged him to ‘take the matter into his own hands,’ by which I think they mean to simply baptize our son without our consent. My father turns a bright red/purple with rage when the topic comes up and I fear he is going to give himself a heart attack…at which point I feel intense guilt and think maybe I should just give the man peace of mind that his grandson will not wind up in hell for all of eternity. I think it is absolutely absurd that anyone would characterize the perfect loving God I experience as this scary monster throwing unbaptized children into hell, or even purgatory, which are concepts I don’t believe in anyway…you get the point, this is why I ‘dropped out’ in the first place.

So, I come to you with a request. Since we do not have the wealth of theological knowledge to back up our feelings about God, and they (the fundamentalist Catholics) have the backing of the Pope, the Bishops and the ‘Church,’ my husband and I often stutter out a bunch of ‘We believe,’statements which just irritate the fundamentalist Catholics even more because, in their eyes, it does not matter what ‘we believe,’ it matters what ‘the Church’ thinks.

Can you advise us on how we can gently help my fundamentalist Catholic family members to respect our decision? We really need your help on this because I’m afraid we are about to lose more family members and, instead of losing them, we would really like to live in harmony and mutual respect with them. “

Dear Monika,
Thank you for your letter. There are two things operating in your letter that need to be separated before I can respond to your questions.

Your family issues seem to rotate around religious questions, but they are also issues of immaturity and control, authority and rebellion, your own individuation and your place as individuated people in a controlling family structure. Your family’s inability to allow you to make your own decisions about your life and your child and their apparent need to threaten you with hell, guilt and even your father’s physical health are symptoms of your family’s dysfunction. Your inability to escape their clutches, because you have to choose between being controlled by your family and losing your family, indicates that you have not yet achieved the level of emotional separation that maturity requires. These issues need to be looked at by a competent family counselor or therapist.

There are no theological books that will help you because theological knowledge never meets emotional issues. You have to decide whether the price of having your family’s love is worth compromising your integrity. That is a terrible choice, but inside the dynamics of your family that is the choice you must make. Given these dynamics, if you bow to your family’s wishes now, you may be certain that another issue will arise in the future that requires the same bending to their will. So whether you fight this battle now or later is the issue you face.

Try to understand that your family has itself been so bruised by their religious upbringing that they are also scared. They are acting out of emotional fear because they have made peace with a controlling religious mentality that they believe and have been taught gives them security and the promise of heavenly reward. When you stand against their values, you force them to examine those values, which apparently they are not able to do. So their chains simply rattle and their fear increases.

What will be the result in your life - in your child’s life - if you declare your independence of this emotional tyranny now? What will be the result in your life - or your child’s life - if you do not? Is it better to make your stand now or later? What will it do to your relationship to bide your time until your parents die?

None of these decisions are about religion. In this instance, religion is simply being used to perform family emotional violence. No matter how you decide, all of you will bear scars. Someday we might recognize that religion is consistently used by people as a weapon of human distortion. That is a long way from John’s statement about Jesus’ purpose to be the one who brings life and brings it abundantly.

I wish you well.

– John Shelby Spong

As always, I present excerpts from the writings of Bishop Spong to counter the pervasive voices of Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and other Christofascists who have dominated the airwaves and print media over the past 30 years.

Even now, as cracks appear in the mighty fundamentalist evangelical monolith, and as evangelicals’ fear-  and hatred- stoked stranglehold on American hearts and minds is weakening, Dobson et al. persist in asking us to believe that they have ownership rights to the title “people of faith”.   Show them that they don’t.

Read more about:

John Shelby Spong

Progressive Christianity

Read a transcript from 2002:

Spong vs. Bill O’Reilly

~

Posted: January 3rd, 2007 under General, John Shelby Spong, Religion.
Comments: 2

It’s been a while since we had a Bishop Spong essay, so here’s a quick fix. Not much in the way of preface is needed here; For both Spong the writer and us the readers it’s easy to recognize a budding Jim Jones when we see one.

I especially like how Spong is careful to point out a distinction: in abusive situations like this one, religion is only the vehicle, not the underlying pathology itself.

On a personal note: if I were the sort of person who wanted to kill anybody, this type of abuser — whatever the pretext they use for their abuse, be it religion, science, love, national security, or whatever — would be first up against the wall.

Carolyn Stephens writes:

I would very much like to hear your comments on “religious abuse” particularly as it concerns fundamentalism, especially within a family. I am closely connected with a family where the father of two teenage daughters has them “brain-washed” into believing that he speaks for God and that God speaks through him. He has for all practical purposes separated them from the world, using home schooling as a way of keeping them from being involved in the “evil world.”

To my knowledge, there is no physical abuse in the family setting but there is certainly emotional abuse. The girls arefrightened of their father because to displease him is to displease God.

There is a book (older - published in 1991) on the subject: “When God becomes a Drug” by Father Leo Booth that hasbeen helpful to me. Can you recommend anything more current on the subject?

Dear Carolyn,

Your letter on the surface points to a deep pathology that has religious overtones. However, it is dangerous to prescribefor sickness based on second hand data. Unfortunately, if what you say is true, they will not respond to intervention because anyone who intervened would be working for the devil. Our society gives wide berth to obvious pathology when it is covered by religious language.

If you could read my mail, you would see countless numbers of letters from people like the two teenage daughters to which you refer, who tell me of similar abuse and how they managed to escape it. Those who don’t escape it become mental patients themselves or repeat the abuse in another generation.

The signs of pathology are the identification between the authority figure (the father) and God so that by disagreeing with or disobeying the authority figure is regarded as being identical to disagreeing with or disobeying God.

The idea that only the parent can teach the child and abandoning the public education system is normally the sign of a deeply threatened, controlling personality. Parents who control their children through fear are also deeply disturbed people.

Since I do not see this as a religious problem but as a psychological problem, I think you should read in qualified psychological books and journals under the subject of Religion as Pathology. Leo Booth’s book is a good beginning;  perhaps his bibliography will give you more clues.

My best,

John Shelby Spong

 

Posted: November 30th, 2006 under General, John Shelby Spong, Religion.
Comments: none

Several weeks ago retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong posted a letter he had received that contained hard questions about Christianity’s relationship with torture. 

Graeme Moore from Canada writes:
“American response to American torture is perplexing. There can be no doubt that American government officials, military and civilian, torture. They may call it by other names but just as “a rose is a rose,” so torture is torture.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that the considerable evidence that most “information” obtained through torture is unreliable, or worse, there is a fundamental conflict between present day American Christian Christianity and torture.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Christ’s commandment cannot be clearer. It is fundamental to Christian belief. It is the bedrock of the Christian way. Torture cannot be reconciled with Christ’s commandment. One cannot be both a Christian and a torturer. America’s current President proudly and readily announces he is a “born again” Christian. He is surrounded by persons of similar convictions. Many Christian “leaders” support him. The President, however, has authorized torture; he encourages its use even to the point of finding various dubious and devious ways and means to avoid any attempts to curtail torture by Americans or their proxies.

Why do American Christians and certain American Christian “leaders” support torture? (Those people who torture and those people who order, advocate or tolerate torture are equally culpable.) Many Americans contend that America is a Christian nation. It would appear so based upon utterances and statements of America’s political elite and on the number of Americans who profess to be Christians and belong to a congregation whose services they attend on a regular and frequent basis. Can America be a Christian nation when it tortures?

Why do American Christians not rise up to strike down those Americans who torture? When will American Christians demand an end to torture? When will Christian “leaders” take a public position, such as open letters against torture? When will Christian preachers condemn torture from their pulpits? When will Christian say loudly that torture is unchristian and un- American? When will Christians demonstrate and protest torture in a manner similar to their actions against choice? If Christians can stir up a storm in Florida over the “right to die,” when will they unleash a tempest in Washington against torture? The current silence of American Christian is eerily reminiscent of the silence of earlier generations against the evils of racism. Perhaps it is to be expected that a people who lynched their fellow citizens because of their race would torture their enemies.”

Dear Graeme,

Thank you for your question. I invite my readers to write to me with their opinions on this issue. I will publish the best letters in the debate. My readers must know that they have a better chance of being included in the debate if they keep their comments succinct.
– John Shelby Spong

Now Spong has posted some of those responses:

Several weeks ago I solicited reader comments on a letter from Graeme Moore on torture. I promised to print the responses in place of the regular question and answer feature to my column. The letters below are a fulfillment of that promise. Thanks to all of you for your participation in this debate.            — John Shelby Spong

Gerald Nordstrom from Minneapolis, MN, writes:

Graeme Moore is correct in saying that torture or any defense of it violates the Golden Rule. Failure to observe this rule accounts for cruelty and dishonesty of all kinds - the effluence of self-centeredness, the core of all evil. By contrast and at the heart of the Golden Rule are empathy, kindness, generosity, and forgiveness.

Too many born-again Bible-worshipers brush the Golden Rule aside, disinclined to do the soul-searching necessary for following it. Preferring commandments easier to follow, they proudly come out against abortion, stem-cell research, gay marriage, etc., and then comfortably give ignoble support for preemptive violence, presumptuous dominance, and torture.

As to why liberals do not move against the President’s defense of these things, liberals are characteristically laissez-faire, and their tolerance has dangerously allowed Bush too much rope - though there is hope it will be pulled back smartly in the coming election.

Gladys M. Peckham from Bradenton, FL, writes:

These are the same people who advocate war as an answer to world problems. There are no faces in war, not even our own troops. It is simply the good guys and bad guys. Us versus them, and them is always wrong. It takes too much trouble to work things out by listening and respect. Seems we are back in the wild west, no value in people, just land.

John Backus via the Internet writes:

I come from a family whose past (before my parents) was very violent. My mother, in a fearful time of our life, once told me (before I was a teenager) that if someone were to ask me a question, and then start breaking my fingers - I must never answer - because I was already dead, but just didn’t know it yet. And if I absolutely had to speak, I must lie - and lie in such a way that I take “one of them” with me.

I not only believe that any form of torture is beneath us - but it is demonstrably counter productive. I have witnessed it in my country, and it was what I was taught in my own family. Those days are long gone - all those folk, and my parents, are dead. But the memory of that conversation lingers strong.

Rob Hirschman from Saginaw, MI, writes:

The honest answer is that many Christians support torture because they support George W. Bush and his so called war on terror. These are the people that continue to say Saddam was involved in 9-11 and that we are doing God’s will by liberating the people of Iraq no matter how many of them get killed along the way. Facts mean nothing to these people who honestly believe God is on their side. The foundation of their belief is that they and they alone know the truth about God and everything concerning God. These people have no room for doubt or open thought because it makes them uncomfortable even to consider the possibility that they might be wrong. The world is black and white to them with no shades of grey. They pick and choose which part of the scripture to follow. It is like eating at a buffet. The bottom line with them is that only Christians have real truth and to hell with everyone else figuratively and literally.

Dr. Sharon Gilliland from Indianapolis, IN, writes:

I completely agree with Graeme Moore’s comments about Christians and torture. I feel strongly that torture is wrong. I feel appalled to realize that my feelings and opinions are not shared by those who have power in this country. I am ashamed to be an American and wish I could easily move my allegiance to another country. I feel powerless to effect any change in those who rule this country.

For those who want to read more from Bishop Spong and receive new content via email,  I refer you to this site, which offers essays, Q&As and other new Spong commentary for a fee; the first month is free. 

Posted: October 25th, 2006 under General, John Shelby Spong, Torture.
Comments: 2

When asked why I go Spong-blogging so often, I usually say something about how Spong reminds me that not all Christians subscribe to the Dobsonite Values Voters hatefest of “values”.

I also think that many people through lifelong indoctrination tend to listen to and take seriously the words of a religious leader far more readily than they’ll heed a non-religious entity.

For those people then, here’s Bishop Spong saying the same things that many of us godless heathens have been saying. If you won’t listen to us, maybe you’ll listen to Spong:

September 27, 2006

Small Leaders in A New Dark Age

At the end of the first of the two debates that most recently captured the attention of world opinion, a compromise was reached, but many people voiced their belief that the President of the United States would pay no more than lip service to this settlement. At the end of the second debate there was an ingenious “apology” offered by Pope Benedict XVI that appeared neither to understand nor to address the hurt that his comments had created.

When these two debates lost center stage or began to bore the media that needs fresh red meat daily, many were left with the haunting sense that the quality of leadership in these two offices, one the most powerful political office in the world and the other the most powerful spiritual office, was sadly lacking, indeed that midgets now stood where giants are needed.

Most Americans never imagined that they would live long enough to watch a president of the United States publicly defending torture as an instrument of his foreign policy. Most of the people of the world also thought that we had evolved to a level of religious sensitivity in which no leader of one faith tradition would refer to another faith tradition as “evil and inhuman.” We assumed that the imperialistic mentality of the crusading middle ages had passed away. Our minds reeled as we entered what sounded like the double-talk of George Orwell’s vision of 1984, a year that passed almost a quarter of a century ago. How is it possible that the 21st century has arrived at a period in history that looks more and more like the ‘Dark Ages’ revisited?

The behavior of these two men, which St. Paul might have called “spiritual wickedness in high places,” made it clear that in our time people of small, dated minds are now occupying key positions of world leadership. Their words reveal these occupants to be poorly equipped to stand where they stand. Both appear to be out of touch with reality without knowing it, which makes them far more dangerous. The elected president and the chosen pope seem to believe that each possesses such superior wisdom that disagreement with them can only come from those who are confused, ignorant, heretical, or hopelessly unenlightened. When these two men act as they have done recently, we begin to sense that differences between right and wrong are incredibly blurred and a leader’s role is no longer to call people to embrace and reflect a higher humanity, and to see truth and honor as values that must be held at all costs and against every challenge.

Some may be startled at the harshness of this indictment. They may even dismiss it as an expression of either political
partisanship or religious intolerance. It is neither. Let me examine the two episodes about which I speak and ask you to draw your own conclusions.

First, for days now, we watched this administration in which neither the President nor the Vice President have ever been engaged in military conflict in the service of their country, attacking as “soft on the war on terror” three leaders of their own party whose military records are quite distinguished. One, Senator John McCain, is from a military family and was for five years a tortured prisoner of war in Vietnam. The second, Senator John Warner, has served as the Secretary of the Navy after a long career in the military. The third, Senator Lindsay Graham, even today continues to build on his active military career as an Air Force lawyer by being the only member of Congress serving in the National Guard. These noted conservatives battled their president for the principles upon which this nation was founded: justice before the law, fairness in seeking convictions, and the conviction that human rights are of more value than short term political goals.

It was good that these three men stood firm because the Democratic leadership had obviously been cowed by the Republican suggestion that those who do not favor the tactics of torture are weak both on national defense and homeland security. They did not want to be characterized in the Vice President’s words as “pre-9/11 thinkers in a post-9/11 world.”

In this debate the President of the United States sought unilaterally to re-interpret the decisions of the Geneva Convention on the humane treatment of enemy combatants. He did not seem to grasp the fact that if the United States can redefine the meaning of torture, so can every other nation in the world. He did not comprehend that in the course of world history, American service personnel, who become prisoners of war, would then no longer be protected by an appeal to the Geneva Accords. This president has assured this nation that “America does not do torture.” I do not any longer believe him.

Neither do the leaders of the other nations of the world. The data giving birth to this lack of belief is overwhelming. The world has seen vivid pictures of torture at Abu Ghraib. It is now obvious that we tortured at Guantanamo. We have learned that despite earlier denials, the CIA has operated torture centers in other countries where the laws against torture are less stringent than they are in the United States
and where those carrying out these illegal procedures, are not subject to criminal charges.

When the Washington Post broke the story about these foreign torture chambers, President Bush’s response was not to deny their existence but to denounce those who revealed it as disloyal to this country. He insisted that the United States needed this program for our own security and asserted once more, without credibility, that this country “does not do torture.”

Then the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen of Syrian background, broke into the news, validating every fear and suspicion that truth has now been sacrificed in this nation’s quest for security. Maher Arar was kidnapped by American authorities at Kennedy Airport after mistaken intelligence identified him with a terrorist organization. With no due process this Canadian citizen was put on a United States government plane, flown to Jordan, and then driven to Syria, where he was tortured for a year, being forced to live underground in a space the size of a grave. No connection between this man and terrorism was ever established. The Canadian government finally secured his release, but Mr. Arar has exposed the lies, if they still needed to be exposed, that
this government is not engaged in practices prohibited by the Geneva Accords.

This deliberately misleading denial was only this government’s latest assault on truth. It must be placed alongside telling this nation that we went to war because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear bomb-making potential. Neither claim was truthful. Both the President and Condoleeza Rice went so far as to state that they did not want the “next terrorist attack to be in the form of a mushroom cloud.” Mr. Bush dismissed the outcry of the nations of the world about abuses at Guantanamo. He proclaimed that Abu Ghraib was an aberration involving low-level military personnel, but then he dodged any challenge to this assertion by not recommending the general, under whose command the prison at Abu Ghraib fell, for a promotion, since that would have required congressional approval in the process of which questions would have had to be an