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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Purgatory: Is Jack Spong Dishonest and Wrong?
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
The election of a gay bishop has spawned several postings here about the unprosecuted heresy of Spong, who purportedly lacked the integrity to leave the church when he lost his faith. If there is any heresy, it is Tillich’s non-personal God, as Spong has said. If there is any lack of integrity, it is among those who still embrace Tillich privately, but proclaim a personal God to a flock “not ready for the truth.” The following quotes come from Why Christianity Must Change or Die and Here I Stand. They are my primer on Spong, prompted by what I think are many misconceptions about Spong's beliefs and integrity.
Spong was willing to play politics with political conservatives, inside and outside the church. He was willing to play the literalist game with literalists who tried to block his confirmation as bishop. But I cannot see why he should be villified. I might have admired him more if he had left the church when some said the only reason why he was staying was a paycheck. But I still admire him for forcing people to either support or attack his stand.
Spong on Tillich and His Devotees
Tillich did preach in both the Union Seminary Chapel and the Harvard Chapel on a fairly regular basis, but the audiences who heard him in these rarefied academic setting were hardly your typical pew sitters. These theologians never had to deal with the reactions of ordinary folks who felt that their spiritual leader was destroying their faith. That would be the job of graduates like myself. Most graduates, I was to learn, however, would not rise to this challenge. They would graduate, pack up their seminary notes, and revert to the piety of their youth, undergirding their preaching with traditional religious understandings…I vowed that I would be different when I finally became a priest.
Spong on God
God, the source of life, calls us all to live fully. God, the source of love, calls us all to love wastefully. God the Ground of Being, calls us all to have the courage to be ourselves. So when we live, love, and have the courage to be, we are engaged in worship, we are expanding our humanity, we are breaking out of our barriers.
Spong on Jesus
Underneath the prevailing theistic images of God, we see a divine presence called spirit within us and most spectacularly in Jesus of Nazareth. We find our spirits touched by his spirit, our lives enhanced by his life, our being called to a new level by his being…Beyond the boundaries of theism, which have limited us for so long, we discover a startling revelation of God at the very center of human life, and Jesus, the spirit person, stands at the heart of that revelation.
Spong on Eternal Life
I want to make it clear that it is out of this same understanding of both God and Christ that I can state that I believe I do now, and will forever, share in that ultimate gift of life that is both transcendent and eternal…My conviction about eternal life, however, is not just a pious dream standing in hope at what seems to be the ultimate barrier of death. It is also attached to my understanding of God as the Ground of all Being…I [am] a believer who lives in the being of God, who loves with the love of God, and who anticipates some sense of eternity in which my being, differentiated and defined by the power of love, is joined with the being of others who are at one with the Ground of all Being.
Spong on Worship
Honesty compels me to admit that most of my difficulties with the words and concepts of worship arise from the fact that these words assume the truth of the theistic definition of God. In the traditional understanding of that word, I am not a theist. I do not believe that I have been a theist since the time that my theological life first began to be shaped by the aforementioned Christian scholar named Paul Tillich in the early fifties.…My life has thus been spent processing Tillich’s nontheistic thinking as it interacted with the received theistic tradition of the Christian faith…[see Spong on God for more on worship]
Spong on The Creeds
Our task is neither to literalize nor to worship the words of yesterday’s theological consensus. It is, rather, to return to the experience that created these creedal words in the first place and then to seek to incorporate that experience in the words that we today can use, without compromising its truth or our integrity as citizens of this century.
Spong on Primacy of Scripture
I have never ceased to make the Bible my primary textbook.
Spong on The Value of Truth and Integrity above Unity
I [believe] the church should meet the issues of our world head on and that truth [is] more important to me than church unity. Unity is a very secondary virtue. Faithfulness and integrity [are] primary.
Spong on His Integrity During Election and Confirmation to the Episcopate
The big issues of that day were the ordination of women to the priesthood and the proposed revision of the Book of Common Prayer. When these apparently divisive questions were asked of me, I responded as simply and bluntly as I could. If I was to be elected, I certainly did not want it to be on some false premise. So when asked about the ordination of women, I said “I favor it. Next question.”…When asked about the revision of the 1928 prayer book, I responded, “I helped to write it, so of course I’m in favor of its adoption.”…A man who introduced himself as “Father Wantland” [but] had been ordained to the priesthood without attending an accredited seminary…set about to check out my orthodoxy over the telephone. He read me some passages from antiquity that I immediately recognized as the writings of Arius, the protagonist to Athanasius in the battle to formulate the creeds in the early fourth century…I told him he was reading from Arius and why I believed that Arius’s understanding of Christology was inadequate. He was pleased and Oklahoma's standing committee voted to concur with my election. I did not have a chance to tell him that I also believed Athanasius’s understanding of Christology to be inadequate. Bill could only deal with one litmus test at a time.
[ 01. November 2003, 21:50: Message edited by: Erin ]
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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shareman
Shipmate
# 2871
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Posted
Spong has published his twelve theses on the web, but to avoid copyright difficulties, I will abbreviate and paraphrase them. They're available all over the public domain, so I don't believe there's any copyright infringement.
A Call For A New Reformation
1. Theism can't be used to define God.
I'm not sure what this means, but why? Why can we not think of God as outside ourselves? That's just a statement of lack of faith.
2. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
Again, why?
3. The biblical Creation story is mythology and is nonsensical in a post-Darwinian world.
This statement is hubris. Of course the Biblical story of the Creation of perfect humanity which fell is myth, but it is, IMHO, perfectly in keeping with Evolution. We humans have an understanding of guilt and sin which is different from that of even our closest primate relatives. Chimps know right from wrong, and can be psychologically damaged by ill treatment, so they do have a long term memory of things that can effect their emotional well-being. What there is no evidence for is chimps bearing a long term burden of guilt. Whatever the event in our evolution that Genesis refers to as eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, it is the thing makes us different, it is the Fall. That's what myth IS, for God's sake, a means of expressing profound truth in an understandable way.
4. The virgin birth...(is)impossible.
Well, yeah, but why should it be impossible for God, the "ground of all being?" This is merely a statement of lack of faith.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can't be accepted in a post-Newtonian world.
Why? Only if you believe Spong's premises about God being understood "non-theistically." Many of the miracles are about making people ritually pure, healing the sick, for instance, who were kept out of the Temple because if their impurities. Jesus came to reunite us with God (cf. the idea in the thread about was the veil of the temple torn?). His healings did just that, in an earthly sense. Why is "a post Newtonian world" so important? God made the laws of Physics, God can break them. Again, miracles are only a problem if you don't believe in an Almighty God in the first place.
6. The view of the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea...
This is perhaps the most disturbing. It is amazing that a bishop should be so out of touch with the human condition. Continuing with my point about our human quality of guilt, Spong seems to ignore the fact that we humans carry longterm guilt. Every human society has a concept of atonement for wrongdoing. When we apologize, we say "How can I make it up to you?" This idea that we must in some way do something to make up for past sins is universal in human culture. What about the sins we can't make up for? That's where the guilt comes in. What about the guilt we carry that we don't really deserve to carry? The Cross says that it is all forgiven. The price demanded by our need to atone in order to be whole again has been paid for us. This is a basic part of being human, not some bizarre Semitic concept.
7. Resurrection is about Jesus being "raised into the meaning of God."
I'm not altogether sure what this means, but it strikes me as just being the logical conclusion to be made from Spong's concept of a non-theistic deity. I reject that concept, and I reject this. Why should the Resurrection not be an event in human history? Who even says the Resurrection IS in human history. The Orthodox have a concept of Easter being the Eighth Day of Creation, when Christ makes all things new. (Orthodox Shipmates, please clarify). We are told in Scripture that the Kingdom is all around us. I believe that, God being outside time itself, the Kingdom IS, in a way, already here. It exists in that place beyond time. Christ, being God, could thus be outside time, yet visible within it if He was Resurrected into the Kingdom. (Not clear, because I can't adequately frame the concept).
8. The story of the ascension assumed a three-tiered universe...
As did the Apostles, so it was logical for Christ to be seen going up. He could have gone sideways, He could have just winked out, but how would the Apostles have understood that? God, the man needs a sense of the abstract.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ...
Yes there is. For Christians, it's called the Bible. Interpretation will always happen, and people will always argue over it, but it's still there!
Prayer:
He says it cannot be a request to a deity to act in history in a particular way. Why not? I don't ask God for much, actually, except the strength to deal with what He sends me and to trust that He knows what's best, and He gives me that strength. For others, it's a comfort to ask God for help. They get help, maybe not what they're looking or maybe it only comes after long pain and questioning of the whole idea of God, maybe it leads to a crisis of fatih if it's not the help we think we need, but again, where's faith in all this?
As for guilt as a motivator of behaviour, well, it seems the Christian message is about freedom from guilt. I know guilt has been used as a means of "crowd control", but come on, if this layman can understand that as a perversion of the Gospel, why can't a bishop?
All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is.
No quarrel there.
For me, Spong's greatest sin is hubris. He seems to think that modern science has, or will have, all the answers. He seems to think that he is right and two thousand years of Chistian thinkers are wrong. Of course the fact that science and religion ask different questions seems never to have occured to him. I think he's wrong, and his ideas are not very comforting to me. I think he's dishonest because he denies the message of the faith, and has rephrased it some way that makes sense to his worldly understanding. What's worse is the arrogance that says the Church has to change because he doesn't believe any more, and that must all follow in his disbelief. I don't believe in the teachings of Hinduism, that's why I'm not a Hindu. I have great respect for the faith of my Hindu friends, and they have great respect for my faith. As one friend says "I think Hinduism is best, you think Christianity is best, what's the problem with just accepting that?" If Spong doesn't believe any more, I have no quarrel with that, but he should take off his mitre and walk away. You don't HAVE to be Christian, you know. But then again, there's no Church pension, is there. I wonder what he'd do if he worked for a weapons manufacturer and then became a pacifist.
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Israel also came into Egypt, and Jacob was a stranger in the land of Ham.
Posts: 516 | From: on a rock AND a hard place | Registered: May 2002
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strathclydezero
# 180
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Posted
Was Thomas made any less of a disciple when he 'lost' his faith?
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All religions will pass, but this will remain:
simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.
V V Rozanov
Posts: 3276 | From: The Near East | Registered: May 2001
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Jerry Boam
Shipmate
# 4551
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Posted
I can't believe no one is taking you up on this! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
(well there you go, two posts while I was typing!)
When I first was drawn to Christianity a few years ago, I thought I was going to love Spong. He held views I found sympathetic on a broad range of issues and his Tillich based "ground of all being" stuff fit with some of my Buddhist perspectives nicely.
But I got irritated with his narrow definitions of theism and determined opposition to a personal aspect to God. He seems to say, over and again, that the only theistic conception possible is the bearded guy in the clouds. And he argues against a personal aspect to God as such a person could only have the qualities that his staunchest opponents ascribe to their image of God.
I came away from reading several of his books with the overall impression of a wonderful man who was somewhat damaged and distorted by his constant battle with narrow minded conservatives and simplistic theologies.
I am still learning about this faith and working through what I believe about it, but I have no vehement disagreement with him on any point.
I would disagree with his precise and limited imagining of Jesus, but not very strongly.
I am looking forward to the stronger comments that must be coming. ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
[ 08. August 2003, 21:53: Message edited by: Jerry Boam ]
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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.
Posts: 2165 | From: Miskatonic University | Registered: May 2003
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shareman
Shipmate
# 2871
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by strathclydezero:
Was Thomas made any less of a disciple when he 'lost' his faith?
But he got it back. And he didn't demand the rest of the gang follow him into disbelief.
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Israel also came into Egypt, and Jacob was a stranger in the land of Ham.
Posts: 516 | From: on a rock AND a hard place | Registered: May 2002
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strathclydezero
# 180
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by shareman:
quote:
Originally posted by strathclydezero:
Was Thomas made any less of a disciple when he 'lost' his faith?
But he got it back. And he didn't demand the rest of the gang follow him into disbelief.
Yes ... but he was not rejected during the time he did not have belief.
Regardless, Spong is a different league next to a man he claims as one of his former mentors, the former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway. Spong recycles ideas familiar to anyone who has studied theology while Holloway is an original thinker who is not afraid to ask new and difficult questions and feels no need to find easy answers. For me this is the key to liberal Christian thought, finding new ideas and breaking new ground.
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All religions will pass, but this will remain:
simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.
V V Rozanov
Posts: 3276 | From: The Near East | Registered: May 2001
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Merseymike
Shipmate
# 3022
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Posted
Nor did Spong. I don't agree with everything he said, but I recognise a 'bogeyman' when I see one.
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Christianity is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced
Posts: 3360 | From: Walked the plank | Registered: Jul 2002
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Wm Duncan
Buoy tender
# 3021
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Posted
I haven't read him, but haven't heard any quotes by him that weren't part of the mainstream of Christian theology in Europe/America in the last century. The anti-modernist backlash puts him in the limelight, but that doesn't make his thought particularly novel or outside the fold of Christian faith.
I don't think it's up to him to leave the church if he doesn't believe he's "lost his faith" -- but rather, that he's honestly and faithfully addressing its questions. If the church determines he's lost its faith, then he might be removed.
Wm Duncan
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I have overcome a fiercely anti-Catholic upbringing in order to attend Mass simply and solely to escape Protestant guitars. Why am I here? Who gave these nice Catholics guitars?
-- Annie Dillard
Posts: 1193 | From: about 30 km above the Juan de Fuca plate | Registered: Jul 2002
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
I thank people for responding. It's not possible in a thread to fully discuss each piece of Spong's theology and I apologize for inviting that by giving a long list of beliefs. I tried to hit on what I thought most people would think essential for evaluating someone as "heretical." Also, I wanted to touch on "honesty" by showing that he was consistent from his collegiate days.
I do think it is a fair cop to accuse him as seeing the world in terms of only two options: Southern US Fundamentalism, in which he was raised, or Liberal Existentialist Theology of the 1950's, which he essentially converted to as a seminarian. He is a product of his times and of his past. I am a product of similar times and a similar past so it is easier for me to have sympathy with him.
But I will ask this question about "losing one's faith." If a Fundamentalist changes from a literal view of Adam to a mythic view, has he "lost his faith" or "grown in faith?" What about an evangelical who changes from a theistic view of God to a nontheistic one? Internally, the person says, "I've not lost my faith, I only now see it clearly and in a new light." Outsiders who have not made the shift say, "No, you've simply lost your faith." Is that a fair statement to make?
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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jugular
Voice of Treason
# 4174
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Posted
I have read most of Spong's work and see it for what it is - populist literature intended to provoke thought and discussion about a new form of orthodoxy. Nothing in it is new to anyone who has studied theology, but his writings have a resonance about them which challenges the church into new ways of being.
To my mind, +Spong is primarily an ecclesiologist rather than a theologian. He has little or no original material, and eschews the term "liberal". He is better described as progressive orthodox, and his method of argument is rooted in evangelical theology and methodology.
I think that he is right in claiming that history will condemn him, not for being too radical, but for not being radical enough.
Did I mention he's coming to my church in October?
![[Yipee]](graemlins/spin.gif)
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We’ve got to act like a church that hasn’t already internalized the narrative of its own decline Ray Suarez
Posts: 2599 | From: Australia | Registered: Feb 2003
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Jerry Boam
Shipmate
# 4551
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
If a Fundamentalist changes from a literal view of Adam to a mythic view, has he "lost his faith" or "grown in faith?"
Grown in faith. Clutching at the literal view in the face of all the evidence seems like a defensive psychological posture than a result of faith, though such a posture might be conflated with a kind of faith.
quote:
What about an evangelical who changes from a theistic view of God to a nontheistic one? Internally, the person says, "I've not lost my faith, I only now see it clearly and in a new light." Outsiders who have not made the shift say, "No, you've simply lost your faith." Is that a fair statement to make?
No. The outsider would either be asserting something untenable about the meaning of faith, rather as I did in my first answer, or calling the believer in a nontheistic God a liar--not fair.
I would say that the person has probably developed a richer faith. But then I would ask them about their definition of theism and if there might not be a theistic position that encompassed their perceptions of a nontheistic God--or perhaps some middle ground between a theistic and nontheistic position.
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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.
Posts: 2165 | From: Miskatonic University | Registered: May 2003
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
But then I would ask them about their definition of theism and if there might not be a theistic position that encompassed their perceptions of a nontheistic God--or perhaps some middle ground between a theistic and nontheistic position.
I am such a person. Thank you for asking the question; I will try to answer.
"Theistic" means to me "personal" which is to say, "a metaphysical entity with a mind, a will, and an intention; also, with an ability to communicate it's thoughts, will, and intentions conversationally." I have never experienced this with a non-biological being. The notion that God always listens, answers symbolically or by causing something to happen, or simply waits a very very long time to respond because he somehow knows that you need to find it out for yourself or do it yourself or whatever paints a picture of a cat who likes to toy with a mouse. I can imagine no "personal" picture of an all-powerful God that does not make him a bad person for the way he communicates, controls, and assents to the suffering of his creatures and creation.
My philosophical and theological problems are solved by positing a non-person that manifests itself in the visible universe. I cannot imagine a "half-person" who created me and does not speak to me intelligibly while assenting to my suffering, but I am listening if you are talking.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
Sorry to double-post, but I greatly appreciate jugular's insight. I almost said that Spong actually appears to me to be a Neo-Orthodox, like one of his other mentors, Reinhold Niebuhr, and that he synthesizes 20th century academic orthodoxy into layman's terms as part of his educational mission, which he always made primary as a priest and bishop.
But I didn't think anyone would take me seriously. Suggesting that the Ship's poster-boy of heresy could in any way be "orthodox"...well I just thought it would be a hailstorm. Leave it to the Ship's Rebel. ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
I am half considering signing up for a Borg seminar that will include Spong in the upcoming academic year. Why the ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif) himself might make an appearance and give his assent!
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by strathclydezero:
quote:
Originally posted by shareman:
quote:
Originally posted by strathclydezero:
Was Thomas made any less of a disciple when he 'lost' his faith?
But he got it back. And he didn't demand the rest of the gang follow him into disbelief.
Yes ... but he was not rejected during the time he did not have belief.
Didn't go on a book tour, either.
There are two problems with Spong. First, he's a terrible philosopher. He frequently relies on imprecise language and charged rhetortic instead of arguments to make his points. This has gotten him lots of media attention over the years, but of course the media is attracted to controversy, not truth, or even the pursuit of truth. They liked Spong because he was colourful, not because he was prophetic. His primary market were the survivors of American fundamentalist subculture, most of whom will listen to anything that comes off as critical of their parents' beliefs. I've attended two Spong talks, and both times he resorted to dehumanizing his opponents instead of addressing their arguments. (On one occasion, a liberal philosophy professor wrote a response on Spong, saying he would be unlikely to pass one of the university's second-year philosophy courses).
Second reason: whatever it was Spong had cooking in that noggin of his, it wasn't sticking to the ribs in his own Diocese. During his tenure, he presided over what was possibly the fastest shrinking diocese in the communion. As Alister McGrath said about Spong's diocese: "What it thought was a confident manifesto has turned into a suicide note." In the end, Spong was a colourful figure that drew much attention, like most colourful figures, there was nothing substative or enduring in his work. Pure pablum that has done little more than exacerbate the tension and confusion in the church.
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Posts: 57 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2003
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jugular
Voice of Treason
# 4174
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Posted
Could you please offer some proof for that Tonewheel? +Spong's autobiography says that during his tenure the diocese increased its average attendance by 2% and that the diocese was in a much more secure financial state when he left than when he arrived. One of you is wrong. Or do you live in the diocese of Newark?
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We’ve got to act like a church that hasn’t already internalized the narrative of its own decline Ray Suarez
Posts: 2599 | From: Australia | Registered: Feb 2003
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
quote:
I've attended two Spong talks, and both times he resorted to dehumanizing his opponents instead of addressing their arguments. (On one occasion, a liberal philosophy professor wrote a response on Spong, saying he would be unlikely to pass one of the university's second-year philosophy courses).
It would be good to have quotes from the talks and some more specific information to support this too. For instance who is this professor and where does he teach?
It wouldn't surprise me (as someone who thinks Spong to be plain wrong on some points - I don't go with his Jewish liturgical calendar theory at all) to find someone with a good genuine academic reason to criticise him but when you don't give names, references, links etc. it can sound a bit like repeating a smear, which I'm sure is not the impression you want to give.
Quotes from the talks to demonstrate your point would be nice too.
L.
[ 09. August 2003, 12:43: Message edited by: Louise ]
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Now you need never click a Daily Mail link again! Kittenblock replaces Mail links with calming pics of tea and kittens! http://www.teaandkittens.co.uk/ Click under 'other stuff' to find it.
Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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Merseymike
Shipmate
# 3022
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Posted
I found Spong extremely helpful. Having rightly rejected conservative evangelical Christianity, it was reading Spong's Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism that made me want to explore other Christian traditions more fully.
Of course he is a populist ; he would be the first to say that is his aim. Nothing wrong with that.
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Christianity is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced
Posts: 3360 | From: Walked the plank | Registered: Jul 2002
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
I read Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and partway through every chapter I could have drawn a heavy black line and written "Here's where he starts just making things up."
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Lou Poulain
Shipmate
# 1587
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Merseymike:
Of course he is a populist ; he would be the first to say that is his aim. Nothing wrong with that.
I agree with MM. I read WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE at a time of great need. I was thrilled to find a progressive articulation of Christianity and I became a big Spong fan. That experience led me down a path toward the Episcopal Church. For that I am grateful. That said, I have moved beyond Spong.
I think Jack Spong is a great starting point for the many who reject the characature of Christianity that is American bibble-belt fundimentalism.
Populizer? Yes. And that's a good thing, in my mind.
Lou
Posts: 526 | From: Sunnyvale CA USA | Registered: Oct 2001
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Lou Poulain
Shipmate
# 1587
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lou Poulain:
[QUOTE]
Populizer?
Ack! How about popularizer? Not a whole lot better. Anyway I think you know what I mean.
Lou
Posts: 526 | From: Sunnyvale CA USA | Registered: Oct 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
I read Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and partway through every chapter I could have drawn a heavy black line and written "Here's where he starts just making things up."
Ruth, I am genuinely amused, in a positive sense of the word, that I had the same reaction to reading NT Wright after you and Todd recommended him. But at least NT Wright was kind enough to clearly identify the parts where he began making things up: he said, "and here I must now abandon history and reason to reveal my confessional faith." I read through a few of them carefully and then skimmed them to verify that they were pure fabrications that gave NT all the meaning in the world and nothing to me.
Every historian does this when they try to truly recreate the past. Spong, Wright, and Borg visit the past from 2,000 years in the future and pick through the pieces of time that remain. The whole picture is ambiguous and incomplete. Some minds fill it in with a miraculous and supernatural set of miracles culminating in the physical resurrection and ascension and other minds fill it in with a growth of the natural into the supernatural in the minds of those who were witnesses at the time. There is a heavy black line where everybody makes things up, except for the truly dogmatic agnostic who says they can't be sure of anything at all.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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St. Cuervo
Son of a Son of a Sailor
# 4725
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jugular:
Could you please offer some proof for that Tonewheel? +Spong's autobiography says that during his tenure the diocese increased its average attendance by 2% and that the diocese was in a much more secure financial state when he left than when he arrived. One of you is wrong. Or do you live in the diocese of Newark?
Louie Crew was a recent candidate for president of the House of Deputies and is a member of the standing committee of the Diocese of Newark maintains a very thorough page of statistical information and commentary on the ECUSA.
He reports that the Diocese of Newark shrunk 3% from 1990-2000 here.
He also has a page of general demographics of the diocese here.
I would add that Dr. Crew is a fan of Bishop Spong (and a member of the standing committee!), so we can probably assume that he is not trying to discredit his own diocese by publishing false reports of shrinking. If anything, we can assume that Newark lost at least 3% of its members from 1990-2000.
Cheers,
St. C.
[ 09. August 2003, 18:24: Message edited by: St. Cuervo ]
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
Posts: 295 | From: Falls Church, VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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St. Cuervo
Son of a Son of a Sailor
# 4725
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Posted
Sorry for the double post. I just re-read juglar's post.
So Spong's biography claims average attendance increased 2%? Dr. Crew's numbers on membership wouldn't disprove that. It is possible that the average attendance increased while the membership decreased. This is part of the phenomena known as "post-denominationalism" where more and more people attend parishes regularly but do not join.
An important thing to consider is you have to adjust any of these numbers for population growth (or loss). If the population within the Diocese of Newark increased 10% during Spong's tenure but the average attendance only increased 2%, then the diocese did not grow relative to the population as a whole. On the other hand, if the population within the Diocese shrunk 10% and the diocese membership only shrunk 3%, then the diocese would actually, despite shrinkage, have grown relative to the population as a whole. Most of these numbers don't mean much by themselves. I'll see what I can find.
I would also note that it is probably flawed to try to use numbers to justify theology. A growing parish or diocese is not necessarly a sign of one that is discipling its members into greater Christlikeness. Conversely a shrinking diocese or parish may be shrinking because it has takes some unpopular, but very Christlike, stands on certain issues. So it is hard to use numbers by themselves without knowing more.
Cheers,
St. C.
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
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fatprophet
Shipmate
# 3636
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Posted
Surely the 'problem' with Spong is not his ideas per se - with which one could agree or disagree. He is very challenging and indeed in one respect it is useful to have him as part of the clergy so we can have a very necessary debate on what Christians can and cannot believe now we all live in the 21st Century and far more clever than our ancestors etc etc.
However, though he may not be wrong or dishonest () there must be some sane people out their who don't have a little tiny difficulty with his remaining part of a church and denying the post important tenets of its traditional religious belief?
Presumably he thinks he must stay in, in order to radically change it toward his vision - he seems to see himself as having some king od prophetic role. If so, again I can't doubt the man's integrity. Rather its the intergrity of the denomination itself that is put into question.
What Spong does prove is that one can clearly be a member of ECUSA without believing any traditional Christian doctrine whatsoever. Since he is a non-theist, it clearly could not matter one jot that a ECUSA member was instead an atheist, unitarian, polytheists, or Buddhists as long - of course - as they were politically liberal and loved their neighbours and the poor.
ECUSA must be for those people who have a questing spirituality but don't want any dogma, no absolute theological truth, no concept of orthodoxy as opposed to heresy. Indeed it's religious nature has disolved and blended in completely into the popular post-modern spirituality that is all pervasive, a vague belief in something vague and a commitment to the ideals of love and goodness without angels, demons, heavens and hells, and without a God.
(if God is not an objective reality, then whatever Tillich says, there is no God)
The fundamental problem is that Spong's spirituality does not need at all any organised church or clergy; it gives no reason whatsover to go to one church over any other, to worship at a Shinto Shrine, pagan grove, a quaker fellowship or at a Cathedral.Its a theology that ultimately must deny the very religious structures of the denomination and its whole distinctiveness.
Spong has done a remarkable thing for christian thinking - he has challenged many, and rightly. He has important things to say about social inclusion. Yet he has also set his own house on fire.
IMO Spong has infact prophesised (and assisted) the doom of institutional Christianity and of Christianity as a distinctive world religion - but he s done it with a friendly countenance, cheeky smile, soft spoken words and a glint in his eye.
Could the (mythical) serpent in the (mythical) Garden of Eden have done any better?
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FAT PROPHET
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by St. Cuervo:
So Spong's biography claims average attendance increased 2%? Dr. Crew's numbers on membership wouldn't disprove that. It is possible that the average attendance increased while the membership decreased. This is part of the phenomena known as "post-denominationalism" where more and more people attend parishes regularly but do not join.
But you need to consider how membership is counted in the ECUSA. Attending and taking communion are what make you a member; notice that Louie Crew's page doesn't say "members" - it says "communicants." You can be confirmed if you want (and must be if you want to be an officer of the parish), you can transfer your letter from one parish to another if you want, but the thing that actually counts, as far as we are concerned, is coming to church and taking communion three times a year.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the state of New Jersey grew 8.6% between 1990-2000. The counties which are part of the diocese of Newark grew in population variously - a low of 2.0%, a high of 11.7%, with an average of 8.07%, between 1990-2000.
So the overall population of the diocese of Newark grew, while the number of communicants in its parishes shrank.
New Jersey stats
quote:
I would also note that it is probably flawed to try to use numbers to justify theology. A growing parish or diocese is not necessarly a sign of one that is discipling its members into greater Christlikeness. Conversely a shrinking diocese or parish may be shrinking because it has takes some unpopular, but very Christlike, stands on certain issues. So it is hard to use numbers by themselves without knowing more.
I agree. But it's still not a good sign when there are more and more people living within the boundaries of your diocese and there are fewer and fewer people attending church in its parishes.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fatprophet:
ECUSA must be for those people who have a questing spirituality but don't want any dogma, no absolute theological truth, no concept of orthodoxy as opposed to heresy. Indeed it's religious nature has disolved and blended in completely into the popular post-modern spirituality that is all pervasive, a vague belief in something vague and a commitment to the ideals of love and goodness without angels, demons, heavens and hells, and without a God.
(if God is not an objective reality, then whatever Tillich says, there is no God)
This is so insulting I don't know where to begin. I'll try not to let it intrude on my thoughts tomorrow morning while I am contemplating the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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Jerry Boam
Shipmate
# 4551
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Posted
Gosh, FP, you say so many nice things about the ECUSA in that post, I'm wondering if I should have become episcopalian instead of joining my radical Methodist lot... On the other hand the stuff about undermining denominations is probably true for both, so it doesn't really matter...
I have to disagree with your comment about God as "objective" reality. God is the subjective reality par excellence. God is not an object of any kind. God is neither an external thing, nor an internal thing. God is not part of spacetime. If God exists then it's spacetime that is part of God. You seem to be siding with Spong in suggestig that he has to be either some version of the bearded guy floating around in drag or nothing that can be described in theistic terms.
Am I all alone having a private fantasy about a God who is no single thing, but is yet a person?
Even if I were alone in this belief, I would take it over the bearded guy any day. And of course there's the little detail that it is working for me... Far better, from what I hear, than many traditional forms of belief are working for others.
This tension between the personal aprehension of God as a person or persons and God's non-personal nature is why I like the concepts of the trinity and the dual nature of Christ. Obviously, any being who can be one and three persons is not limitable to the familiar image we have of a person. Obviously, any being who can be both a fully human man and one part of transpersonal God is can't be boxed in to the limited conceptions we have of our own beings or of God as a being. So what's left is a complex pointer to an inconceivable whole that we perceive as through a glass darkly. Beyomd recognizing that, I think people, and I'll include amateur and professional theologians in that category, should try hard to bear in mind that their models of God are not God and try not to lose track of the actual encounters people have with God in their hashing over of these models.
Or, as a friend once said, "of course you're gonna front, but it's important not to believe your own s**t."
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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving is not for you.
Posts: 2165 | From: Miskatonic University | Registered: May 2003
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St. Cuervo
Son of a Son of a Sailor
# 4725
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
But you need to consider how membership is counted in the ECUSA. Attending and taking communion are what make you a member; notice that Louie Crew's page doesn't say "members" - it says "communicants." You can be confirmed if you want (and must be if you want to be an officer of the parish), you can transfer your letter from one parish to another if you want, but the thing that actually counts, as far as we are concerned, is coming to church and taking communion three times a year.
That is interesting, yes, I slipped into Presbyterian terminology for my second post and started throwing the word "membership" around.
So, RuthW, would say that Dr. Crew's numbers on "communicants" and Bishop Spong's (as reported by jugular) reference to "regular attendance" refer to the same thing?
Best,
St. C.
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I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked... angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
Posts: 295 | From: Falls Church, VA | Registered: Jul 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
Don't ECUSA churches keep lists of members entitled to do things like vote people onto committees? Or is that the same a s communicants? In which case presumably they'd have to record the names of communicants in some way??
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
Originally posted by Louise:
quote:
It would be good to have quotes from the talks and some more specific information to support this too. For instance who is this professor and where does he teach?
(Er...I didn't know this would be required! ![[Frown]](frown.gif) ) The first talk was at Queen's University in 1990, and it's not transcribed anywhere, but I wasn't aware that fact would preclude its authenticity. The talk DID happen, and I'm simply explaining my impression of it.
The second talk was in 1993 in Vancouver, called Christian sexual ethics: a dialogue with John Stott and John Spong produced by Anglican Video in association with Diocese of New Westminster, Regent College and Vancouver School of Theology. Toronto: Distributed by Anglican Book Centre, 1993. (28 min., 30 sec.)
quote:
It wouldn't surprise me to find someone with a good genuine academic reason to criticise him but when you don't give names, references, links etc. it can sound a bit like repeating a smear, which I'm sure is not the impression you want to give.
Again, it seems like an odd requirement, but here you go. This article was written by the moderator of the Spong-Stott debate:
HANCOCK, Maxine. Some Reflections On The Use Of Language In The Stott-Spong Dialogue. Crux (Vancouver), 29(4), December 1993, pp.28-33. University English teacher who chaired a John Stott - John Spong dialogue, reflects on Spong's managing an audience by rhetoric rather than by argument.
quote:
Quotes from the talks to demonstrate your point would be nice too.
Gosh, even the New York Times doesn't check facts like this! I'll go to the library and photocopy the article and e-mail to you, if you like.
There's also this.
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Posts: 57 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2003
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Kevin Iga
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# 4396
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Posted
I think we're talking past each other re: "objective reality" and "subjective reality". Often, it seems, people say "subjective reality" when they mean "exists only as a figment of the person's mind".
As someone who considers himself pretty steeped in science (post-Newtonian and otherwise) when I read in Why Christianity Must Change or Die claims that in a post-Newtonian world we must reassess the miraculous claims of the Bible, I was left scratching my head.
Most miracles of the Bible would have been viewed as extraordinary in Biblical times, and modern science would not make them seem any more extraordinary. It's not like modern science had to come about to teach us that people normally can't walk on water, or that virgins don't generally give birth, or that five loaves of bread and two fishes do not generally feed a crowd of 5000.
Is Spong imagining some scientist in 1714 (say) making headlines, by discovering that, despite popular belief, if you try to walk on water you will sink?!
Science produced no new information on these miracles. It said that generally, such things do not happen. But everyone knew that before. That's why the one time it did happen, people took notice and wrote it in a book.
Kevin
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Presbyterian /prez.bi.ti'.ri.en/ n. One who believes the governing authorities of the church should be called "presbyters".
Posts: 521 | From: Pepperdine University | Registered: Apr 2003
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by jugular:
Could you please offer some proof for that Tonewheel? +Spong's autobiography says that during his tenure the diocese increased its average attendance by 2% and that the diocese was in a much more secure financial state when he left than when he arrived. One of you is wrong. Or do you live in the diocese of Newark?
I believe I overstated this, I sincerely apologize. I was relying on heresy and memory, I should have checked first.
According to Louis Crew's online stats, the Diocese of Newark reduced its weekly attendance by 4.6% between 1991 and 1999. This ranks 68th out of 100 in the race to lose the most members in ECUSA. Spong was consecrated in 1978, so it's possible the diocese grew in the late 70s/80s, but started shrinking in the 90s.
Attendance figures compared to overall population growth in the area are perhaps more telling. The state of New Jersey grew in population in the 90s by 9.5%, but Newark shrank during the same period by 4.6%. Compare that to the national figures: US population grew by 13.1%, ECUSA grew by 3.4%.
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Posts: 57 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2003
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the state of New Jersey grew 8.6% between 1990-2000. The counties which are part of the diocese of Newark grew in population variously - a low of 2.0%, a high of 11.7%, with an average of 8.07%, between 1990-2000.
So the overall population of the diocese of Newark grew, while the number of communicants in its parishes shrank.
New Jersey stats
Ruth, I'm so sorry. I just submitted a horribly unfortunate cross-post. Perhaps we should share the research load in the future.
![[Embarrassed]](icon_redface.gif)
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by St. Cuervo:
So, RuthW, would say that Dr. Crew's numbers on "communicants" and Bishop Spong's (as reported by jugular) reference to "regular attendance" refer to the same thing?
Probably. I don't know what other numbers Spong could be referring to.
quote:
Don't ECUSA churches keep lists of members entitled to do things like vote people onto committees? Or is that the same as communicants? In which case presumably they'd have to record the names of communicants in some way??
If you want to vote at the parish annual meeting, there are two requirements - you need to be a communicant within the last 90 days, and you need to be "known to the treasurer" - i.e., you need to have given money. (There is no minimum amount - you could put a penny in an offering envelope with your name on it and that would make you known to the treasurer.)
Most Episcopal parishes are small enough that everyone knows who's been coming to church lately. Once, our former rector was anticipating a possible bit of trouble at an annual meeting, so he had the treasurer generate a list of names of recorded givers and bring it to the meeting. But even then we didn't have anyone try to vote who was not eligible to do so.
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by St. Cuervo:
So, RuthW, would say that Dr. Crew's numbers on "communicants" and Bishop Spong's (as reported by jugular) reference to "regular attendance" refer to the same thing?
In Canada, there's weekly attendance, and there's "baptized members". The later is the most oft-cited stat, although different dioceses have different criteria for what a "baptized member" is. In the Diocese of New Westminster, there are 25,000 "members", but only 10,000 attend regularly each year. Some "members" are deceased, but many churches don't prune their parish rolls frequently enough to reflect reality.
(Aside: This way of handling the numbers recently drew heavy criticism when the blessing of same-sex unions passed in New Westminster by a Synod that uses members instead of attendance to chose delegates. Each church gets one delegate per hundred, up to 800 -- a method which shortchanges which the largest churches, which also happen to be conservative, and also happen to have the highest attendance-to-membership ratio).
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Every historian does this when they try to truly recreate the past. Spong, Wright, and Borg ...
Spong is hardly an historian!
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Every historian does this when they try to truly recreate the past. Spong, Wright, and Borg ...
Spong is hardly an historian!
I should have said "we all do this," because we all do whether we are professional historians or not.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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fatprophet
Shipmate
# 3636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by RuthW:
[QUOTE]This is so insulting I don't know where to begin. I'll try not to let it intrude on my thoughts tomorrow morning while I am contemplating the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
I am not sure why you are so insulted Ruth. Though I am sorry if my post is open to being interpreted in an insulting way .
What I said could be positive for some people, negative for others. There are lots of people out there who have a questing spirituality that is not satisfied with traditional dogma.
However if you personally think traditional doctrines are important, it is probably just as well to realise that your denomination and house of bishops do not.
Or are we saying that Spong is to ECUSA only a tiny aberration that everyone has decided to avoid thinking about?
I'm afraid that I'm one of those people (like Spong himself) that believes that if one knows the truth one should fight for it and that truth excludes its opposite.
If Spong is telling his church that its traditional theology is unacceptable, then equally the church has a right (if it wants) to tell Spong that his very untraditional beliefs or interpretation is equally unacceptable. If you believe truths then you must vigorously defend them (without shedding any blood of course) or you betray them.
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FAT PROPHET
Posts: 530 | From: Wales, UK | Registered: Dec 2002
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fatprophet
Shipmate
# 3636
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry Boam:
I have to disagree with your comment about God as "objective" reality. God is the subjective reality par excellence. God is not an object of any kind. God is neither an external thing, nor an internal thing. God is not part of spacetime. If God exists then it's spacetime that is part of God. You seem to be siding with Spong in suggestig that he has to be either some version of the bearded guy floating around in drag or nothing that can be described in theistic terms.
I couldn't disagree more. This is probably not the
a thread to discuss metaphysics, but I must say that I believe to the contrary that God is the OBJECTIVE reality par excellence. God is the only real real from whom all other objects are derivative or reflections.
Many theologians note "God can't be an object like other objects", but to misread this proposition simplistically is to misunderstand what theism is saying.
For it is our objective reality that must be in question,not God's, and for it is all other objects including ourselves that need to be explained and which are contingent, derivative and some how "carved out" of the greater reality that is God(or my favourite metaphor - our reality are just transient waves and ripples on the surface of the ocean of the absolute)
Of course there is a distinction between subjective perception and the "thing in itself". Subjective reality e.g dreams and conceptual images in the mind are "reality" in that they exist but only for a particular person. The debate about subjectivism v objectivism raises the old philosophical question: "when the tree in the forest falls, does it make a sound when there is no one around to hear it fall?" I would of course answer yes, being a realist.
A purely subjective God would only exist because of us. An objective God means that we would only exist because of God. I somehow think the latter is more Christian.
As for Tillich, everyone knows he was heavily influenced by Hegel's idealism (as well as existentialism).
Frankly for Spong to be so overawed by one theologian, shows a lack of deep intellectual thinking. In seminary he must have been like a duckling who having lost his mother duck (metaphor for belief in traditional dogma) takes up with the first object that moves and follows that around for ever.
There happen to be more (and better) theologians in the history of the church than Tillich, as well as more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in his philosophy.
Spong imo also betrays his lack of intelligence - or he is being deliberately disingenuous - when he constantly brings up the suggestion that realists all believe in a beared God living on a cloud. This is a straw man and no way represents traditional belief of theistic theologians.
On a positive note, Spong has certainly made sure theists clarify what they mean by God as an objective reality, so he has done the church a favour in that regard.
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FAT PROPHET
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
Thanks Tonewheel,
I've seen several posts recently where Spong was used as a kind of shorthand for heresy, so I'm always curious with these 'bogeyman' figures as to whether people can stand up what they say about them.
I'm a little confused though, you mention an English teacher who moderated a debate I thought it was a 'liberal philosophy professor' who criticised him.
It's not uncommon in Purgatory to be asked for links or to back something up.
cheers,
L.
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Now you need never click a Daily Mail link again! Kittenblock replaces Mail links with calming pics of tea and kittens! http://www.teaandkittens.co.uk/ Click under 'other stuff' to find it.
Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by fatprophet:
I must say that I believe to the contrary that God is the OBJECTIVE reality par excellence. God is the only real real from whom all other objects are derivative or reflections.
<snip>
Of course there is a distinction between subjective perception and the "thing in itself".
<snip>
A purely subjective God would only exist because of us. An objective God means that we would only exist because of God. I somehow think the latter is more Christian.
I think you are using an esoteric definition of "objectivity" that is more properly called "contingency." I can say that humans are contingent upon molecules, but that does not mean that humans are only subjective reflections of molecules. I could say that they were objects derived from molecules, but still they can have emergent properties beyond the properties of individual molecules.
You revert to the more standard definition of subjectivity, which is to say perception of objects, to which Jerry Boam was referring. But rather than demonstrate what the clear "thing in itself" is in the case of God, you revert back to "God is the object upon which humanity is contingent." You do so without showing or describing in any way how human existence is contingent upon God's existence. In contrast, Tillich does so with a first premise of faith: Being is contingent upon God. The metaphysical concept of Being is contingent upon the metaphysical concept called God, which is the source of metaphysical Being. Curiously, I think that you are trying to say the exact same thing as Tillich but are having trouble doing so.
If God has objective existence, His characteristics as an "object" should be definable and explainable in a way that is undeniably demonstrable to anyone, in the way that the existence of atoms can be proven whether people want to believe in them or not. This is not the case; therefore God has no objective existence. He is a subjective postulate that explains where our metaphysical Being comes from. We cannot be sure that we really are metaphysical Beings, we may simply be physical beings. It requires faith to assert that we have will, can perceive good and evil, and can thus make voluntary moral choices between the two as a metaphysical Being and not simply a reflection of some underlying object.
Or are you saying, dear prophet, that our very own existence is an illusion and that contrary to our belief that we have control over our lives, we are really just Calvin's predestined puppets, operated by invisible strings that give us the appearance of the power to exist on our own? Please say no.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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JimT
Ship'th Mythtic
# 142
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Posted
Now that I’m past this little piece of humor…
quote:
Originally posted by TheMightyTonewheel:
His primary market were the survivors of American fundamentalist subculture, most of whom will listen to anything that comes off as critical of their parents' beliefs.
…and TheMightyTonewheel has provided some basis for his rambling dissing, I’ll make a response.
Tonewheel has two objections:
1. Spong is a terrible philosopher.
2. Spong’s diocese shrank while he was there.
What evidence does he give? The evidence of “terrible philosophy” is “He frequently relies on imprecise language and charged rhetortic instead of arguments to make his points.” The real knock then, is not against his philosophy, nor his philosophical powers but his presentation. Yet the link he provides says this, “And in fact, only he was on the side of 'mere Christianity' he would be one of the outstanding witnesses of our age. For one thing, he has courage, and his presentational skills are absolutely brilliant.” Further, the same article covers a wide range of topics and quotes including, “What I'd like to be is at the point of life, that I'm so affirmed by the love of God, that I would be willing to give my life away for anybody.” And what do the headlines for the article scream? African Christians? They're just a step up from witchcraft. Talk about dehumanizing your opposition and using charged rhetoric. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) Spong has seen African priests lay hands on homosexuals to cast out demons. He says they do this because of a shortage of time in a post-scientific age. So the author dehumanizes Spong with the rhetorical question, “How far are such words removed from the colonialism of the past when Europeans shamefully talked about Africans as savages?”
![[Projectile]](graemlins/puke2.gif)
If Spong’s diocese shrank, that proves nothing. Jesus’ ministry shrank to 12 on the night he was betrayed.
I don’t suppose there is any hope of extracting an apology from Mr. Mighty, but it would do me a world of good to hear one for the crack about gullible ex-Fundamentalists.
Posts: 2619 | From: Now On | Registered: May 2001
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J. J. Ramsey
Shipmate
# 1174
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Now that I’m past this little piece of humor…
The evidence of “terrible philosophy” is “He frequently relies on imprecise language and charged rhetortic instead of arguments to make his points.” The real knock then, is not against his philosophy, nor his philosophical powers but his presentation.
JimT, imprecise language and charged rhetoric are not just matters of presentation. Imprecise language is a good way to get caught in fallacies of ambiguity or equivocation. Charged rhetoric often hides that one is saying very little, pounding the pulpit when one has a weak point.
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I am a rationalist. Unfortunately, this doesn't actually make me rational.
Posts: 1490 | From: Tallmadge, OH | Registered: Aug 2001
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Merseymike
Shipmate
# 3022
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Posted
But I don't think he 'has a weak point' - much of what he said needed saying, and was said in terms that most could understand.
It doesn't mean I agree with him altogether.
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Christianity is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced
Posts: 3360 | From: Walked the plank | Registered: Jul 2002
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
JimT wrote:
quote:
But I will ask this question about "losing one's faith." If a Fundamentalist changes from a literal view of Adam to a mythic view, has he "lost his faith" or "grown in faith?" What about an evangelical who changes from a theistic view of God to a nontheistic one? Internally, the person says, "I've not lost my faith, I only now see it clearly and in a new light." Outsiders who have not made the shift say, "No, you've simply lost your faith." Is that a fair statement to make?
Hmmm…I think that depends on a lot of things.
(Declaration of variables: Lee=person in question; A=orig. belief; B=new belief.)
--Is Lee moving from belief in something false to belief in something true?
--Did Lee really believe A? Does she really believe B?
--Why is she moving? Because of new insight, or being told that “everyone knows A is stupid and out of fashion”, or because her friends believe B, or because her parents believe A?
--Did A help Lee somehow in getting through life? Will B?
To outsiders who believe A, she may well have lost her faith—because she’s lost –that- faith.
It’s also possible that Lee will move away from A, but not find B—at least, not right away. She may check out C, D, A’, ZZ, etc. She may just decide to spread her wings for a while!
(I tried to move this away from the specific fundamentalist to non-theist progression Jim set up, so the ideas would apply to movement between any two beliefs. People do move in all sorts of directions!)
And:
quote:
Some minds fill it in with a miraculous and supernatural set of miracles culminating in the physical resurrection and ascension and other minds fill it in with a growth of the natural into the supernatural in the minds of those who were witnesses at the time. There is a heavy black line where everybody makes things up, except for the truly dogmatic agnostic who says they can't be sure of anything at all.
Yes, that’s the problem. I’m not sure we can every really KNOW. Maybe the best thing is to follow what speaks to our own individual hearts, and let that be enough.
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Blessed Gator, pray for us!
--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Erin
Meaner than Godzilla
# 2
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Posted
I believe it was retired bishop Fitzsimmons Allison who once said, "Jack, my boy, you should have studied your history in seminary. If you had, you'd have known that your heresies were thought of a long time ago by better minds than yours."
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Commandment number one: shut the hell up.
Posts: 17140 | From: 330 miles north of paradise | Registered: Mar 2001
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by JimT:
Now that I’m past this little piece of humor…
quote:
Originally posted by TheMightyTonewheel:
His primary market were the survivors of American fundamentalist subculture, most of whom will listen to anything that comes off as critical of their parents' beliefs.
…and TheMightyTonewheel has provided some basis for his rambling dissing, I’ll make a response.
Tonewheel has two objections:
The evidence of “terrible philosophy” is “He frequently relies on imprecise language and charged rhetortic instead of arguments to make his points.” The real knock then, is not against his philosophy, nor his philosophical powers but his presentation.
Not so. There are two things that make a good philosopher: the ability to compose a good argument and the ability to communicate it. The point I was making is that he's a good presenter but a bad philosopher. That's the whole point of Maxine Hancock's article saying that Spong manages an audience "by rhetoric rather than by argument" (an article which I will post as soon as I can).
Let me give an example of that I mean. Here's an excerpt of Spong giving a television interview, found here. "People invest their religious feelings in a kind of security system, and they believe they've captured ultimate truth or their reality of God in symbols and they cling to those symbols in a very desperate way. And when somebody comes along and distrubs the symbols...then what you're really doing is distrubing the security system of that person. The result of that is anger."
What Spong is saying might be correct, but it's not an argument. It's just a handful of statements. All he's doing is categorizing conservatives and orthodox Christians, painting them as sort of infantile, unthinking, insecure, and angry. I doesn't take anything more than a 6-year-old child to make a statement like this. It's one thing to say it, it's another thing to show it. Spong is all about TV-dinner theology, nothing more than a set of statements punctuated with hyperbole and ad hominum arguments.
This technique isn't reserved for liberals. It's the same with Pat Buchanan. Today, he wrote: "Having failed to conform his life to scriptural command, Robinson now demands that Scripture be reinterpreted to conform to his deviant life style." (found here) Well, what does that say? It says nothing . It's a completely vacant comment. It's like saying, "He's wrong, and that's all you need to know".
quote:
And what do the headlines for the article scream? African Christians? They're just a step up from witchcraft. Talk about dehumanizing your opposition and using charged rhetoric.
You're right, it is charged rhetoric. But, keep in mind two points: Spong did say that they've moved out of animism into superstition, so it's not terribly inaccurate to say that implies they are one step away from witchcraft. It's definately charged, but it's also sort of what he implied, and it was dehumanizing. Second point: we're talking about whether or not Spong uses rhetoric to dismiss his opponents. Whether or not his opponents do the same is not relevant.
quote:
If Spong’s diocese shrank, that proves nothing. Jesus’ ministry shrank to 12 on the night he was betrayed.
Yyyyeah...but it sort of took off from there. The point is that Spong believed his version of Christianity would help the church "change or die". It was his theory that these changes would prove popular and help the church define itself.
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I don’t suppose there is any hope of extracting an apology from Mr. Mighty, but it would do me a world of good to hear one for the crack about gullible ex-Fundamentalists.
Why? Because fascists like me don't apologize? A very, very sad implication. But you're right on one hand, I shouldn't have said it, it was unnecessary, I didn't mean it the way it sounded, and I'm sorry.
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Posts: 57 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2003
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Louise:
I've seen several posts recently where Spong was used as a kind of shorthand for heresy, so I'm always curious with these 'bogeyman' figures as to whether people can stand up what they say about them.
A fair point. I strongly oppose dismissing Spong because he's Spong.
quote:
I'm a little confused though, you mention an English teacher who moderated a debate I thought it was a 'liberal philosophy professor' who criticised him.
Well, he has more than one critic. I've been at two Spong talks, the first at Queen's University was responded to by a non-Christian philosophy professor. I can only wish I had the article: it was called "Methinks the Bishop protests too much", and I remember it for it's pithy quote saying Spong couldn't pass one of his second-year courses.
The second talk was actually a debate with John Stott in Vancouver, and was moderated by Maxine Hancock, the english professor. Later, she wrote an article in Crux Magazine that I quoted. I'll get it tomorrow and post it (or send private e-mails if it winds up to be too unwieldy).
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Posts: 57 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2003
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TheMightyTonewheel
Shipmate
# 4730
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Posted
I found an even better example of Spong's style:
Spong article on John Stott published on Beliefnet
Quoth Spong: John Stott is quoted as saying that "the great tragedy of the Church today is that evangelicals are biblical, but not contemporary, while liberals are contemporary, but not biblical." It is a nice try, a clever, evenhanded approach, but it does not work. It is not biblical to read the Bible in a superstitious, ill-informed manner. It is not biblical for John Stott to justify every prejudice, to whitewash chauvinism, racism, homophobia, and a not-so-subtle hatred for everyone who does not affirm the evangelical value system.
This kind of writing is almost exactly what you hear on a grade 6 playground. It's just claim after claim after claim. Stott's approach doesn't work, it's not biblical, it's racist, homophobic, blah blah blah. No examples, no arguments, no nothing. You might just as well say someone is racist because they're racist. (Incredibly, in this 1500 word attack on Stott, Spong can manage to quote Stott only once, the line I referenced above). I mean alot of this stuff is just made up. Evangelicalism is dying? He can't be serious.
John Spong was a curiosity. The media was really interested in a Bishop that talked the way he did. He turned theology into kind of a circus sideshow. Ocassionally, he said some really interesting things, and I loved the way to talked about how God was a mystery and too big too fully understand. But John Spong's impact will ultimately like his arguments: a mile wide but only an inch deep.
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"I detected one misprint, but to torture you I will not tell you where." -- Winston Churchill to T.E. Lawrence, re Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Posts: 57 | From: Vancouver | Registered: Jul 2003
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RuthW
liberal "peace first" hankie squeezer
# 13
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Posted
fatprophet, do you really not see that saying we in the ECUSA only have "a vague belief in something vague" is insulting? And do you think if that's all we have there would have been people in church this morning in the blistering heat?
Posts: 24453 | From: La La Land | Registered: Apr 2001
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