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Title: Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 0-06-067536-5 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 01 May, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.32 (233 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A rallying cry many should answer.
Comment: Now-retired Episcopal bishop Shelby Spong has never shied away from contentious statements regarding his faith. For decades, Spong has made himself a target for conservative and fundamentalist Christians with his proclamations on prayer, the role of women and homosexuals in the church, and more. WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE is another step along this road. Between the book's covers, Spong tackles the wholesale reinvention of the Christian faith, from its methods of worship to the very substance of its belief. In a religious environment where some churches burn Harry Potter books for their supposedly irreligious content, Spong's treatise is certainly on an express lane to the bonfire.
Those who take the time to actually read Spong's words will find a thoughtful discussion of the changes Christianity needs to make in the face of a changing social and intellectual landscape. Spong himself struggles with the loss of the premodern innocence that gave rise to the Christian faith, acknowledging that the world as the first-century Christians understood it is not the world in which we live today. Advances in human understanding have fundamentally altered humankind's approach to everything from the weather to disease to the size and origin of the galaxies. Spong's work attempts to find a way for Christianity to remain relevant when its belief system can no longer be accepted literally.
WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE is not a huge book, despite its topic. While Spong has a tendency to run on when he has an idea in his teeth, his thoughts generally move quickly. He doesn't provide inflexible answers to the questions this reinvention raises, instead pointing out where adherence to a premodern understanding of God has crippled the development of Christianity, and then providing his ideas about how to improve matters. Spong, unsurprisingly, knows his stuff, and its likely many readers will learn things about the historical development of Christianity that they never knew before. All readers, however, will be challenged by Spong's proposed solutions to the question of literalist Christianity, defying as it does the vast body of received wisdom regarding God that form the faith basis of Christian-influenced cultures.
Spong's book is not for those who accept Christian doctrine wholeheartedly, but for those who cannot divorce reason and learning from their religious beliefs. Rather than lapse into a state of nihilism - nothing matters, least of all an imaginary super-being in the sky - as a result of this perspective, Spong instead strives to reclaim the beauty and fulfillment that comes from a new, contemporary understanding of Biblical writings, God-belief and the life of Jesus. Spong is a true believer who does not want to be robbed of the benefits of the Christian faith. As a result, his words can often be quite moving, even as they shake the pillars of literalist religion.
During the course of WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE, Spong repeatedly refers to himself and fellow travelers as "believers in exile". This is a vast group, and growing larger by the year. In the growing ranks of disaffected believers, Spong sees the coming irrelevance of his bedrock religion. Though some might see his work as a confrontation with the faith, Spong is instead throwing it a lifeline, and while he cannot single-handedly affect a new reformation, he wants to give it a go. WHY CHRISTIANITY MUST CHANGE OR DIE is a rallying cry many should answer.
Rating: 5
Summary: An interesting title
Comment: since Christianity has changed a multitude of times over the years. Bishop Spong is a deep thinker and I believe a man with a good heart. To me, that's saying a lot when you're speaking about Christians, just due to the fact that they seem to believe they have this exclusive religion and if you do not believe as they do you are not only condemned to hell, but must be feared, abused, even murdered (but prayed for!!!!). I wonder, do they pray for Osama?
My major problem with this book, as any book on such a topic, is God doesn't speak in "words" (despite the evangelical belief that the bible is the so-called "Word of God", even though the chapters are mostly titled after the MEN ... no WOMEN here ... who wrote them). God speaks in quiet moments in the soul that do not translate well to language; poets have sometimes captured it, although you must have the soul to "read between the lines"; musicians also, in their music, not often in their words. God speaks mostly in quiet, still, peaceful moments. We can feel something, then it wisps away.
Do I KNOW the TRUTH? No. I never will in this life. Neither will you. We seek, as seeking is the nature of life. But to FIND is only something we may feel in a moment, to be lost again the next. Yet scholars such as Bishop Spong with the courage to question are to be admired, not vilified (not even by God, in my opinion, and I "sense" (alas, the human lack of anything else) God agrees with me on this one).
Perhaps since I did not have the "luxury" of a right wing conservative upbringing I am not afraid to ask questions. I pity those who are. So my hat is off to Bishop Spong and all those not afraid to use the brain God gave them. Peace.
Rating: 1
Summary: This book is absolutely blasphemous.
Comment: The Bible says in the end times there will be false prophets... right here is one of them.
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Title: Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism : A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 0060675187 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 10 April, 1992 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: A New Christianity for a New World : Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 0060670630 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 17 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Here I Stand : My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love, and Equality by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 006067539X Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 03 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: Liberating the Gospels : Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 0060675578 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 17 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Living in Sin? : A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality by John Shelby Spong ISBN: 0060675071 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 02 February, 1990 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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