Michael Dowd
JOHN SHELBY SPONG: Christianity Continuing to Evolve
In May of this year I interviewed John Shelby Spong for my (intermittent) “Evolving Faith” podcast. I was so impressed that I knew I wanted to include him in this conversation series as well.
If you are unfamiliar with Jack and his writings…
John Shelby Spong, whose books have sold more than a million copies, was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years before his retirement in 2001. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson — he’s considered the champion of an inclusive faith by many, both inside and outside the Christian church. In one of his recent books, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Discover the God of Love (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2005), this visionary thinker seeks to introduce readers to a proper way to engage the holy book of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
A devout Christian who has spent a lifetime studying the Bible and whose life has been deeply shaped by it, Bishop Spong says he was not interested in Bible bashing. “I come to this interpretive task not as an enemy of Christianity,” he says. “I am not even a disillusioned former Christian, as some of my scholar-friends identify themselves. I am a believer who knows and loves the Bible deeply. But I also recognize that parts of it have been used to undergird prejudices and to mask violence.”
A visiting lecturer at Harvard and at universities and churches worldwide, Bishop Spong delivers more than 200 public lectures each year to standing-room-only crowds. His bestselling books include Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism; A New Christianity for a New World; Why Christianity Must Change or Die; Jesus for the Nonreligious; and Here I Stand.
Bishop Spong’s extensive media appearances include a profile segment on 60 Minutes, as well as appearances on Good Morning America, Fox News Live, Politically Incorrect, Larry King Live, The O’Reilly Factor, William F. Buckley’s Firing Line, and Extra. Bishop Spong and his wife, Christine Mary Spong, have five children and six grandchildren. They live in New Jersey. His website is: http://www.johnshelbyspong.com
In this conversation, Jack does a magnificent job of sharing his ideas and the passions underlying them, but also in teaching a good bit of the history of Christendom — and of the Western World more generally. When one steps into such a historically rich perspective, the sense that change must occur in the expression of Christianity today and onward into the future transforms into the least radical path to follow. “Christianity has been an ever-changing movement throughout its entire history. Anybody who doesn’t quite understand that doesn’t understand history.” Following are some additional choice quotes from our conversation…
“The Bible that I treasure and I’ve read extensively in my life was written between two and three thousand years ago, and it makes assumptions that I cannot make. . . So I either have to reject the Bible as irrelevant to the world in which I live (as so many of my contemporaries do) or I’ve got to find a different way to read the Bible and to see it as a pointer to a truth that it cannot fully embrace.”
“I’ve tried to find a way to live within the tension of being a 21st century thinking person and a believing Christian.”
“One of the great weaknesses of religion is that it tries do act as if there is such a thing as unchanging truth.”
“We live on the other side of people like Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. So we have to look at the universe in a way that we had never looked at it religiously before. We’ve got to look at the world on the other side of Isaac Newton, as well, who took away the concept of miracle and magic — with which the Christian story is deeply compromised, I would say. And we have to look on the other side of Charles Darwin.
Now, the Darwin revolution has shaken the church story to its roots. That’s why we have this incredible negativity in our society toward the thinking of Charles Darwin. Enormous energy has been spent trying to resist and dispute Darwin. Yet the fact is, the religious community has lost that war. They don’t all realize it, but that war is lost . . .
So what’s gone on is that throughout history we have constantly had to rethink the Christian symbols in terms of the new worldview. And I think that’s what is going on today. We are trying to make sense of the symbols of our religious heritage in a world that is radically different from what we inherited as the Christian people walking through history.”
“Darwin says that we were not created perfect. You can’t fall unless you start out in a perfected state. We have evolved through hundreds of millions, even billions, of years of evolutionary history. So there is no fall. The whole concept of original sin is gone. Our hymns that reflect this, and the preaching that reflects this, and our doctrines that reflect this no longer translate. And so it’s really devastating, because we don’t know what to do. You cannot be rescued unless you fall. You cannot be restored to a state that you’ve never enjoyed. So the whole way that we’ve told the Jesus story has now become inoperative.”
“I see my audience as the people who are still hanging on to their religious convictions but feeling very shaky about them. Or people who have given up religious convictions but still miss them. I call these people ‘the believers in exile.’ They want to believe; they feel a sense of transcendence and wonder and awe in their lives. But the old symbols simply don’t work.”
“The way that we finally deal with the lack of knowledge and with religious prejudices is that the people who hold them finally die. The world changes, and their children relate differently, and their grandchildren relate differently.”
“God, to me, is the source of life, and I worship God by living. God, to me, is the source of love, and I worship God by loving. God, to me, is the ground of being, and I worship God by having the courage to be everything that I can be.”
“The mission of the church is not to convert people, not to make people religious. It’s to help people become deeply and fully human, and to be able to give their lives away in service to other people. That’s the Christ principle!”
“For most people, religion is not a search for truth. It’s a search for security. So you’ve got to be very careful when you challenge the security by which people live.”
“All we’ve got to do today [to help evolve Christianity] is to be faithful to whatever the transition pressure is. And then you build a pathway into a future that you cannot see. Faith is to walk beyond the level of your vision.”
“I have great confidence that my transcendent experience of the presence of God, a God I still see through the lens of Jesus of Nazareth, is going to be a factor in the humanity of a thousand years from now. But what form and shape it’s going to take, I don’t even want to speculate. I’m too busy trying to be faithful in my moment, which is always a transition moment.”
“I don’t want peace of mind. I want to embrace the anxiety of what it means to be human. Any religion that takes away my anxiety, I think, takes away my humanity.”
“One of the symbols that I think we finally have got to get rid of in order for the Christian faith to live is the definition of God as a theistic being. That’s the God that has been destroyed by the expansion of knowledge. Theism is not God; theism is a human definition of God.”
“An atheist is not someone who does not believe there is a God. An atheist is one who has rejected the theistic definition of God.”
“There is no inerrant bible; there is no infallible pope. There is no one true religion; there is no one true church. We’re all pilgrims walking into the mystery and wonder of it all.”
Resources mentioned during our conversation:
“Evolutionize Your Life: Heaven Is Coming Home to Reality” (alt. title: “Deep-Time Wisdom: An Inspiring Vision of Humanity’s Future”). This is the main program I’m now delivering in all religious, non-religious, and even anti-religious settings. I delivered an early version of it at the United Nations in April 2009, where it was also well received.
Deirdre Barrett, Supernormal Stimuli: How Our Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose
“What Reality in Human Experience Do We Point to with the Word, ‘God’?”, a pdf of a short essay by evolutionary theologian, Gene Marshall. In my opinion, this chapter from one of Gene’s books is foundational to an evolutionary understanding of the divine. (The pdf shows up sideways, so you’ll need to open it with Adobe Reader and, under the “View” menu, rotate it clockwise. Otherwise you’ll need to print it out. It’s only 10 pages and well worth it!)
My interview/conversation with John Shelby Spong earlier this year: “Redeeming Christianity in the 21st Century”.
Real Men Wear Baby Wraps! – with pictures of me and my USMC son-in-love Jon Stevens carrying newborn Ayela Rene.
I think there is a Universal Consciousness that we are all connected to, and that we all use.
So when any of us have new ideas or new thoughts, they don’t actually come from us, but
through us from that Universal Consciousness that connects all Life, and then out into the world. The future of consciousness, I believe, is the realization of this Universal Consciousness and its connection to everything, and our understanding that we can use it. In the past long before the advent of the knowledge that we now have about Life and the Universe, this was called God, and given supernatural human qualities and personality. But in actual fact, we are slowly learning that this Universal Consciousness is just the way the Life Force of the Universe operates. —Jim High
WOW…I have read JSSpong’s books and he is somethings else with his ideas… a lot of it will threaten people—he with 16 death threats from Bible believers, or true believers. Sad. Spong’s words are very relevant for us who see the need to reach beyond the old
language of much of some/much of the church language today and to rethink and redo much of our theology ( in our evolutionary conscious world). JSS is good a wording the need to grow in the scientific and religious dialogue in a way that we go beyond the “conspiricy of silence” and begin to articulate in new ways the evolving Xity just as other religious paths must do…that is the challenge to move beyond the search for security and the search for truth and be in genuine dialogue. This is what will free us to deal with the symbols and then be free enough to say “I really do not know.”… but to realize “I’m connecred to the Mystery… and the future we cannot see… but realize we have trouble responding with all of this LIFE gift. It means that we all have to be careful be-cause faith or the Bible ( or other sacred words) can be used as a weapon but it doesn’t have to be; it can be used to transform a new world— we need to step out and be “post theists” of the One beyond the up in the sky kind of being and “be” (by expansion of knowledge) informed by the linkage of new theology and a new evolutionary mind that honestly can’t tell the full story. ..but can see the mystery anew as a Fulling in LOVE with this evolving process that is beyond us but related to us. We are pilgrams on the “humanity journey” moving toward self concsciousness and as part of this mysterious experience. There is “no unchanging truth” but a life filled with anxiety but also the gift
of relatedness. Religion and Science are gifts easily misused but we need to be HONEST with them. PEACE, Henry
Just wanting to say how much I appreciated John Spong. Such clarity and so prophetic. Really appreciated your take, John, on staying connected to “transitional pressures”, and allowing the future to emerge one adjustment at a time – discovering where Spirit is moving, trusting that, rather than feeling like we need to engineer the future into existence.
Great interview, Michael.
Ditto! I really appreciated John’s refusal to entertain questions pertaining to the future and how it might play out. It takes a lot of pressure off my shoulders to think that my only responsibility is to somehow be faithful in the moment and let the future take care of itself.
It seems like John Stewart in Evolution’s Arrow is implying that we are meant to intentionally align our lives with the trajectory of evolution in terms of choosing what work we do – but John Spong seems to be saying we don’t need to worry about that, but rather just to endeavor to embody life, love, and being. Are these points of view contrasting, or am I missing something? I’d love some feedback and thanks for the interview Michael!
-Travis
Travis -
Good question about consciously aligning our lives with the perceived trajectory of evolution v. just endeavoring to embody llfe, love, and being. I think it is a matter of scale and timing. I don’t think any of us want the World Bank or the Nature Conservancy or our nation’s aggregate health insurance/provider system to just go with “life, love, and being.” Societies are just too complex to have that as the leading guideposts for such practically oriented institutions.
Rather, for all those organizations, we would benefit to have them take some of the key lessons discerned from “the trajectory of evolution” that Michael keeps emphasizing (there are, of course, others). Foremost: a valuing of diversity as a solution to our problems, not a problem to be solved, and “aligning the self-interest of individuals with the well-being of the whole.” As to the latter, this urges us to ask, how do we incentivize both the larger systems and individuals within those systems to make choices that truly do benefit all levels of the nested scales?
I mentioned the Nature Conservancy above both because I am a long-time member and donor and because it hugely exemplifies the brilliance of incentivizing individuals to do the right thing ecologically — rather than relying exclusively on top-down lawmaking, as emphasized (necessarily) by many other environmental organizations. There is a subtle, yet important difference. At the same time, it has been interesting to watch how the Nature Conservancy is facing up to the realities of climate change, as it will encounter huge challenges in its mission because some of its vast system of small private land preserves for biological diversity needs and protecting specific endangered species will be rendered ineffective as the habitable zones shift northward.
Anyway, that is just one detailed example of why observing how the trajectory of evolution has enabled life to overcome challenges can be a useful, though far from prescriptive, guidepost for all our human institutions to learn from.
Connie,
Thanks so much for taking the time to respond to my post. I’m deeply touched that you and Michael are so committed to your work – it comes across as totally selfless and unconditional. Thank you, thank you, thank you ; )
Travis
You say habitable zones will shift northward in response to climate change? Where are you getting this information from? I’d be interested in reading more about the anticipated effects of climate change. Thanks,
Travis
I found this interview to be spectacular. I loved the eloquence and comfort with which Bishop Spong spoke and explained his ideas and experiences. I was raised as a Catholic until I was 10 years old when my parents divorced. With my mother, we never went to church very much. I went to church periodically with my grandmother who had become a Pentecostal. In high school I went through a period when I wanted to find “the true religion.” I read about other faiths, and studied with several Christian faiths, but in the end I just couldn’t reconcile any of them, in no small part due to the literal interpretations of the Bible that we’ve been discussing. So I gave religion up all together. Then about 6 years ago I met a Baha’i. I wasn’t looking for faith or religion, but what he explained to me about this faith said made so much sense for the first time in my life. So I studied the Baha’i Faith for 3 years and then joined. I was so excited about what I heard in tonight’s talk that I am compelled to describe how I understand what I’ve heard in Bishop Spong’s interview with my understanding of the Baha’i Faith, though it’s far from authoritative. These are just my thoughts.
What I find incredibly interesting about so many things Bishop Spong (and many others in this series) have discussed, is that much (not all, for sure) of what some speakers say they believe as core tenets of their faith, are core beliefs of the Baha’i Faith. In fact, one of the main points of this lecture series being the harmony of science and religion, is a core principle of the Baha’i Faith. It is heavily emphasized that science and true religion are not in conflict. (“True” religion is not comprised of superstition and dogma and “flat-earth” faith.) And there is what Michael calls a sense of “deep-time” as the writings state that “life on earth is very ancient. It is not one-hundred thousand or two hundred thousand, or one million or two million years old. It is very ancient.” So needless to say, as I am a biologist, it was amazing to me that a religion actually said this and placed so much importance on science as a means given to man to discover the realities of things.
Also, Bishop Spong spoke well on the problem of original sin and its terrible ramifications today. Baha’is do not accept this concept. We are told that we were created noble. Of course there are mystical aspects of many of the Baha’i writings as in the Bible, but the point here is, we do not pass on the destructive idea of the inheritance of sin and everyone needing to be “rescued” as Bishop Spong said. And to Michael’s point about mismatched instincts, because the Baha’i writings explain how humanity’s development on earth has progressed through stages, including going through the animal stages (my language), we do have historica surviva/animall instincts that we have to fight. Bishop Spong was exactly correct when he said that when we passed through the threshold of self-consciousness, it then became our goal to rise above our survival instincts and become moral (my addition, this last part).
Bishop Spong stated that “I don’t think anyone can define God.” The Baha’i Faith says that God is the unknowable essence, yet we have been created to experience love, compassion, joy and all those things that define God.
Bishop Spong mentioned that his hope is that we all move forward. This reminds me of writings in the Baha’i Faith of progression, motion and maturation. These concepts are throughout and underscore the danger of subscribing to absolute truths. Bishop Spong said, “One of the great weaknesses of religion is that it tries to act as if there is a thing as unchanging truth.” This is not what the Baha’i faith says to me. Truth, scientific and religious, is so often relative. As our knowledge grows, our worldview grows, matures and changes. A core principle of the Baha’i faith is independent investigation of the truth, even or perhaps especially, questioning my own faith. That is how faith is strengthened.
There are so many more examples, but I’ll leave off for now.
I am confused, though, about what Michael and Bishop Spong believe about the Bible, religious Revelation and what I would call the station of Jesus. I understand that they have a hard time with a “theistic” concept of God. Bishop Spong stated that there is no one true religion. As a Baha’i I have a different take on that. To me all the major religions together are the diverse expressions over time of one true religion. It is a continuum. Outwardly, and more superficially, the religions look separate and denominational. But another view, with a wider perspective, is that they are a progression of the same spiritual truths over time, but adapted (and corrupted) by the cultures in which they appeared. Like Bishop Spong said, we get way too bogged down in details that don’t matter, and also over time the true messages have been overlaid with dogma, superstition and untruth (into a pretzel) such that for many it becomes palatable, or dangerous. So to me there are sacred writings inspired by God. There were personages that were divine, meaning not just human beings who were really nice, and spoke and wrote well, but were truly in possession of the knowledge of God and the plight of humanity and carried messages for humanity for us to grow and rise above our animal nature, and to help us prepare for the next world. I get the impression that Michael and some others in this series do not agree. And that is ok. I really applaud the wisdom, experience and true heartfelt desire by the speakers to bring an appreciation for evolutionary Christianity to those who are struggling. I am tickled to death that someone can have Ph.D.s in theology AND Physics. But it sounds like for some, the Bible is the book they were taught growing up, they struggled with it and then reconciled their “flat-earth faith” with the reality of scientific findings, and Jesus and His teachings just represent great examples of how to live. (I am certainly not saying this is true of all the speakers). One of the things I am struggling to understand is why a scientist who recognizes the immensity of 14 billion years of creation, the evolutionary process that involves change and modification over time, would be stuck on one religious revelation (Jesus and the Bible, if you are Christian, or other religious texts if you belong to another faith). If, as a scientist, you accept that there are universal laws of increasing complexity, creation and decay, transformation, and change over time that created the cosmos, the galaxies and planets, the earth and ultimately human beings who, themselves have undergone hundreds of thousands of years of growth and adaptation over time, why wouldn’t Revelation (if you accept Divine Revelation), the message of God, not also need to be adapted and modified as humanity grows and changes as well?
I really do appreciate the efforts of all the speakers, and Michael and Connie. I am enjoying hearing other views that make me think about alternative interpretations.
I encourage anyone reading this to also listen to the conversation that Bishop Spong and I had in May, for my Evolving Faith podcast series, linked here: “Redeeming Christianity in the 21st Century.” It too was excellent (though we covered very different territory than we did last night). And since I see Bruce Sanguin adding his comments, if you’ve not already done so, be sure to listen to both my earlier conversation with Bruce in this series (scroll down, second to the bottom) and also a delightful one we had earlier in the year: “Evolutionary Christian Spirituality“.
Another good talk, I’m not surprised. I also enjoyed the challenges presented by Spong’s book which I believe is titled: Born of Woman, a liberal theological take on Mary.
By saying God is undefinable, it strikes me as a way of defining God. I think we can say some things, like this series has, God is a God of Love, a God noted in all of nature.
Enjoyable, thanks again.
A brilliant conversation in an incredible series of conversations.
Jack Spong is one of my religious, spiritual and evolutionary heroes simply because his ideas and thinking are ALWAYS evolving. He could have decided to rest on his laurels as one of the gurus of “progressive” Christianity in the 80′s or 90′s but he has continued to journey into the mystery of this life and its sacred dimensions and share his epiphanies with us.
His recent books, Jesus for the Non-Religious and Eternal Life – A New Vision just blew me away. I expected a re-hash of his earlier expositions about life, love and being (which are great – don’t get me wrong!) but instead he used this experience of the divine as a foundation for even deeper insights.
Thank you Jack/Bishop Spong/brother for your integrity, patience, persistence, sharing, caring and daring.
Thank you, Michael for the wisdom and hard work required to dare to imagine this series of conversations. We live in the most incredible time of opportunity and are immersed in an ocean of emerging wisdom. Thanks again for allowing us to experience that in the incredible richness of these conversations.
I really enjoyed this conversation. As a member of the church alumni association for 30 years, I appreciate what Rev. Spong is trying to do. Perhaps if I had heard him 30 years ago, I would have stayed in the fold. It all seems like such a stretch to me now! As much as I still admire the Christian tradition and love it’s history, to suggest that it is still a relevant faith makes my brain feel like it’s being twisted into a pretzel. To cut through a lot of theology, I take it that Rev. Spong is a unitarian-universalist Jesus follower. I put unit. & univ. in lower case to contrast it with the religion of that name and refer back to the original doctrinal disputes that gave rise to those terms. This needs to be further modified because Rev. Spong does not uphold a unitarian theology so much as a unitarian atheology. Jesus was not God: in fact, no one is God because God is not a being. The universalism part just means that everyone will end up in the same place. Following Jesus? This gets complicated by the very Christian tradition that has brought him to us. Emerson spoke of a “noxious” preoccupation with the person of Jesus in the Harvard Divinity School Address of 1837. To say that no man ever spoke like this man is as much a myth as the 7-day creation.
Coming into this discussion late, I am skipping through earlier discussions. I apologise if I say something that has already been said.
I really had not gotten into anything JSS had written so this was my first exposure. Surprisingly I found myself agreeing with almost everything that was said, particularly in regards to post-theistic Christianity. The anthropomorphic idea of a god has been good and not so good for three or four thousand years; but what is that compared to evolutionary time? It must, likewise, evolve. Speaking of or praying to someone much like us is comforting and that is OK but don’t force this idea on others of differing ideas. I believe all religions are humanity’s attempts to make a connection with a “higher power” as AA puts it. This may be a base all could agree on and pursue in their own ways. I think this forum may be opening new avenues along that path.
I am so excited about Spong’s interview with Michael that while listening to it alone I was clapping my hands and exclaiming agreement out loud! Thank “god” for your life, love, and being, Bishop Spong, that you express so well. Your facility with language to clarify is amazing. Thank “you”.
How grateful I am to you Michael Dowd for bringing this series about! I am looking forward to having friends over to listen, especially to Spong, as I have downloaded the dialogues.
I think Spong is great but I take exception to 2 things: even in an evolutionary framework we could say that humanity “fell” when they evolved out of the great apes into homo sapiens. We know that we know. We can think outside of ourselves in a way that animals cannot. We now know good and evil but rather than it making us godlike we have become crueler than any animal. We are culpable because we do have choice. And we need to be rescued in some sense by wisdom that seems to come from beyond.
Second, Christ did call us to convert people but we are to convert them to Christ’s teachings not necessarily to Christianity. I don’t think Spong would disagree with this but he might use different terms for it. But that might be presumptuous of me.
I’ve since started reading Jack’s book A New Christianity for a New World and find it refreshingly challenging. Jack is decidedly for a post-theistic embodiment of Christianity, but I’m wondering if it is possible for a person to be a mature theist. I know that I’ve met some mature (at least in my view) Christian monastics, but perhaps their theism is a bit more nuanced, mysterious, and deep than is stereotypically portrayed. Michael, would you consider yourself theistic at all? Are there different ways of embodying theism that allow for personal maturity and wholeness? If so, why does Jack seem to be launching a diatribe against theism rather than the way it is commonly lived out? Thanks,
Travis
Bp Spong: Brilliantly terse, lucid, profound, and ever hopeful. In this 60 mins interview, he covered evolution from the one cell organism to self consciousness amongst humans, their need to believe for the sake of security, along with some speculations about one thousand years from now taken one step at a time!
He lives with the tension of ideas not just easily but with hope aided by personal experience, and the Bp at age 79 brings a youthful challenge to embrace change, to learn from it, and to be prepared to change anew–and that process easily can use the umbrella of Christian evolution for cover.
I want to respond to the following statement from Bishop Spong: “We live on the other side of people like Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. So we have to look at the universe in a way that we had never looked at it religiously before. We’ve got to look at the world on the other side of Isaac Newton, as well, who took away the concept of miracle and magic — with which the Christian story is deeply compromised, I would say.”
As someone who’s spent a good portion of my life immersed in the lives, work, and writings of all four of the gentlemen referenced in the good Bishop’s statement, I confess that I just can’t connect the dots in his statement. Perhaps I’m misunderstanding him, but he seems to be saying that the Scientific Revolution (a common name for the period from Copernicus to Newton) simply changed the religious landscape and “deeply compromised the Christian story.”
If I have that right, then I’m afraid that the Bishop has it wrong. Let me simply make two brief points to illustrate how wrong such a conclusion would be. I’ll talk about Kepler and Newton, leaving Copernicus and Galileo to one side here.
Johannes Kepler learned about the Copernican view while studying for the Lutheran ministry at Tubingen. Lutheran universities tended to teach students about Copernicus, b/c of Phillip Melanchthon. He believed that mathematics was the divine language, that humans could still do mathematics perfectly even after the fall, and that astronomy was the highest form of mathematics. Although Melanchthon didn’t take the earth’s motion literally–hardly anyone did, since the evidence against it was almost overwhelming–he viewed Copernicus as, like Luther, a conservative reformer from within a tradition (that’s how Copernicus presented himself). But, Kepler took the earth’s motion literally. Indeed, in his view, the Copernican universe with its 3 parts (the Sun, representing God the Father; the starry sphere, God the Son; the intervening region, God the Holy Spirit) was a physical image of the Trinity, and he made it his life’s great work to prove the Trinity by proving the Copernican system.
As for Newton, magic, and miracles, it’s fair to say that all 3 went together pretty well. Indeed, without the “magic” of alchemy it’s quite possible we wouldn’t have had the notion of universal gravitation. Newton did absolutely nothing to take away miracles or magic. I’ll grant that he considered the Trinity a great heresy, but that was only b/c idolatrous human reason had flown too far from the plain words of the Bible.
There is nothing here anywhere to indicate that Kepler or Newton, not to mention Copernicus or Galileo, did anything to “deeply compromise” the Christian story.
In fairness to the Bishop, who is no expert on these things, it isn’t hard to find many others making grandiose (and unwarranted) statements about how modern science has made “the Christian story” untenable. I don’t blame the Bishop for passing on nonsense that he probably obtained from sources that he reasonably assumed to be reliable.
In fact, Christian theology helped to shape modern science, and the Christian story was not taken apart by the collective contributions of the four people mentioned here. They ought not be used in this way, as part of a modern myth about science and secularization.
Copernicus and Galileo showed us that we’re not the center of the universe. Kepler and Newton demonstrated that the universe could be explained in terms of mechanics. Darwin showed that we share common descent with the rest of life on this planet.
All of these, in one way or another, undermine the traditional Christian story and support a naturalistic explanation of the cosmos. We’re not special and the universe can be understood in materialistic terms.
It doesn’t matter what these gentleman believed or where they did their work. The result of their work has changed our worldview.
And that has continued.
Instead of demons, Germs and genetic defects are the cause of diseases, and chemical imbalances the cause of mental illness. Time, length and mass are relative and space and time are interrelated. Matter is mostly empty space, and the rules of nature at the very small are bizarre.
Emotions lie in the brain, not the organ that pumps blood, and fortitude is not in the intestines. Our thoughts are the results of brain activity, not some ephemeral soul. And animals possess abilities we had previously reserved for humans.
I found Mr. Spong’s conversation to be full of “I think” statements. I also found both Mr. Spong and Mr. Dowd to be very defensive of their opinions. In fact, they couldn’t seem to help themselves by letting out snickers when discussing others’ beliefs that didn’t match their own. What I didn’t hear about were the scientific methods used to come up with their findings that were defended so vehemently in this talk. Oh well, maybe the next conversation with get there.
Mr. Dowd and Mr. Spong seem to so desparately want the redemptive story of Christ to not be true. They pretty much said that in this ‘conversation’. I was waiting to hear from them their scientific analysis of why this piece of the story of Christianity is false. They didn’t do that though. You’re story that you are developing is warm and fuzzy and touchy feely. Hell, even men like to hold babies… Why not call your ‘story’ or ‘conversation’ something that leaves out the word christian? Still wondering why you just won’t leave the Christian message out of this… Thanks for enlightening me.
Karen, you listened pretty carefully. IMO, there are no “scientific” reasons for discarding the Christian gospel. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t identify with the term, “evolutionary Christianity.” If you get a chance to listen to my interview here, by all means let me know. I’ve studied “science and religion”, including evolution, for a long time–as an historian, not as a pastor or a theologian, but also as an ordinary Christian believer–and I can’t find any reasons to discard the gospel in the name of science. Indeed, I think that in order to have a genuine dialogue with science, rather than a monologue in which science calls all the shots, one needs to retain and enhance genuine Christian theism. Bishop Spong’s idea of going “beyond theism” in the name of science is, IMO, based on a faulty analysis of the situation. Indeed, it’s an example of what is known as the “warfare” view of Christianity and science, in which Christians are supposed to give up core beliefs in order to be able to “get up to speed” and be fully “scientific” and progressive. Historians have thoroughly debunked the validity of the “warfare” view, in terms of the history of Christianity and science; this means (among other things) that those “modern” theologians who think that science gives us warrant to engage in wholesale doctrinal reformulation are badly mistaken. They might have other reasons for wanting to do that, but–please–don’t bring science into this.
Thank you for your comment; I hope you see this one.
I don’t think a scientific discussion fit this talk. You may have better luck getting an answer if you rephrase your question. Science and religion are two different disciplines and I see more ‘warfare’ from the two of you than from Spong. Spong is very open to the love of Christ. He also has a healthy respect for science.
Your question, “where is the scientific analysis of the redemptive story”, seems to assume that scientific analysis is something that could be applied to that story. If so, you would need to start with the mechanism, how are we redeemed through Christ? Is it through prayer? Regular church attendance? Acts or Faith? Taking communion? I have not found the Bible to be clear on that.
If it is something that you know in your heart and have experienced, that is wonderful. I do not deny its truth. It is just not a scientific discussion. This does not mean that Christ’s message can’t be found in a discussion of how his message has come to us through natural means, fallible people, throughout history.
I would have to say that while I disagree with JSS on many points, the one that really stuck out for me was when he stated that he does not wish to associate with any religion that takes away his anxiety, because that is what makes him human. From all my studies in various realms of science, as well as studying human life as a participant, and studies of both the Bible and other religious traditions, the one thing that makes us less than human is anxiety, or more accurately, anxiety is the direct result of being made less than human. The true religion, and I do believe there is one, will remove my anxiety and allow me to be truly and fully human again. The account of the fall in Genesis I would agree is not historical as presented, but is accurate in that every human makes the same choice with the same dehumanizing result, if they live long enough that is (I vote for needing to live for at least 7 months to make the choice).