Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile

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Summary: Laugh Out Loud
Review: Spong has written many provocative books in which he intelligently uses his writing skills to prove his thesis and refute orthodox conservative views. If you want your beliefs challenged and proven wrong based on hard facts and evidence, along with a handful of provocative reading, then this book is for you.
The title says it all, why must Christianity must Change or Die. Christianity is always changing, just so it can survive. Anyone who looks at any denomination can see this trend. A great book, a great read. Worth your every penny.

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Summary: God's word doesn't change
Review: Gee, what a surprise. Spong has really gone off the deep end with this title. He is trying to change the word of God. Who does Spong think he is? God? What an idiot.

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Summary: Wow!! The reason liberal Protestantism has failed.
Review: It is no wonder that the Episcopal Church is one of the fastest shrinking denominations in America. Along with the other mainline/progressive/liberal Protestant denominations (United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church USA, United Church of Christ, etc.), the Episcopal Church has had negative growth over the last few decades, while conservative/evangelical Protestant denominations (Assemblies of God, Southern Baptist Convention, Presbyterian Church in America, etc.) have grown rapidly and continue to do so. As always, I back-up what I say...visit the Glenmary Research Center's page for the most comprehensive study on religious growth/decline in America: http://www.glenmary.org/grc/RCMS_2000/rankings.htm

I say all this because it is so clear that liberal Protestantism, which Bishop Sponge professes, has failed horribly. The question should be "Why liberal Protestants have changed (or 'progressed') and died?" Their seminaries aren't even doing well, even with all the money they have. Harvard Divinity School, Yale Divinity School, Union Theological Seminary, and all the other bastions of liberal theology have experienced great decline in applicants/admissions. In the '90's, you could get into Harvard Divinity School with a "C" average...that's pitiful. Meanwhile, Fuller Seminary and Gordon-Conwell have experienced tremendous growth.

As far as Bishop Sponge's material, nothing is new. It's all "Jesus Seminar" type stuff. In order to discover the beauty of orthodox Christianity, I recommend Peter Kreeft, J.P. Moreland, William Lane Craig, and, of course, the dynamic duo of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. That covers both Protestants and Catholics. God bless you on your journey.

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Summary: Boy, Did This Guy Get a Wrong Number!
Review: Christianity, the real kind, not the atheism and moral relativism pushed by the author of this book, is growing by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, no legitimate Christian wants to go to "churches" like those presided over by left-wing social activists posing as clergymen, e. g., Bishop Spong. Pretty soon, if not already, Spong's whole congregation will consist of nothing but Sodomites and Marxists.

Christianity doesn't need to change, but Christians need to give a wide berth to the "liberation" advocated by Spong and his kind. Otherwise, they might find themselves "liberated" like the Christians in China and Cuba.

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Summary: UPDATES GOD BUT PRESERVES THE CHURCH -WHY?
Review: John Shelby Spong wrote this book for people who could no longer accept the standard Christian theology. That certainly includes me, so I read his book with great interest. In many ways he mirrors my own thinking, but his long ecclesiastical background as an Episcopal Bishop gives us different vantage points.

Spong says the old concept of a theistic God is no longer useful in a modern world. God is not a person who lives in the sky and tinkers with our lives and sits in judgment. The steady march of knowledge about the vastness of the universe and our puny place in it has made that God obsolete. Spong is at his best when he is tracing the biblical roots of this God and showing how they arose, not out of any divine revelation, but were the natural product of the tribal societies with whom they originated.

I loved his chapter on "Jesus as Rescuer" in which he demolishes the doctrine that "Jesus died for our sins." He goes on to argue against the Virgin Birth and Immaculate Conception, showing how, to people of the time, a sinless Jesus needed sinless progenitors. I was amused at his discourse on the Ten Commandments, as he actually pronounces some of them "immoral." That's pretty heavy stuff. I was brought up Catholic, and I don't think the Catholic Church will be following Bishop Spong into rejection of these long-standing Christian ideas. I don't know much about Episcopalians (a church started by a king who wanted to divorce -- make that murder -- his wife!) but it seems to me these doctrines are the lever used to control people and perpetuate the church. The church will never let them go.

That brings me to my differences with Spong. He continually uses the word "worship;" he uses the word to mean the activity that goes on inside churches. It seems to me he has hung onto this word because there is no meaningful word for the hodgepodge of activities that occur inside church buildings. As to the word itself, surely a God who is in all of us and who encompasses the vast universe has no need to be worshiped. The whole idea of worshiping God is also obsolete, along with the other concepts Spong so deftly kills off.

I think he also misses the mark in his discussion of prayer. He asks why someone who is prayed for should recover from their illness while someone who is not prayed for does not recover. What kind of a God would be so influenced? What is wrong with this analysis, in my opinion, is the inclusion of God, who does not have to be involved in what we call prayer at all. Just as we do not need to worship God, neither do we need to petition him/her. Prayer, I believe, is really an aspect of non-local consciousness. It is a type of psychic phenomena if you will, a way one mind or spirit reaches out to another. The question is not who we pray TO but who we pray FOR. We touch the other person or event with our spirit or inner energy. Prayer can be studied scientifically (to some extent) and studies have been done that seem to indicate prayer works.

In the same way, Spong does not offer us much in his discussion of life after death. While I like a lot of what he said about the value of what we do in this life, the real question is what happens when we die. Christian doctrine on this has emphasized the divine judgment which separates the good from the bad, relegating us to heaven or hell. Spong traces the theological roots back to the theistic God who is like a good parent, and the way these concepts of the next life were used by the church to control behavior in this life.

But is the concept of life after death totally bound up with reward and punishment? I think not. Today we have much evidence from Near Death Experience (NDE) and Out of Body Experience (OBE) and the testimony of mystics like Robert Monroe. There is a mini boom in contacting the dead (consider the popularity of John Edward's "Crossing Over") and millions of people accept these sources as proof that our spirits go on after we "cross over." Again, where is God? He/she does not have to be in this equation either. The evidence seems to indicate that we take our emotional baggage with us to the other side, and we continue to grow spiritually in this new realm.

I also need to mention his attitude toward Jesus. Of course as a priest and bishop, Spong has had Jesus contiually in his life, and to say Jesus is just an interesting character in some ancient and unverified stories would be too painful. But Spong is willing to relegate many items in the Bible to mythical status, so why does he accept some (not all) of what is said about Jesus? Even interpreting the unacceptable (the birth in a stable, attended by three wise men, for instance) in new ways is hedging on whether anything written about Jesus is true. I agree that Jesus as described in the New Testament has much to offer. But how can we know what really happened thousands of years ago when the only testimony was written years later and has the bias of its time? Spong will not eliminate Jesus from his belief system, but many others who haven't spent decades in liturgical orthodoxy will.

So do all these transformations of the old Christian ideas mean there is no God? Not at all. I agree generally with Spong in his conclusions, but he is tied to his ecclesiastical past in a way that I am not. While I think churches have contributed to society by bringing people together and creating social bonds, and often doing good works, I cannot see how they can go on when the basic reason for their existence -- their theology, including Jesus -- can no longer be believed. Spong concludes his book by saying "I expect to enter even more deeply into the reality of the God in whom I have lived and moved and had my being." Amen to that, but it does not require a church.

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Summary: Rational christianity
Review: I loved this book...it was an absolute comfort to read. I was reading what I have *felt* for so long. Bishop Spong articulately presents God, not as a "Daddy in the Sky", but as Spirit that swells throughout us. Jesus is no longer fancifully perceived as the literal son of God, but as a historical holy man. Mary is a women, who conceived naturally. No mythology, no storytelling, no childish Santa Claus beliefs. What a treat! In particular, I was helped by his chapter on prayer. Once you have stepped away from the idea of a theist deity, your prayer life can be something you need to revisit and rework. I highly recommend this book for anyone who is ready to consider Christianity in a realistic, intelligent manner.

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Summary: This book will send you into exile
Review: Want to know why Christianity (the biblical kind) is losing such influence in our society, culture, and churches? Read this book. Bishop Spong has serious issues with orthodox, conservative, evangelical Christianity that he believes that those believers who are faithful to Scripture (the orthodox, conservative, evangelical types) need to get back on his understanding of the "straight and narrow" path. To Spong biblical Christianity is too hateful, sexist, individualistic, supernatural, and rightist. Well, Spong's book is the outcome of the liberalism that has infected Christianity since the beginning of the 20th century. In fact, he is the logical product of those anti-Machen scholars during the early part of the 20th century. You gotta give this much to Spong though: at least he is quite honest about his liberal and atheistic perspective on things. There are many so-called Christian scholars out there who pretend to be Christian but teach things that are NOT Christian (e.g., Shirley Guthrie, John Hick, Sallie McFague, etc.). Spong (and those who support him) should realize that the Gospel is not about socio-political revolts against governments (Romans 13:1-7), is not about fuzzying the line between manhood and womanhood (1 Cor 11:3-16), is not about allowing people to commit all sorts of heinous sins (Romans 3:8), and is certainly not about trying to make people feel good by saying that truth is relative or subjective (Galatians 1:8-9). Jesus Christ said that the Gospel will divide humankind (Matthew 10:34-36), not make people join hands because truth is irrelevant. This book should be read--for the sake of showing why Christianity is going downhill these days. This book will not solidify your Christian walk, but push you into the desert where Jesus Christ becomes meaningless.

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Summary: Ignorant of this Generation
Review: In his book, Spong attempts to promote a Christianity that he believes is suitable for people in the postmodern era. Embarrassingly, Spong either shows an ignorance or lacks understanding of postmodernism. He presents a "Christianity" (as he calls it) that is for the mind that accepts the fundamentalist scientific views of people like Darwin and Sagan. The problem lies in the fact that postmodernism rejects all truth systems including the modernisitic view which embraces science as the ultimate foundation of truth. The "exiles" he speaks of are people who do embrace the scientific modernist view and correctly believe that the "Christianity" that even Spong preaches has no place in it. Yet even the numbers of these "exiles" are dwindling, and Spong chooses to incorrectly address the new generation that is coming up.
In the end result, what Spong presents is an apolgetic for the same old tired liberal Christianity of the 20th century. As we look at plummeting attendance for the churches that embrace this belief system, we do see the dying of his form of "Christianity". This may be the need Spong sees in writing this book.
Disapointingly, he offers this generation nothing, displaying instead a fundamental error in the way we view the world (most times with an air of arrogance). He is nothing but a dinosaur preaching to a slowly dying herd.

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Summary: A book for today's thinking Christian
Review: Why Christianity Must Change or Die is a work of devout love. The author's credentials are impeccable--previously Bishop in the Episcopal Church USA, as of the year 2000 professor at Harvard. These two directions produce both insightful observations and the ability to present them well to a lay audience. Sometimes his prose can be a bit crude--mis-spellings and questionable grammar pop up from time to time--and his end-notes are often more nuisance than informational. And occasionally when one wants more information than he presents, he says simply "I've covered this in another book."

But Spong's vision is both broad and deep. He is a Christian who wonders how Christianity may continue to survive. He recognizes that this faith has many times been pronounced dead, and shows how the organized religion has changed to reconstitute itself at each of those turning-points. He traces the history of the concept of the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and the Ascension; and he shows how these seem each to be historical accretions. He does not try to convert the converted. He speaks to "Christians in exile," those people who have difficulty accepting some of the basic tenets of today's Christianity in light of what they learned in high school. His point of view is that a faith as powerful as Christianity can't duck and run before either fundamentalism or modern science.

The questions Spong raises are those of any thinking Christian living in this century.

Though he touches on possible new directions, Spong doesn't claim to have the answer to the question of how Christianity must change; he simply points out the validity of the questions raised by biblical criticism, philosophy, and science. What does the Big Bang say about creation as it appears in Genesis? Why do Resurrection stories grow more detailed the longer after Jesus' death they were written? The answers are important but do not destroy the faith Spong so greatly reveres.

As is often said, Spong's greatest critics are people who have never read him. He can be faulted in presentation of some details, but not in vision or sincerity. Few people could put down this book in mid-chapter because the ideas are so well presented and so heart-felt.

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Summary: How far off can you get?
Review: POint number 1...
He says God can not be theistic because he is reffered to as a rock. This is completly destroying the idea of what the text is saying. He simply fit it to his own understanding without truly reading context. Rock is supposed to mean foundation. God is our Foundation!! This is not saying in any sort of way that he is nontheistic.

Point 2.
This is a new reliogion completly!!!