Why Christianity Must Change or Die:
A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile
By John Shelby Spong
Harper San Francisco, 258 pages, $22
Can a Bishop Be Wrong?:
Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong
Edited by Peter C. Moore
Morehouse Publishing, 188 pages, $17.95
Say what you will about Episcopal Bishop John Spong of Newark, N.J., but apparently it takes 10 men to gang up on him.
“Can a Bishop Be Wrong?” is a conservative effort to show that Spong’s liberal opinions are not the majority view among modern Christians. But the opposition book also helps certify him as a major figure in popular religious literature — if not a champion of careful theological thought.
“Why Christianity Must Change or Die” recaps themes Spong has developed in 13 other books since 1972, when he wrote “Honest Prayer.” Basically, Spong says modern, rational people feel exiled from historic Christianity, with its “idolatrous literalization” of the Bible. Galileo, Darwin, Freud and Einstein have put the lie to the Earth-centered universe, with a sky-dwelling deity who created humans by direct fiat.
“The God of theism came into being as a human creation,” Spong writes. “As such this God, too, was mortal and is now dying.”
What does Spong replace theism with? A generalized “Ground of Being,” a pervasive presence in himself and others, which impels him to greater love, spiritual development and acceptance of others. Even “daring to be all that one can be,” in a strange echo of an Army advertising slogan. Prayer amounts to being “deeply involved in life.” Christian ethics means “the right to explore selfhood . . . to live, to love, and to be simply for the sake of living, loving, and being.”
Where have we heard this before? Indeed, where have we not heard it? Much of this book is recycled hippie culture, imitation Eastern philosophy, libertarian politics, a rubber stamp on virtually every New Age notion of human divinity.
How does Spong prove his own kind of deity exists? He raises the question himself but answers only with more vagaries: “Perhaps it is only an illusion, but illusion or real, we know its presence. It is like a mystical center of life that can neither be described nor denied.” Spong clearly doesn’t like to be held to the rules of proof he makes for others.
The writers in “Can a Bishop Be Wrong?” are worthy opponents for Spong: theologians, rectors, ethicists, a former missionary. The 10 lack Spong’s flair for popular writing, but they are more specific with their arguments.
Retired Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison accuses Spong of “neophilia,” accepting currently fashionable ideas and rejecting old ones. Several writers say Spong gets it wrong in stressing inner experiences over events. The writers also take issue with Spong for reshaping church beliefs about marriage, divorce and other moral issues, and one chides Spong for recasting teachings in order to attract younger people.
