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Tasmanian Anglican

October 2003

 

 

 

 


A New Christianity for a New World by John Shelby Spong

 

A New Christianity for a New World

reviewed by Will Briggs

 

 

Should I, as they say, 'thank God for Spong' or is he 'Satan's best lieutenant?'

Having read him I can now understand why Spong has gained such a following. He touches upon issues that are relevant yet not frequently talked about.

Who can't sympathise when he talks about the 'spiritually thirsty' who can 'no longer drink from the traditional wells of the past' or a Christianity which 'increasingly displays signs of rigor mortis'?

But Spong approaches such issues by attempting to do away with the very idea of God that we associate with traditional Christianity - the belief in God as a divine personal being; one who forms creation, sustains creation, and miraculously and graciously restores creation through Jesus Christ. For Spong such 'God-talk' is 'dying, or …perhaps already dead,' and produces beliefs that are 'non-sensible at best and non-believable at worst.' For Spong, the Christian God is simply a 'human creation.'

And so it is easy to see why Spong is such a controversial figure and why many demand that he stop calling himself a Christian. His message does undermine essential Christian beliefs such as creation, the incarnation, the resurrection, and also traditional Christian views on abortion, homosexuality, and the right to have children.

But Spong is not just trying to knock things down.

He also wants to construct a new 'Christianity' - a 'new quest for God' which carries his refrain: 'I neither need nor desire that parental protective God any longer.' After denying the plain message of the Bible (which he calls a 'God-explanation') he then proceeds to give his own explanation of what he calls an underlying 'God-experience.'

In this new explanation, God is an intangible abstraction, the ungraspable source of life, love, and being. Jesus is a 'God-presence' who personalises this impersonal Source in a way we all can if we open ourselves to our 'divine potential.' Evil is the twin of goodness and we are called to embrace wholeness instead of goodness, our darkness along with our light. By 'meditation and contemplation' we can discover 'what it means to be fully human' and find in ourselves the 'second coming of Christ.'

For me Spong's explanation is hollow.

And it is obvious to me that he is not a Christian believer. His protests that he is a Christian just sound like a man who believes that the sky is pink and proclaims, 'The sky is blue!' while attempting to 'reform' the dictionary so that 'blue' actually means 'pink.'

Spong's explanation is also flawed. And I have to agree with the many intelligent people who have pointed out the problems. He portrays biblical Christianity as something it isn't; he distorts it so that it is easier to attack. He unashamedly imposes his own beliefs into the Bible. And there are gaps in his explanation (e.g. he asks us to embrace our evil but doesn't satisfactorily show how this changes our view on the crucial issue of justice). I know Spong 'sounds convincing' to many, but having now read him his unsoundness is clear to me.

Furthermore Spong's explanation fails, as far as I can see, to answer his own concerns, mainly because he is unbelievable in a postmodern world. Despite his attempts, his world-view is just another human power-play, an imposition of beliefs. His demand for enforced ethics and imposed religious tolerance, and his idolising of Western science demonstrates this. In my mind, his is a 'gospel' accessible to only the strong, proud and intelligent in a world that knows its own weakness and need for freedom.

Ultimately, it is Spong's question of relevance that the church needs to face.

I agree with Spong to the extent that I will borrow his words to say that the church must change or die. It must - our Victorian-era style of ceremony, our non-descript practice of morality, our shallow spirituality, and our misuse of God's Word, among other things - must be dealt with. We must get closer in practice to our gospel heart of freedom in Jesus Christ from sin and all that keeps us estranged from God our maker. In rejecting this heart Spong has nothing to offer the problems of the world but a repackaging of those self-same problems. His is no new Christianity for a new world; it is a non-Christianity for a non-existent world.