[Dialogue] spong 9/19

[KroegerD at aol.com]

September 19, 2007 
Common Dreams, Sydney,  Australia, 2007  

It was the best conference I have attended in my entire career. Entitled  
"Common Dreams" and attracting 1500 plus people to Sydney, it was the brainchild  
of a committee of about a dozen people representing various Christian groups 
in  Australia. Chaired by Rex Hunt, a Uniting Church of Australia pastor from  
Canberra, and Greg Jenks, an Anglican priest and academic from Brisbane, the  
organizing committee identified themselves as "Progressive Christians." They  
were committed to the Christian experience, but were alienated from the  
traditional religious structures by which Christianity is currently identified.  
They seemed to be deeply aware of the unwillingness of the present  
ecclesiastical structures to address these realities. That fact was to them a  sign of 
Christianity's impending death. Yet, their own commitment to the Christ  
experience was simply too great to allow the demise of Christianity to go on  without 
a struggle. They wanted to begin the campaign to take back the Christian  
Church from those who now to control it, and thus to offer a new possibility to  
the religiously alienated who no longer care to be identified with what the  
public face of Christianity has become.  
Rex Hunt called the conference to order, proclaiming this gathering to be  
"the most significant event happening in Australia today." One might have  
assumed that this rhetoric was self-serving hyperbole, except for the fact that  
the conference became a target for the threatened religious establishment, whose 
 visceral opposition quickly transformed it into a high profile media event.  
Leading the attack was the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen.  
In order to grasp the meaning of this response to the conference some  
knowledge of the nature of the Anglican Church in the Archdiocese of Sydney is  
required. That knowledge is not easy to communicate for "Sydney Anglicans" are  
like no other part of the Anglican Communion in the Western World. They call  
themselves "Evangelicals," but that is a perfumed word designed to cover with  
some kind of credibility an uninformed, anti-intellectual fundamentalism. The  
Archdiocese of Sydney is that part of my church that still reflects the  
anti-Catholic bias of elements of England's 17th century civil war. They  
discourage the presence of altars in their churches, preferring holy tables with  
visible legs lest anyone think that their communion services were in fact a form  
of the "sacrifice of the mass." They insist that all their clergy be trained in 
 Moore Theological College, an evangelical school of no recognized 
scholarship  and they mandate that those who teach at Moore must themselves be Moore  
graduates. The level of threat and the desire to repress any deviation from  
their Biblicism is abundantly obvious. Sydney Anglicans refuse to allow women to  
be ordained to the priesthood and their tirades against homosexual persons 
make  Pope Benedict XVI look almost moderate. They are deeply infected with the 
idea  that there is only one truth which, of course, they possess and only one 
pathway  to God which is identified with their own.  
The leaders of the Sydney Archdiocese were not pleased that this conference  
on Progressive Christianity was meeting in the heart of their See City. The  
Archbishop was even less pleased that I had been invited to give the keynote 
and  concluding lectures at this assembly. The idea that a new perspective on  
Christianity might come to the attention of the people of Sydney was more than  
they could tolerate and the fact that HarperCollins of Australia planned to  
launch the Australian publication of Jesus for the Non-Religious at  this 
gathering and that some Sydney Anglicans might actually read it was  anathema. 
Like all such closed minded religious leaders, who are in the mind  control 
business, they prepared their counter attack.  
In the issue of their diocesan newspaper "The Southern Cross," which came out 
 just prior to the conference they devoted two full pages to two stories  
attacking me and my latest book. The headline on their cover was telling. It  
read: "Spong is Wrong - So Why is the Radical Bishop so Popular?" The first  
article put my book into a context of all the other things that they believed  had 
recently buffeted their security: the Gospel of Judas (which I have  
dismissed as fraudulent), the discovery of Jesus' family tomb in Talpiot,  Jerusalem, 
complete with DNA samples (which I regard as too silly to merit  mention), and 
Jeffrey Archer's imaginative retelling of the Jesus story from the  viewpoint 
of Judas (which I read as one more of Jeffrey Archer's well-written,  but 
fictional short stories). If these things bothered them, then it seems fair  to 
say that Sydney Anglicans threaten easily. "Now," they proclaimed, "comes  
Jesus for the Non-Religious which is," they trumpeted, "a full scale  explanation 
of Spong's long-held view that all of the major details in Jesus'  story are 
fictional additions to what was an undoubtedly powerful life." Either  unfazed 
by truth or unaware of reality, they included in this list of my  "fictional 
additions" to the Jesus story, the resurrection, oblivious, I assume,  to the 
fact that I have written a major book on the reality of the resurrection,  
which is still very much in print. Since I do not identify resurrection with the  
physical resuscitation of Jesus' human body, as indeed is the conclusion of 
most  recognized biblical scholars, they were obviously seeking to raise their 
readers  fears with their portrayal of a bishop who actually denies the central 
tenet of  the Christian faith. Then they set about to explain why crowds come 
to listen to  me, even in Sydney. With not well hidden flattery, they 
suggested that the new  Jesus scholarship, which they characterized as "highly 
skeptical," is "more  sophisticated than what we offer in our sermons, bible 
studies, Christian books  and articles." People listen to me, they said, because my 
vision of Jesus and  the gospels "appears firmly rooted in his first century 
Jewish context, the  gospel writers are rightly credited with artistic 
brilliance, and relevant  literary and historical parallels are brought to illuminate 
the text. By  comparison some of our own thinking and talking about Jesus 
sounds like Sunday  school material in a grown up world." That was, I thought, an 
amazing admission.  Then the author of this article, Tom Dickson, concluded by 
recommending four  books whose evangelical authors are, of course, unknown 
outside evangelical  circles, which readers might read to arm themselves against 
being attracted to  my ideas.  
In the second article entitled "Spong's Popularity Does Not Make Him Right!"  
Mark Thompson quoted a number of evangelicals to prove that the evangelical  
position is correct, which is in itself a bit of strange logic. All of the  
issues I raise, he asserted were answered "years ago" by evangelicals. He  
referred to my "breathtaking self-assurance" and faulted me for not reading the  
evangelicals who have already demolished my ideas. He does not seem to realize  
that I do not waste time reading the kind of propaganda generated by a flat  
earth mentality. He concluded rather begrudgingly by saying: "Undoubtedly this  
book will be another best seller" since "provocation draws crowds." Thank 
you,  Mr. Thompson.  
This edition of "The Southern Cross" came out August 1. The Sydney Anglicans  
were not prepared for the fact that when the Common Dreams Conference opened, 
 over 1500 people would be attending in their own backyard. When that became  
obvious the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, went on the 
offensive,  issuing a statement banning me from preaching in any of the churches in 
his  diocese. It was an empty gesture representing little more than his 
frustration.  I had no intention of preaching in any Anglican church in Sydney. The 
people in  those churches do not represent the audience to which I direct my 
attention. It  is the people who are repelled from Christianity by the Sydney 
Anglicans who are  eager to listen to what I have to say and their name is 
legion.  
Australia is an increasingly secular nation. A major reason for that rising  
secular tide is that far too much of Christianity is identified with the  
mindless fundamentalism of groups like the Sydney Anglicans. There could have  
been no better advertisement for this Common Dreams Conference of religious  
progressives. With enemies like the Archbishop of Sydney and his evangelical  
acolytes across the country joining the chorus, the people of Australia began to  
express a profound interest in its message. Perhaps, they seemed to be saying, 
 there was something more to Christianity than that which they had long ago  
rejected. With major coverage in television, radio, magazines and newspapers 
the  ideas from this conference were spread to every corner of Australia.  
Among the deeply gratifying things was to watch the rise of new leadership.  
Australian stars at this conference, in addition to Rex Hunt and Greg Jenks,  
were an ethicist, Dr. Noel Preston, from Griffith University in Queensland, a  
sociologist John Falzon from a Catholic social service action group and a  
feminist theologian named Val Webb, a native Australian, though she lived most  
of her adult life in America as the wife of a highly respected doctor at  
Minnesota's Mayo Clinic. Her recent book on the need to re-image Jesus is  lifting 
her to prominence in the Christian world. These Australian leaders were  
augmented by two of the finest members of the Jesus Seminar in America, Dr.  
Brandon Scott and Dr. Joseph Bessler-Northcutt, both of whom are on the faculty  of 
the Philips Theological Seminary in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Other conference leaders 
 included Fred Plumer, who serves as the head of The Center for Progressive  
Christianity, and David Felton, one of the two creators of the progressive 
adult  study program entitled "Living the Questions."  
There is more to Christianity than its public face in either Australia or the 
 United States. I expect that the themes of the Common Dreams Conference will 
 echo across the world. Truth can finally not be suppressed.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Linda Hodges, via the Internet, writes:  
In your inspiring book Jesus for the Non-Religious, you make the  case that 
the healing miracles were not literal events but were instead meant to  convey 
that Jesus "opened people's eyes to see what life could be." I could not  
agree with you more. However, John Crossan says that healing was part of the  
ministry of Jesus (see page 332 of The Historical Jesus). I cannot  envision this 
healing ministry in a literal sense. So, from your perspective,  how did Jesus 
"open people's eyes?" What would a day in the life of Jesus of  Nazareth look 
like? You make a profound case for Jesus as the breaker of tribal  
boundaries, prejudices and stereotypes and religious boundaries. How did this  look in 
practice? If we were to take a video camera and follow Jesus around,  what 
would we see? How did a Jewish peasant people, who more than likely kept  
exclusionary boundaries themselves, experience boundary breaking as life-giving?  How 
can we understand the Jesus experience without resorting to the examples of  
metaphorical healing stories?  
Dear Linda,  
I have great respect for John Dominic Crossan, so you should enquire of him  
as to what he meant by his assertion that healing was a part of the ministry 
of  Christ. I would agree with that point of view, but I do not think that 
healing  is accomplished by divine intervention in answer to prayer or to the 
presumed  miraculous powers of the healer.  
The human being is so wonderfully crafted that when the mind and/or the  
emotions are out of sync, somatic distress is experienced in the body. A  healer's 
ability to restore peace, calm and wholeness can in fact effect cures.  There 
are obvious limits imposed by the laws of creation. Amputated limbs do no  
re-grow. Congenital distortions, like profound deafness or eyes that do not see  
at birth, are not reconstituted. Dead people are not brought back to life, 
and  heart attacks may be survived but scar-free heart tissue is never 
reestablished.   
The miracles of the New Testament do not appear to me to be about  
supernatural events at all. I discussed that in great detail in my last book,  Jesus for 
the Non-Religious. The claims that the disciples of Jesus  made for the God 
presence that they believed they had met in him were such that  human language 
had to be elevated to the "nth" power to convey what they  believed they had 
experienced. The holiness of Moses had to be topped by the  holiness of Jesus. 
The powers attributed to Elijah had to be exceeded by the  power of Jesus. The 
signs that would accompany the messiah inaugurating the  Kingdom of God had 
to be claimed for Jesus' life. That was the agenda of the  gospel writers. They 
sought to enable people to see God in Jesus, not to  describe what Jesus 
supposedly did. To literalize the miracles of Jesus is, I  believe, to distort the 
intentions of the gospel writers. Let me know if John  Dominic Crossan says 
something significantly different.  
John Shelby Spong 



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