[Dialogue] 9/08/11, Spong: The Gladstone Library - A Final Visit
Elliestock at aol.com
Elliestock at aol.com
Thu Sep 8 12:13:45 EDT 2011
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The Gladstone Library - A Final Visit
In the United Kingdom about ten miles from the ancient Roman city of
Chester, inside the northern edge of a country called Wales, is located an
institution that calls itself “The Gladstone Library.” It also serves as a
conference center, run by a board of trustees and loosely related to the
Anglican Church. This library was originally built to house the books of
former Prime Minister William Gladstone, who lived across the street in the
village of Hawarden and who was a prolific reader and even a well-versed
theologian. Gladstone was also a very successful politician who shared the
prime minister’s office in regular rotation over a number of years in what
seemed like a game of musical chairs with one Benjamin Disraeli. Upon Mr.
Gladstone’s death, he donated this library with all its books to the world of
scholarship. People today come to the library in a constant stream to do
research, to spend sabbatical time, to engage in a study break or even to
write or complete a book. In recent years, other well known English
figures have donated their professional books and personal papers to this
Gladstone Library, thus enhancing its status as a place of serious study. Among
them are John A. T. Robinson, the most challenging Anglican scholar in the
last half of the 20th century, whose little book, “Honest to God“ turned
the Christian world upside down when it was published in 1963. It was
later translated into almost every language of the world, selling more copies
than any main stream Christian publication in the 20th century. This book
helped Christianity escape its ecclesiastical ghetto and was discussed in
pubs, around bridge tables, on golf courses across the United Kingdom and
even by London cabbies. John Robinson had opened the theological debate to
the world. Discouragingly enough, the hierarchical response of the Church
of England was to block John Robinson’s career so that he remained a
minor figure in the church while being a major figure in the world the church
was created to serve. John died in 1983 and was buried in an obscure
church yard in the village of Arncliffe in West Yorkshire. Today, weeds grow
over his grave. He was an enormous figure and for me was both my mentor and
my friend. Now his extensive library and personal papers are housed in
the Gladstone Library. So are the books and papers of retired Cambridge
theologian Don Cupitt, probably Anglicanism’s most radical 20th century
thinker, and Anglican biographer Eric James. So the Gladstone Library is a place
of growing theological significance and it is always an attractive place
to which budding scholars are drawn. Future groundbreaking books will
surely be born out of this library.
The Gladstone Library is also a residential conference center. Over the
past twelve years I have been the conference leader for seven of those
conferences. All but one have been oversubscribed and the one that was not was
90% filled and came in the wake of the market crash in 2008. To these
conferences have come lay and clergy leaders: Catholic, Anglican, and
Protestant. At these conferences I have either worked out of the material that
would appear in a subsequent book or have introduced a book shortly after
its publication. In this Center over the years deep friendships have also
developed. Conference members knowing of my current writing interest would
send me books appropriate to the content of the subject on which I was
working. If one consults the prefaces to recent books like Jesus for the
Non-Religious and Eternal Life: A New Vision one will see statements of my
indebtedness to this center, formerly known as St. Deiniol’s Conference
Center and Library, to its warden, the Rev. Peter Francis, and to the people I
have engaged there.
Christine and I planned this past summer what we expect to be our final
European lecture tour to culminate in a conference at the Gladstone Library.
Two events were scheduled for our time at this Library. One was to open
on Monday night, go three full days and culminate on Friday morning. This
format would involve seven lectures, all on my current study of the Fourth
Gospel. Each lecture would be supplemented by a discussion period with
questions which, when put together with the lecture, would form a two-hour
block of time. So this conference involved fourteen hours of material and
interaction. I looked forward to it as a chance to test my Johannine study
publicly for the first time in a concentrated form. A second conference
entitled “Christpower” was also scheduled to begin on Friday evening
following the first conference, which concluded that morning and to end with a
formal tea and a public lecture on Saturday afternoon at 4 p.m. This was
to be followed by a banquet on Saturday evening specifically designed to
thank me for my years of teaching in this place. The trustees of the
library had already elected me a “life fellow” of the Gladstone Library several
years ago. To my surprise I discovered that this latter conference this
year was “by invitation only” with invitations going to people who had been
particularly close to both Christine and me over the years. Even members
of our family came to be with us: a daughter and son-in-law from Richmond,
Virginia; a daughter from Burundi in Africa, a niece from Ireland. Also
present was Anthea Kaan, widow of Fred Kaan, who was in my opinion the best
Christian hymn writer in the 20th century and both of them have been very
close friends of ours. Three unusual and special priests came from the
Church of England, who have shared with me the various ecclesiastical
battles of the past. They were Hugh Dawes, the very gifted first head of the
Progressive Christian Network of Great Britain; Adrian Alker, one of the most
effective parish priests I have ever watched who created an incredible
congregation in Sheffield, and Tony Crowe, one of the heroes in the battle
to ordain women in the Church of England. Lay leaders in the Progressive
Christian Network were also present. Sue O’Hare, a Methodist minister
from Barry in South Wales was present. She had attended previous conferences
and always with an entourage from her congregation. There were also
people present who had been major benefactors of the Library like Arthur
Burgess and Anthony Hannay.
The culminating dinner on that Saturday following the public lecture was
one I shall long remember. The highlight of the evening, next to my
daughter Ellen’s tribute to her father that I shall never forget, was an
announcement made by the Warden of the establishment of an annual event to be held
at the Gladstone Library beginning in 2013 to be known as the John Shelby
Spong/John A. T. Robinson Conference to explore “Frontier or Boundary
Theology.” This event will be designed to foster a continuing dialogue between
Christianity and contemporary knowledge, including the insights of modern
science. This was the Gladstone Library’s way of confirming the emphasis
that I have brought to this place over the years and at the same time it
will link me with the man who was my mentor and whose work I have sought to
carry forward as I stated that it was my intention to do when I wrote the
preface to my book A New Christianity for a New World. With that annual
conference in the UK and the newly-established Spong lectureship at St. Peter’
s Church in Morristown, New Jersey, which was inaugurated in June of this
year with Karen Armstrong as the first lecturer and with 528 people in
attendance, the emphasis I have sought to provide for the Christian Church
will surely be continued.
As I lived through these moving events, they seemed to have a sense of
finality about them. The fact that I also celebrated my 80th birthday in
London on this lecture tour enhanced this sense that I was participating in “
final things.” For the last 12 years, Christine and I have spent about 70%
of our lives away from home, lecturing and teaching in various churches,
conference centers and universities. I have now spoken in some venue at
more than 400 universities in the United States, Canada and around the world.
It has been a wonderful life and I have enjoyed this third career more
than any other phase of my life. I want to make sure, however, that I cease
this activity before people want me to cease it. I want to stop while
invitations are still coming in, not because they have dried up. We are now
scheduled well into the late fall of 2012. We have decided that we will
therefore cut back our travel schedule dramatically on December 31, 2012. I
will then devote my energies to more local concerns, including deeper
involvement in our local parish church, St. Peter’s in Morristown, which both
Christine and I enjoy very much. We even miss it when we are away.
My writing activities will continue for a few years longer. I have signed
a contract to produce this weekly column through December 31, 2013 and
annually after that if health permits. I am working on a book on the gospel
of John that is due at Harper/Collins by the end of 2014. If life and
vitality are granted to me I hope to complete that final book on schedule. If
I do it will be my seventh “last book” and I will be 84 when it comes
out. All of this makes me feel that the time has come to plan the next phase
of my life. I want to be the one who sprints to the finish line rather
than one who limps as I have seen so many people do. Being at the Gladstone
Library, celebrating our common life and our longtime friendships made me
know how very fortunate I am to have lived this long with creativity as yet
undiminished.
So it will be full speed ahead for my public lecturing career until the
end of 2012. It will be full speed ahead with the writing of this column
through at least December of 2013 and perhaps longer after that. It will be
full speed ahead in the completion of my book on the Fourth Gospel by the
end of 2014 and then, as long as I am able, it will be a deep investment in
our local community and our local church from then on.
I hope you will celebrate these plans with me as you have celebrated this
incredible journey into life and faith with me for many years.
~John Shelby Spong
Read the essay online _here_
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Question & Answer
Jonnie Wilson from the University Christian Church in San Diego,
California, writes:
Question:
We appreciate that you don’t want to throw out the Bible, but rather to “
rescue it” and focus on its message of love. Do you think there will ever
be a day when the Bible will include not only the Old Testament and the
New Testament, but also the “Newest Testament” that might reflect modern
Christian thought?
Answer:
Dear Jonnie,
Given what I know about church decision making processes, I think the
answer to your question is a simple “no.” I do not see how an ecclesiastical
body could be constituted to make this happen in any official way given
the state of institutional Christianity today. Some individuals might be
able to accomplish this task for themselves, but I do not believe
institutional forms of Christianity ever will.
The intention of your question, however, can be met in other ways and I
think it not only will, but it must. The Bible, as presently constituted,
makes the assumption that God no longer speaks through people in this world
and has not done so since II Peter, the last written book that was added to
the Canon of Scripture about 135 CE.
Included in our sacred text at this moment are no voices of women, no
voices of people of color and no voices from the last 2000 years of Christian
history. Surely a book suffering from those limitations cannot be called
in any literal sense “The Word of God” unless you assume that the word of
the Lord can only be found in males (who are generally thought of as white
although they are actually middle eastern), and that they all lived
between 1000 BCE and 135 CE! Surely God is not so limited, nor has God been on
a sabbatical for the last 2000 years!
So why can we not supplement our scriptures with other voices? We can
call these readings in church: “The Contemporary Lesson” or something
similar. Among the things I would like to be considered for inclusion in such a
practice are:
The letter from a Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Some of the writings from recognized female religious leaders through the
ages like Hildegard of Bingen in the early 12th century and Julian of
Norwich in the late 14th century. More contemporary female voices might
include Mary Seton from the 17th century and Dorothy Day from the 20th century.
Contemporary female leaders of great and even daring insight might
include Karen Armstrong and Elaine Pagels.
Some of the voices of the Third World like Archbishop Desmond Tutu,
Archbishop Oscar Romero and Leonardo Boff would bring to “scripture” a very
different accent.
Frontier voices that moved Christianity in new directions might include
such shaping theologians as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinas, Meister
Eckhart, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Erasmus, Teilhard de Chardin, John A. T.
Robinson, Edward Schillebeeckx, Hans Kung, Paul Tillich and John Elbridge
Hines.
I am sure this list could be expanded endlessly and everyone would
probably come up with different names. Your letter might free the imaginations
of my readers to form the list of those whose work has been “the word of God
“ to them, for that is what I have done and that is how scripture is
always determined.
We could then keep the Bible as it is as our historic text, but add to its
message in a supplementary way from the richness of our religious
history.
I would also like to encourage churches to stop ending the Sunday service
reading of scripture with some version of the liturgical phrase “This is
the Word of the Lord.” There are some passages in the Bible that no one
should ever attribute to God (see I Samuel 15:1-2, for example), but we can
still hear God speaking through the Bible and surely a living God would also
speak through other voices in history. So perhaps we should end the
reading of scripture as the Anglican prayer book of New Zealand suggests: “
Hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”
Thank you for your question.
~John Shelby Spong
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