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Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers In Exile
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Average Rating:  out of 250 Reviews
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Price: $14.95
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Sale: $4.04
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Manufacturer: HarperOne
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780060675363
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: John Shelby Spong
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Publisher: HarperOne
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Dewey Decimal Number: 230
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Publication Date: 1999-05-01
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Reading Level: 288
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Description: John Shelby Spong is the Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, and has enjoyed a career filled with controversy, much of it thanks to his many bestselling books, such as Born of a Woman, Living in Sin?, and Liberating the Gospels. He has tapped into an audience of people who are at once spiritually starved and curious, yet unwilling or unable to embrace Christianity. Spong refers to himself as a believer in exile. He believes the world into which Christianity was born was limited and provincial, particularly when viewed from the perspective of the progress in knowledge and technology made over the past two millennia. This makes any ideas or beliefs formulated in 1st-century Judea totally inadequate to our progressive minds and lives today. So Spong is in exile until Christianity is re-formed to discard all of the outdated and, according to Spong, false tenets of Christianity. He begins his book by exposing the Apostles Creed line by line, then methodically moves on through the heart of Christian belief, carefully exploring each aspect, demonstrating in each case the inadequacies of Christianity as detailed in the Bible and in the traditions of the Church. The epilogue includes Spong's own creed, recast to reflect the beliefs he considers relevant to Christianity at the end of the 20th century. Oddly enough, Spong's views do not seem particularly new. In fact, his views seem very much in keeping with the religious humanist variety of Unitarianism. What is remarkable is not the beliefs themselves, but that an Episcopal bishop would be the one to embrace and espouse them. Spong has become a trumpeter in the battle of beliefs, not just in the Episcopal communion, but in the realm of Christian faith in general in this country. His books are bestsellers and are in turn, presumably, read by those who, whether they agree or disagree, all acknowledge that in some way, Spong is involved in setting the agenda. This book, as the admitted "summation of his life's work" tells every reader what the complete agenda will be, for the next few years at least. --Patricia Klein
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Spong is wrong, still deserves much credit |
Date: 2008-12-23 |
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Details: Bishop Spong has written a very thought provoking book. As a college religion teacher, I have on balance a positive review of the book.
On the positive side, I think he is doing a great service for those modern people he calls `fellow exiles' from the Christian faith. He thinks they are the silent majority of Christian believers. If so, then the Christian faith is in serious trouble. He adopts a simplified version of science as his basic assumption about the truth content in the faith- a version he thinks this silent majority also holds. Spong first destroys almost all content, then he tries to rebuilt the faith by focusing on some characteristics that Jesus had exemplified that appeal to modern people, like personal freedom and the interdependence of all humans. He focuses on the concept of spirit as the manifestation of the real "God" that underlies everything. Spong is a faithful disciple of Paul Tillich here.
But on the negative side, there is much to criticize. He divides all people into three categories- hard-core theists (like this reviewer), exiles, and atheists. He dismisses atheists as either-or thinkers who cannot see any median ground about God. Without directly saying (and thus having to prove) theism is not the truth about reality, he drumbeats incessantly the paraphrased refrain `this theism could have come about this naturalistic way', hoping that the readers will make the illogical jump from `could have' to `did happen this way'. He even admits that Jesus erroneously thought God was distinct from him out there (theism). But if his ideal Jesus was wrong about this all-important idea, how can Spong be a follower of such a mistaken person. We really know only what the NT writers give us about Jesus. To pull out only some of the written characteristics, while leaving those you don't like, is to open yourself to the charge of being subject to the fickleness of the current cultural attitudes. This is not a book for theists or atheists.
In sum, a book should be evaluated for its benefit for its intended readers. If Spong persuades his fellow exiles to become more loving and other-serving, then he deserves credit.If you can't have both, then Orthopraxy is better than Orthodoxy. |
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Review Summary: Substituting one delusion for another |
Date: 2008-10-25 |
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Details: I'm happy that Bishop Spong was able to break free of the superstitious mind control and fantasy of Christianity. Good for him. But the reality is that his more sane interpretation of who Jesus was, and what this "God" concept is/isn't, is simply trading one belief system for another, albeit, a kinder gentler, more intellectualized and modern version. It's what millions of people are doing in the light of scientific evidence and the exposure of religion for the oppressive and ignorant thing that it was and is.
Buddha said some good stuff too, so did Socrates, Plato, lots of historical figures; but it hardly requires one to imbue them with some mystical mythical quality worthy of veneration in order to pick and chose which sayings, statements, perspectives or attributes attributed to them one wants to embrace and emulate.
I found his tortured justification for suggesting the original biblical authors were speaking in purely allegorical terms; and his giving a new definition to "prayer" and "worship" a bit of a stretch. To suggest the writers, Paul included, didn't intentionally imbue Jesus with Old Testament super naturalistic and pagan based qualities in order to gain first Jewish converts, and when that failed, gentile converts, is either myopic, gross denial, or intentional deception to promote his non-supernatural Jesus as having been rooted in the earliest biblical authors' perspective.
Here's a thought for Bishop Spong and his fellow "exiles". Stop straddling the fence. Drop your new and improved Jesus as man, the whole "spirit" /"Grounded Being" /God is within us gibberish. It's unnecessary as a basis for leading a good and ethical life. Just start living simply as a moral and ethical atheist like a genuine thinking person and lose the esoteric comfort of your modernist revision to Christianity.
Don't worry about Christianity's death. The scientific age is only a few hundred years old. Christianity / theism will eventually die out as the "god of the gaps" is shrunken to a grain of its former prescientific existence by science and man's expanding intellect. The few remaining "believers" will eventually be moved to the fringe, dismissed just as wiccans, scientologists, and Zeus worshipping enthusiasts are today.
Theism will be replaced by reason and logic and an amalgamation of the best of man's moral teachings and values, irrespective of from whence they came, because it is civilization's best interest to do so. Reinventing Christianity to make it more palatable to modern man is tantamount to mental masturbation and simply slows down the inevitable result.
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Review Summary: Courageous critique of theism |
Date: 2008-03-28 |
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Details: Bishop Spong has undertaken an almost impossible task: he seeks to remain Christian while systematically dismantling the entire foundation of Christianity. He finds historical precedence for this enormous conceptual shift in the Exile of the Jews to Babylon. The foundations of Jewish faith were destroyed by the Exile and the Jews had to give up the core of their beliefs or else lose their faith entirely. And so Bishop Spong calls himself, and others who no longer hold to the Christian Creed, "Believers in Exile".
The Christian Creed is examined phrase by phrase and nearly each one is demolished by our modern scientific knowledge, and by simple logic. Is God "the Father"? Is God "Almighty"? This man who has spent his adult life in service to the Episcopal Church rejects these ideas as sexist, paternal, and observably wrong. The age-old Problem of Evil refutes the assertion that God is Almighty. I cannot possibly do justice to Spong's careful and powerful arguments, so I recommend to all those interested to simply read what he has to say. It's quite well written and approachable.
This book is not written for sincere believers, comfortable in their faith. Instead it is written for every thoughtful person who is having trouble reconciling the detailed knowledge mankind now has of the natural world with Christian faith as practiced in the modern world. Bishop Spong has found a Christianity that is beyond theism, as strange as that may sound. Yet his beautifully organized and detailed arguments make this choice quite reasonable, at least as reasonable as any other belief based on faith. |
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Review Summary: Can Christianity make sense and yet retain its power? |
Date: 2008-02-18 |
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Details: Having jettisoned the need for a bodily resurrection of Jesus in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? : A Bishop's Search for the Origins of Christianity, Spong is now ready to jettison the theistic conception of God. Why the Christianity he want to leave behind must die he is not clear about: he may underestimate the desperation of those whose reactionary beliefs mask hysteria. What Christianity will change into he seems to be still struggling with ... and it is not up to him alone, of course, to determine what the new Christianity will be, as he is aware. It is to "believers in exile", those who have similarly rejected supernaturalism, that he turns to enlist the help of.
As earlier in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? : A Bishop's Search for the Origins of Christianity and later in A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born, Spong continues to hold tightly to his image of Jesus. Although he appeals to Paul, his image of Christ also derives closely from his reading of the Gospels, such that he does not in this book dive deeply into Paul's theology. Indeed, in Resurrection: Myth or Reality? : A Bishop's Search for the Origins of Christianity most of his discussion related to Paul's letters is confined to one ten page chapter and in this book the two chapters with "Christ" in their titles mostly cover Christ as implied by the Jesus found in the Gospels. Although Spong points out that Paul "wrote that he was not concerned to know Christ from a human point of view (2 Cor 5:16)", it seems quite important to Spong to speculate, using the Gospels and his assumptions about the impact Jesus had on those who knew him, just who that personal Jesus was.
So anchored in the Jesus he believes he has met, Spong is ready to let go of the bodily resurrection and now the theistic conception of God and of the supernatural heaven and hell, requiring a new understanding of prayer, the basis of ethics and what eternal life might mean.
Spong is searching and inviting you to join his search so that what seems sacred can remain alive. He seems to be struggling but it seems a worthwhile struggle and one that his long role within the church, his long love of Christianity and his integrity equips him well to be a guide for.
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Review Summary: Must Read! |
Date: 2008-01-07 |
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Details: Whether or not you agree with Spong's views on religion, every Christian should at least read this book for an enlightening perspective on their faith. It's very well written and easy to read. |
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