[Vision2020] Bishop Spong on Hitchens

[Ralph Nielsen]

[June 5] Larry Hester from Denver writes:
 >
 > You recently suggested that the split in Christianity today is
 > between those who assert yesterday's religious explanations and
 > those who find no meaning in yesterday's religious explanations and
 > give up on religion altogether. If that is so, is Christopher
 > Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great, a message from the religiously
 > disillusioned? If so how do those religious people who defend the
 > past deal with that book?


 > Dear Larry,
 >
 > If I understand your question correctly, let me begin with three
 > declarative statements:
 >
 > 1. Religion must always be questioned
 > 2. Theism can be abandoned without abandoning God
 > 3. Christopher Hitchens' book is a real asset to the current debate.
 >
 > Now just let me put some flesh on each of those statements.
 >
 > Since human beings are creatures of both time and space, and since
 > we know from the work of Albert Einstein that time and space are
 > relative categories that expand and contract in relation to each
 > other, then we must conclude that any statement made by anyone, who
 > is bound by time and space, will never be absolute. There are no
 > propositional statements, secular or religious, that are exempt
 > from this principle. Words reduce all human experiences to
 > relativity. That is why every religious formula must be questioned;
 > that is why no word of any book is inerrant; that is why no
 > proclamation of any ecclesiastical leader is infallible; and
 > finally, that is why no religious system or institution can ever
 > claim to possess the true faith. Religion is a journey into the
 > mystery of God. It is not a system of beliefs and creeds and when
 > it becomes that, it always becomes idolatrous and begins to die.
 >
 > Theism is not God. It is a human definition of God that assumes
 > that God is a being, perhaps the "Supreme Being," supernatural in
 > power, dwelling outside the world (usually thought of as above the
 > sky), who periodically invades the world in miraculous ways to
 > answer human prayers or to effect the divine will.
 >
 > It is my sense that this definition of God has been mortally
 > wounded by the successive blows of Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac
 > Newton, Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein, just to name a few. I
 > do not believe, however, that this means that God has been mortally
 > wounded even if the theistic definition of God has been.
 >
 > Suppose God is not defined as "a being," but is simply experienced
 > as a power, a presence. Then describing that experience is quite
 > different from claiming to know who or what God is. Then the
 > question is, "Are we delusional or is this experience real?" I
 > think God is real and I believe we are in the process of defining
 > our God experience in a new way that will replace the dying
 > theistic definition of the past.
 >
 > Finally, Christopher Hitchens' book, God Is Not Great, is a
 > description of the theistic God of the past who is dying. The
 > theistic God certainly appears in the Bible and is guilty of many
 > things that are genuinely immoral, like killing the firstborn male
 > in every Egyptian household, stopping the sun in the sky to allow
 > more time for Joshua to slaughter the Amorites and ordering
 > genocide against the Amalekites through the prophet Samuel.
 > Christians need to remember that it has been the theistic God who
 > has been responsible for the development of such things as anti-
 > Semitism, the Inquisition, and the oppression of people of color,
 > women and homosexual persons. This deity has also been perceived
 > as justifying war, fighting crusades and creating slavery. Let us
 > agree with Christopher Hitchens that this God is not great. We need
 > to challenge Christopher Hitchens' assumption, however, that this
 > is the only way we can think about or conceptualize God.
 >
 > I think of the God experience as the power of life, love and being
 > flowing through the universe and coming to consciousness in human
 > self-awareness alone. I therefore feel that by living fully, loving
 > wastefully and being all that I can be I can make the God
 > experience visible. I also believe that it is my Christian vocation
 > to build a world where all people have a better chance to live,
 > love and to be. It is when I do these two things, I believe, that I
 > am engaging in the essence of worship.
 >
 > - John Shelby Spong