[Vision2020] Bishop Spong on Hitchens

[Scott Dredge]

What are Bishop Spong's views on same-sex hitchings?  I ran a couple of searches but didn't find anything conclusive.

-Scott

----- Original Message ----
From: Ralph Nielsen <nielsen at uidaho.edu>
To: Vision 2020 <Vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 5, 2008 9:49:06 AM
Subject: [Vision2020] Bishop Spong on Hitchens

[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


=======================================================
List services made available by First Step Internet, 
serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.  
              http://www.fsr.net                      
          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
=======================================================