Friday, May 07, 1999
Bishop challenges many Christian tenets
BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
For decades, Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has infuriated many Christians and engaged others with his interpretations of the faith's central events.
The virgin birth is invented symbolism, he maintains, as is the physical resurrection of Jesus. Mary Magdalene was likely Jesus' wife, he says, and the Apostle Paul might have been a repressed gay man.
Bishop Spong, who heads the Episcopal diocese of Newark, N.J., comes to Cincinnati May 18 to speak and sign copies of his latest book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die (Harper San Francisco; $14). Subtitled “A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile,” the book calls for Christians to surrender many of the faith's long-held beliefs in exchange for a modern understanding of Christianity.
The understanding that Bishop Spong advocates discards the notions of Jesus' divinity, a theistic God, heaven, hell and other bedrock beliefs. He argues that these interpretations are the attempts of first-century humans to understand the life of Jesus, attempts that contradict what 21st-century humans now know.
“What I think we've got to do is go underneath these symbols and figure out what the Christian experience was. I don't think it has a thing to do with being born of a virgin or walking on water,” Bishop Spong, 67, says. “That was how our forefathers and foremothers understood the experience. We have to get back to that experience.”
IF YOU GO
• What: Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong speaking and signing copies of his latest book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die.
• When: May 18 at noon and 7 p.m.
• Where: Noon at New Thought Unity Center, 1401 E. McMillan St. East Walnut Hills; 7 p.m. at Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Rookwood Pavilion, 2692 Madison Road, Norwood.
• Cost: Free.
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