First Congregational United Church of Christ – Eugene, Oregon

REDEFINING THE MEANING OF - III Based on John Shelby Spong’s Book: “A New Christianity for a New World”

“Tradition vs. ”

By the Fourth Century of the Common Era, the acceptance of a theistic definition of God by the Early Church had been codified in the words of several of its major , or confessions of faith. The Nicene and the Apostle’s Creed became the repositories of these traditional beliefs and have remained operative for nearly two thousand years despite anything and everything that science has revealed about our universe and the natural workings of that universe. The inadequacy of as a description of God was brought into question as early as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by German theologians who challenged the literal reading of Scripture and who began using a scholarly approach that sought to make discerning judgments about these writings. Viewing biblical texts as ordinary pieces of literature, rather than set apart as divinely inspired, as in the traditional view, it asks when and where a particular text originated; how, why, by whom, for whom, and in what circumstances it was produced; what influences were at work in its production; what sources were used in its composition; and what message it was intended to convey. It also addresses the physical text, including the meaning of the words and the way in which they are used, its preservation, history and integrity. Biblical criticism draws upon a wide range of scholarly disciplines including archeology, anthropology, folklore, linguistics, Oral Tradition studies, and historical and religious studies. Despite their growing popularity and use within the academy, however, these methods were largely rejected by the leadership of the church. Between 1910 and 1915, in reaction to biblical criticism in general and to the challenge of Darwin’s theory of evolution in particular, a group of conservative Christians published a series of pamphlets under the title The Fundamentals. From these writings, the term “fundamentalism” was coined as a description of the literal beliefs of conservative Christians and thus entered the religious vocabulary. The Five Fundamentals are: 1. The inspiration of scripture as the literal, revealed word of God. 2. The virgin birth as the literal guarantee of the divine nature of Christ. 3. The substitutionary view of the atonement and the saving power of ’ blood. 4. The certainty of the physical bodily from the dead and the accuracy of both the empty-tomb and the appearance stories in the Gospels. 5. The truth of the Second Coming of Christ, the reality of the Day of Judgment based on the record of one’s life, and the certainty of Heaven and Hell as eternal places of reward and punishment. When Anglican J. A. T. Robinson’s book, Honest to God, was published in England in 1963 revealing why the God-talk emanating from the church in his day was no longer credible, it was met by an outpouring of negativity unprecedented in religious circles. He had introduced his readers to the work of who was calling for the scriptures to be demythologized; to Deitrich Bonhoeffer, who was calling for a Christianity apart from religion; and to , who was insisting that God could no First Congregational United Church of Christ – Eugene, Oregon longer be defined as a personal being but must be approached non-personally as the Ground of All Being. Robinson was subsequently pilloried in the press, in letters to the editor, on radio talk shows, and from the pulpits of the land. He was quickly marginalized by the Anglican Church, avoided by those who had once been his colleagues and friends, and forced to fight to maintain his reputation and integrity. The debate provoked by Robinson’s book eventually led Time magazine to publish a feature article in 1964 proclaiming THE DEATH OF GOD in bold red letters across its cover. That article resulted in equally intense debates in churches and seminaries, as well as in homes, bars, and offices across this country. It was followed by a plethora of other books and articles on the subject and then, three decades later in 1998, Bishop John Shelby Spong’s book entitled Why Christianity Must Change of Die appeared. He, the Episcopal bishop of Newark, N. J., was equally vilified by his clergy colleagues. He was barraged with a series of unflattering labels, including atheist, Anti-Christ, hypocrite, deceiver, the Devil incarnate, and ecclesiastical whore. Some letter-writers demanded that he renounce his office as a bishop and that he be expelled or deposed from the church. Some even carried threats of punitive action, including his murder, which writers either recommended or threatened to carry out themselves. Of the more than ten thousand letters Spong received in response to his book, however, more were positive than negative by a margin of three-to-one. The vast majority of the positive responses came from lay people, while roughly ninety-percent of the negative letters were from clergy. Lay people seemed to resonate with Spong’s thinking, suggesting that if he, a bishop, could say these things, than perhaps there was still room in the Christian church for someone like them. The clergy, on the other hand, appeared to defend their turf with vehemence while attacking any proposed changes in their traditional understandings of scripture or the ecclesiastical functioning of the church. Some of the laity were church dropouts. Some were only nominal members. Some had adopted the stance of being silent participants in the life of their churches, unconvinced but also unwilling to disturb the prevailing beliefs of their communities. Many of them told stories of a time when they had sought explanations from church leaders but had been informed that any stance other than acquiescence to the “revealed truth” as taught by the church or affirmed by scripture was sinful behavior. It is hardly surprising then, that in 2009 two major polls in American religion, both significant, sophisticated and scientifically grounded research about grass-roots American beliefs, found that the percentage of self-identified Christians had fallen 10 points since 1990 while the percentage of people claiming no affiliation with any kind of faith doubled in recent years to some 16 to 20 percent. In addition, somewhere between 25 and 30 percent of American adults under thirty now claim no religious affiliation at all, making their number the fastest growing demographic in the country.

Questions for Discussion

1. How would you explain the negative and heated reaction of other Christians to the writings of people like Robinson and Spong? What do you think provoked it? 2. If most of the negativity comes from the clergy, to whom or what can lay people turn if they are inspired to want to help reform and renew the Christian church?