©Bill Gnade/2005
[Nicholas Kristof can't just get enough of the Church. Once again he dispenses a narcotic for the masses, although this time he dispenses a nearly lethal dose. Again, I continue with my thesis that the "New York Times is the opiate of the people."]
Shelby Spong is so thoroughly heretical he offends his own orthodoxy, an orthodoxy of abuse and contradiction. In fact, Spong, the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ, is so censorious of orthodox Christianity that it requires less effort to believe in fairies and woodland nymphs than it does to believe that Mr. Spong has ever been a Christian. His is a vision imbued with gnosticism, the privileged vision of those who transcend the mundanity of the common faithful; a vision that supplants the myopia of the Holy See.
Amazingly, it is a vision touted in press and propaganda as fresh, new, progressive; though it is old and tired; tried, and found wanting. That's why it is called heresy: not because it is new or unknown; but because it is old and forsaken and untrue and harmful to humanity.
Perhaps that is why New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof turns to Spong for guidance in his most recent column "Liberal Bible-Thumping"(5.15.05). By way of propping up liberals' efforts to win the so-called culture wars, Kristof writes that Spong has something to teach liberals in his new book, The Sins of Scripture:
"This book is long overdue, because one of the biggest mistakes liberals have made has been to forfeit battles in which faith plays a crucial role. Religion has always been a central current of American life, and it is becoming more important in politics because of the new Great Awakening unfolding across the United States."
Unfortunately Kristof neglects to tell his readers what the essence is of this alleged "Great Awakening." Irrespective of such oversight, all readers cognizant of the issues involving the separation of church and state should take note: Liberals must denounce the Church's intrusion in politics unless, as Kristof reveals, the Church is Shelby Spong. THAT kind of intrusion, that kind of breach of the defenses against creeping religiosity in the sacred secular is permissible. Jerry Falwell's kind is damnable.
Kristof to liberals: Be more like Spong.
And what is Spong? Surely he is not an Episcopalian, for I know Episcopalians. Spong is, as I've said many times elsewhere, a Unitarian with a fetish for vestments (for those of you who are not familiar with vestments, vestments are the religious garb - gowns, cassocks, albs, stoles, etc. - typical of liturgical churchs). In fact, Spong has publicly stated his love of Unitarianism, and his affinity for it, during a lecture he delivered at the nearby Unitarian Church that once employed me.
Need proof of Spong's Unitarianism? Here are just two telling quotes from Spong culled from thousands of possibe choices:
"Jesus did not die for our sins! Jesus was not a sacrifice offered to God to overcome the fall that never happened. We are emerging creatures, not fallen creatures." [http://www.dioceseofnewark.org/vox30599.html]
"To the extent that the Buddha, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Krishna, Mohammed, Confucius, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Genoa, Hildengard of Bingen, Rosa Parks, Florence Nightingale, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Buber, Thich Nhat Hahn, Dag Hammarskjold, or any other holy person brings life, love, and being to another, then to that degree that person is to me the word of God incarnate. No fence can be placed around the Being of God. The suggestion that Jesus is of a different kind of substance and therefore different from every other human being in kind instead of in degree will ultimately have to be abandoned. Then the realization will surely begin to dawn that to perceive Jesus as different form others only in degree is to open all people to the divine potential found in the Christ figure. It is to invite all people to step into the power of living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to be all that any one of can be - a self whole, free, real, and expanding, a participant in a humanity without boundaries." [http://www.escapefromwatchtower.com/spong3.html (From Who is Christ for us?)]
These statements have Unitarians leaping in the pews, and the orthodox on bended knee.
Kristof continues with this gem about the atrocious behavior of the Jewish God (the OLD Testament God, for Christians), quoting Spong (and look at the crown jewel that follows it):
'"Can we really worship the God found in the Bible who sent the angel of death across the land of Egypt to murder the firstborn males in every Egyptian household?" Bishop Spong asks. Or what about 1 Samuel 15, in which God is quoted as issuing orders to wipe out all the Amalekites: "Kill both man and woman, child and infant." Hmmm. Tough love, or war crimes? As for the New Testament, Revelation 19:17 has an angel handing out invitations to a divine dinner of "the flesh of all people."'
"Bishop Spong, who has also taught at Harvard Divinity School ..."
I guess if Spong has taught at Harvard Div, I should just stop thinking.
There is a passage in the Old Testament that says something like this: If a man is caught having sex with a goat, the man and the goat shall be put to death (I'm not making this up). For two seconds, maybe three, the passage bothered me, not least because I could not understand the violence toward the goat. And then, clarity. For I understand humans well enough to know this: That if Smith is caught having sex with a goat, and is killed for it (yet the goat is spared), Jones and Brown might very well turn that goat into a sideshow.
"Step right up, folks, and see the goat that won the heart of Smith."
No doubt others might even be tempted to see what a goat "felt" like; or to exploit the goat in sundry ways. One can't imagine that Mrs. Smith would like to see that goat prancing through her garden. Thus, killing the goat might actually be progressive.
So when God told Israel to practice genocide in its battles, was He not actually encouraging Israel to be compassionate, even distinct from its warring enemies? For at the time it was typical for tribes to kill enemy men and abscond with their women and children and livestock, all as spoils of war. Turned into sex slaves (though sometimes wives), and just plain slaves, the women (and children) were often brutalized by their enemies. Thus, for God to order the killing of every enemy tribal member, without flinching, indeed may have been humane orders. And I dare say, when another tribe walked through a decimated village leveled by the advancing Israelites, they must've wondered, even scoffed, at the kind of warriors that would reject the flesh and wealth of the plundered.
But it's easy for the heretic Spong to look back 30 or 40 centuries from his high post and snear at the drooling primitives of the past. It's easy because Spong is arrogant, bringing 21st-Century table manners and silver spoons to a Bronze Age banquet, demanding post-modern propriety. It's also easy because Spong believes we are heading toward perfection (as stated above) as "emerging creatures." We are not fallen; we are not getting worse, unless we are Roman Catholics. In that case, we are not emerging at all. And one can have no doubt that Spong believes he is more emergent than his evangelical neighbors.
And here is a perfect opiate for the careless from Kristof's pen:
"Bishop Spong particularly denounces preachers who selectively quote Scripture against homosexuality. He also cites various textual reasons for concluding (not very persuasively) that St. Paul was "a frightened gay man condemning other gay people so that he can keep his own homosexuality inside the rigid discipline of his faith."'
I am glad that Kristof admits to some skepticism here, but it is both too little and too late. That Spong should find Paul an angry gay man closeted in Corinth, so to speak, without so much as a historical or scriptural justification than his own voyuerism passed off as scholarship, is not only typical Spong gnosticism; it is typical Spong self-deception.
He is hardly, HARDLY, a role model for liberals anywhere. And he is hardly a gentle, tolerant shepherd. He writes:
"Let me say this carefully, but clearly. Anyone who elevates their prejudices to the position where they are defended as the will of God is evil."†
Interesting.
I wonder if Spong believes he's doing God's will. If he doesn't, then he's awash in futility. If he does, then, in his own words, he's evil.
Oh, the conundrums of being an emergent God.
Contratimes
†See http://www.beliefnet.com/story/11/story_1107_1.html
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