Monday, June 10, 2013

John Spong Talks About Religion

I have been doing a great deal of reading about religion over the past few years, and although I rarely allude to it in my blog, I have a deep conviction that our existence here is but a small part of a much greater reality. Writers like John Spong, Marcus Borg, and Harvey Cox have helped me to grow out of what I consider the childish and superstitious notions of religion that the professional atheists (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens) find so easy to mock and dismiss into a more nuanced appreciation of what we call God.

Here is a brief clip of John Spong articulating some of that perspective:



10 comments:

  1. Lorne, I have studied about religion just like you but life remains a mystery for me. I will call myself an agnostic.

    However, humanitarianism makes a lot of sense to me. I recommend to my friends to read Dr. Wilder Penfield's book "The Mystery of the Mind : A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain." and his other publication. He was a well-known neurosurgeon and practiced at McGill University.

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    1. Thanks for the recommendation, LeDaro. I have heard of this classic, but have yet to read it.

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  2. I have been going through the same "discovery". I have done both formalised, and informal, studies in this area. You may enjoy some of the material by Unitarian Universalists such as "A Chosen Faith" by John Beuhrens and Forrest Church. I am currently reading "The Future of Faith" by Harvey Cox. And, I agree with Spong. Based on what I learned in seminary, the mainline churches seem to want to keep this 150 year old knowledge (Historical Critical approach to biblical studies) quiet. After all, it would probably empty the pews! Most probably can't handle the knowledge. I know there were some seminarians that had trouble with it.

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    1. Thanks for the reference, UU4077. I have read The Future of Faith, a very readable book that left me much impressed. Lately I have been reading a little about the gnostics (Beyond Belief – The Secret Gospel of Thomas – Elaine Pagels) and was very surprised at their level of sophistication, seeing much of the traditional Gospels in a more metaphorical than a literal light. That approach, which we find today in progressive Christianity, was deemed heretical at the time and thus suppressed, but would seem to offer much to the 21st century seeker.

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  3. I have a lot of time for John Spong.

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    1. Spong was once regarded as a very radical thinker, and I suppose he still is within conservative religious circles, double nickel, but I find his thinking both refreshing and quite invigorating.

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  4. I had a discussion once with my Systematic Theology professor (the man is brilliant!) about Spong. He called Spong a hack! I disagreed. I said I believed Spong got people thinking about the stuff that those in the pulpit (and what we were learning) were afraid to talk about. (I don't agree with everything Spong says, but he does bring out, in layman's terms, what needs to be addressed).

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    1. Agreed, UU4077. When I first started reading his material, I found Spong rather elusive when it came to articulating what God is too him, but as time passed I realized that was due to the fact that God is essentially ineffable. To talk about God as 'the ground of all being,' as Spong does, now makes perfect sense to me.

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    2. I believe he gets that "ground of being" concept from Paul Tillich (a great theologian).

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    3. Thank you for the clarification, UU4077. While I have, of course, heard of tillich, I have not yet read anything by him. I once tried another theologian, Han Kung, but found him a opaque for my layman's mind.

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