Is This Christianity?

Dear Bishop Spong,

I wrote to you a little while ago on the same general subject as Dr. Gerald Neuberg. I don't believe that you have responded to that either privately or publicly, though I could have missed it.

My point was that you SHOULD give your philosophy/religion a new name, not pretend that is Christianity.

I read your explanation here with interest. Some of what you write is correct, of course, but then some of the serpent's words in Eden were correct. The problem in such matters as these is to distinguish between the essential core and the inessential periphery.

If I change my clothes and hairstyle and even have plastic surgery, I am still me - the same person. On the other hand, when the Battersea Power Station in London had all the machinery taken out, it ceased to be a power station. It now looks the same from the outside, but it is in fact an art gallery. The British Labour Party of Prime Minister Tony Blair has retained it's old name but, for good or ill, it is no longer a socialist party. The inner being and therefore it's actions and results are very different.

To deserve the name of Christ, Christianity has to retain it's core beliefs. There was nothing "first-century culture" about Jesus rising from the dead; it was no easier to believe in then than now. Nor has the nature of mankind changed with the changes in culture and scientific knowledge - indeed the 20th century was probably the most brutal ever. It saw Flanders and the trenches, the holocaust, Hiroshima, and the Killing Fields of Cambodia, among many "inhumanities" and already in this century we have 9/11, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay.

So the message that God in human form sacrificed Himself to overcome our subjection to death and rose from death to bring a new spiritual life to those that fully accept it, is timeless. It has no boundaries of century, culture, or geography. Sin and forgiveness, death and life, are still very real, very present in our lives today. Change the liturgies by all means (please) with new worship forms, reword the creeds into more easily understood forms if necessary, translate the Scriptures into modern language, emulate the Apostle Paul who said, "I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some," but if you do not know what "save" means and you say that Jesus did not rise bodily from death, or you say that He will not return to bring on the Judgement Day, then it is no longer Christianity that you promote but a different thing which modern people find more comfortable.

On that point you give the game away when you say, "I have to force my Christian faith into the thought forms dictated by the 21st century," whereas Jesus refused to force His thought forms into those of either the Jewish tradition or the Graeco-Roman world and Paul wrote, "Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your minds."

Jesus said plainly. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no-one comes to the Father except through Me." That statement can be believed and accepted or disbelieved and rejected, but it can't be updated! It is not subject to time and space.

You should make it plain to your readers where you stand on that core challenge.

Seed Newsvine

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