Word: bishops
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Excerpts from a tract by a staunch atheist? On the contrary, those are assertions offered by a bishop of America's Episcopal Church, John Spong of Newark, in his new book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (Harper San Francisco, $16.95). Spong's unorthodoxy is of long standing, but it has now reached epic proportions. His previous book, Living in Sin?, assailed Christian dos and don'ts on sex and asserted that nonmarital sex can be holy under some circumstances. After the work appeared in 1988, Spong ordained a sexually active gay priest, inspiring the Episcopal House of Bishops to "disassociate...
...wildly offbeat convictions raise an intriguing question: Are there any limits to what an Episcopal leader may believe -- or disbelieve? His Paul- was-gay argument, based tenuously upon the Apostle's unmarried state and frequently mentioned sense of personal sin, is causing a growing uproar among traditionalists. But conservative Bishop William Frey, president of Pennsylvania's Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, doubts any decisive stand will be taken by the church against his colleague's writings. "The House of Bishops has shown itself to be impotent in the face of challenges to the core beliefs of the church," Frey says...
...Angeles Bishop Frederick Borsch, who chairs the hierarchy's theology committee (on which Spong sits), explains that "we are not a confessional church that tries to write a definition of orthodoxy. A lot of us would defend this as the genius of Episcopalianism." Spong's latest work, however, leaves the genius somewhat embattled...
...American religious circles. The Roman Catholic hierarchy has questioned whether the U.S.-led military action meets the traditional just-war criteria. The war has been branded "morally indefensible" by officials of Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestant groups affiliated with the National Council of Churches, including Edmond Browning, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Bush's denomination...
...universal love, has always had a struggle with the idea of war. Most early believers refused to bear arms. After the rulers of the Roman Empire embraced Christianity in the 4th century, St. Augustine first elaborated the limited argument in favor of military action. Wrote the North African bishop and theologian: "War should be waged only as a necessity, and waged only that God may by it deliver men from the necessity and preserve them in peace...