Word: spong
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...think the Bible is literally true," says Bishop John Spong of the Episcopal diocese of Newark, New Jersey, answering a question scholars have tugged at for the past 200 years. Spong, who is invariably described as the enfant terrible of liberal Protestant theology, writes books with such titles as Resurrection: Myth or Reality and Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism that are guaranteed to make conservatives growl. "The Bible also says the woman is usually the property of a man. I don't believe that either," Spong declares. "The Bible says homosexual people should be put to death...
...belief in the Bible as the literal Word of God, a conviction that confounds his critics. "I would never seek to solve the ethical problems of the 20th century by quoting a passage of Holy Scripture, and I read the Bible every day," says liberal Episcopal Bishop John Spong of Newark, New Jersey, who used to deliver newspapers to the Graham farm as a boy in North Carolina. "I wouldn't invest a book that was written between 1000 B.C. and A.D. 150 with that kind of moral authority." Graham, for his part, wouldn't think of doing otherwise...
...Rescuing the Bible, Spong brands traditional Catholicism as a "destructive" creed. But he is even more offended by conservative Protestants who take a literal view of biblical exegesis. Spong, 59, held similar beliefs in his boyhood as a practicing Presbyterian, and has admitted that Fundamentalism gave him a "love of Scripture that is no longer present in the liberal tradition of the church." In taking aim at literalism, Spong declares his goal is to reveal the spiritual truths underlying the biblical text. Still, his book lashes out both at the conservative view of the Bible and at its adherents...
...Spong's 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...
...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...