What is repellent to me about Spong is that he had to lie his way into his "orders". He becomes bishop by saying stuff in front of God and everyone that he doesn't believe and then expects his position as bishop to give him some air of authority.
He's one of the reasons I renounced my orders and left the Episcopal Church. Gates of Hell sure prevailed against THAT sucker, I tell you what!
Twelve Theses - John Shelby Spong
from "Here I Stand" ( HarperCollins; New York:2000 pp. 468 -469)
Drawn from my book Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile
A Call for a New Reformation
1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. God can no longer be understood with credibility as a Being, supernatural in power, dwelling above the sky and prepared to invade human history periodically to enforce the divine will. So, most theological God-talk today is meaningless unless we find a new way to speak of God.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So, the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post--Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes the divinity of Christ, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God that must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God, who raised Jesus into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in Scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior-control mentality of reward and punishment. The church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for cither rejection or discrimination.
Author's Note: These theses posted for debate are inevitably stated in a negative manner. That is deliberate. Before one can hear what Christianity is one must create room for that bearing by clearing out the misconceptions of what Christianity is not. Why Christianity Must Change or Die is a manifesto calling the church to a new reformation. In that book I begin to sketch out a view of God beyond theism, an understanding of' the Christ as a God presence and a vision of the shape of both the church and its Liturgy for the future.
But for a long time, we could pretend that the Diocese of Newark had nothing to do with OUR local parish. But the rot spread from Spong and his ilk to General Convention, and thence down to the Diocese of Atlanta. The latest bishop is just about as heretical as Spong - we just couldn't stand it any more so we fled.
Where did you wind up? We were very "high" so we are with the Catholics - the Archdiocese of Atlanta is one of the most conservative in the country. We have a brand new (just a couple of weeks) archbishop (who will be confirming my eldest on Monday) He comes from the USCCB, but fortunately so far he seems to be very orthodox and quite strict (he follows an arch conservative that kept the liberals' bloomers perpetually in knots, and a good thing too!) The parish is all atwitter because the grapevine is reporting that he's actually going to catechize the children, and is coming an hour early for that purpose! The Christian Education director and our Parochial Vicar (who is in charge of the children's ministries) are sweating bullets and hoping their instruction was adequate!
My daughter actually wanted to take Confirmation instruction over again because she felt that she learned nothing in the Episcopal confirmation classes (I have to agree with her, it was all touchy-feely, kum-ba-yah nonsense.) She sure has learned a ton of stuff in THIS one - it was dead serious with lots of Bible study, recitation, memorization, and a three page paper on her confirmation saint and why she chose him. I think the Archbishop will be pleased.