"Except for those subhuman, nosepicking neanderthals who are my opponents. They don't count as human beings."
Hundreds at what Spong called a "consciousness-raising conference" cheered and applauded as he mocked traditional Christian and Jewish beliefs about God and the Bible.
Now, now. Jewish fundamentalism is all right, since it's the belief of a quaint culture and also serves as a barometer for the secularity of society. But you and Ramsey Clark may have changed that.
Warning against this supposed "tribal" religion, Spong insinuated a connection between conservative Christians and Islamist terrorists.
There you go again! Don't you know that moslems are a quaint non-western culture and not subject to judgments of any kind? How dare you! What are you, a rightwinger???
He noted, as if it were some kind of proof, that both Osama bin Laden and George W. Bush "invoke" God.
So who is the bishop invoking? He's speaking as a bishop, isn't he?
Spong, who is the retired Episcopal Bishop of Newark, has long been a biting polemicist on behalf of liberal religion, writing books suggesting that the Virgin Mary was a prostitute and St. Paul a "self-hating gay man," while denying that Christ was divine and rejecting a personal God. "It's time to name evil as evil when sounded in pious accents of biblical religion,"
Gotta love them non-Theistically based moralists! What makes them think that "evil" has any definition apart from the decrees of the personal G-d he rejects?
Spong's Episcopal denomination is one of America's fastest declining. His own Newark diocese, during his 24 years as its bishop, lost 40 percent of its membership.
No!
"We have a pope who says [moral] relativity must be combatted," Spong lamented. "Protestant leaders say homosexuality is a sin. A cardinal denounces evolution." The bishop asked forlornly, "Is this what Christianity has become?"
Whatcha gonna do when history starts "running backwards" and the Omega Point turns out to be the Alpha Point?
Condemning popular religion that "masquerades as Christianity," Spong sneered that he did not want to walk into "what's called a Christian book store," listen to a "Christian" radio station or be "identified with the Christian vote," when these labels apply to people "bashing homosexuals" and "keeping women from choosing."
Why should seat belts be optional only for women?
Spong fretted that the Bible in America has become a "force in public policy as an arbiter of right and wrong." Those who quote it make "fascinating points" and "assume the Bible is always right," he observed.
I bet John Brown is spinning in his grave.
Spong reserved special venom for the American South, where he was raised as a "fundamentalist."
Ah. So that explains it.
"What kind of Bible do they read in the Bible Belt?" Spong asked rhetorically. "Did they not practice slavery? Did they not allow lynchings?"
Actually, the perpetrators and victims in those cases read the exact same Bible and interpreted it in the exact same literal way (still do). So, really, how come anti-racist liberals and Fundamentalist Blacks never notice each other? Do they live in separate dimensions or something? Or is it another one of those "they're so quaint!" cultural things?
Referring to the rise of religious conservatives based in the South, Spong claimed, to the audience's delight, "The old [segregationist] George Wallace vote simply applied perfume and call themselves the religious right."
"Remember: only monogenism can prevent race-mixin'!"
Even if Jesus were ascending at the speed of light, he still would not have yet left our galaxy after 2,000 years, Spong chuckled, crediting this clever observation to the late astronomer Carl Sagan.
The hell . . . ?
The Bible calls the Hebrews the "chosen people," Spong mockingly recalled. "If God has chosen people, then he also has unchosen people," Spong warned.
C'mon, Spongy. Dig a little deeper. Now, lie down in your grave. That's a good boy!
"Have you read the Bible from the Egyptian standpoint?" Spong asked to laughter, pointing out that God did not treat the Egyptians kindly in the Book of Exodus.
Have you ever read a history of World War II from the Nazi standpoint, Johnny boy?
Referring to the Bible as a "book we have called the Word of God," Spong charged that it justified genocide and treated women as property. The Old Testament urges capital punishment for a whole range of sinful offenses, including adultery, he mischievously noted. "How many of you would be alive?" he smilingly asked.
The Sanhedrion's lookin' better all the time!
"If you take the Bible literally, there'd hardly be anybody alive," Spong observed dismissively.
That's funny . . . I interpret the Bible literally, and there's still plenty of people alive, last I checked.
But biblical literalism is on the march, Spong worried. "In our nation there is a religious mentality that would lead us to the past of tribal warfare," he warned. "This is too small a God for our expanding world and consciousness."
Spong then announced his conversion to the Australian aboriginal religion, noting it is far superior to primitive and tribal religions like Judaism and chr*stianity.
"The God we serve is greater than any of our religious traditions," Spong told the approving audience, which gave him an enthusiastic standing ovation.
Well, that takes care of his problem with numbers. Now he just has to get all these people to move to New Jersey.
Seriously, I'm a bit confused about one thing. Spong used to be an unapologetic advocate of western science and rationalism and criticized African Catholic Bishops for their primitive beliefs. Now he sounds like he's joining the bizarre club that uses science to bash the Biblical G-d and then goes into new age drumming and "indigenous" worship. Oh well. I guess he's EVOLVING!!! Get it? Evolving!!! HA! HA! HA!
Oh. Well, I guess you had to be there!
It's hard for me to laugh about Mr. Spong. He's pretty evil. Then again, sometimes the best thing to do about evil is to laugh at it. At least that was something both Luther and St. Thomas More agreed on.
BTW - did you notice that Spong said the Bible was 3,000 years old?
Now I think the Torah was actually given 3450 years ago or thereabouts, but it's a pretty amazing statement.
The radical historical-critical types, depending on which ones you talk to, generally claim that the oldest Bible books to exist in their current form were compiled no earlier than Hezekiah - 2680 years ago.
He's basically saying that there was a Bible in the reign of David the King.
By his standards, that's a primitive notion.