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A Canadian study found that conservative churches are still growing, while less orthodox congregations dwindle away.Mainline Protestant churches are in trouble: A 2015 report by the Pew Research Center found that these congregations, once a mainstay of American religion, are now shrinking by about 1 million members annually. Fewer members not only means fewer souls saved, a frightening thought for some clergy members, but also less income for churches, further ensuring their decline. Faced with this troubling development, clergy members have made various efforts to revive church attendance. It was almost 20 years ago that John Shelby Spong, a U.S....

With apologies to C.S. Lewis My dear Wormwood, The Screwtape Letters It's hard to fathom, even by our standards of non-compliance with the Other Side, what a marvelous catch this John Shelby Spong fellow has turned out to be. I doubt we could have created a more perfect model of apostasy and heresy all wrapped up in one man. For more than four decades, he has steadfastly aided and abetted our cause of disbelief. Atheists and skeptics are obvious sinners, but they are not a patch on a man who wears the cloth of his religion while defaming and declaiming...

At 82, retired and enjoying life, Bishop John Shelby Spong doesn’t have to be the liberal enfant terrible whose pronouncements for gay rights and against traditional dogmas once scandalized Christendom. Indeed, many of the views that once turned the Charlotte native and former Episcopal bishop of Newark into a lightning rod are now regarded as so matter-of-fact that they barely occasion much notice: Ordaining gay clergy and blessing same-sex marriages, for example, or having a female presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman elected to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion. On a range of issues, Spong...

IN 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise. Thus their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States. Go to Columnist Page »...

A controversial bishop from the Episcopal Church who denies belief in a personal God was warmly received on Monday as a “wise man” during a lecture at the United Methodist Church’s Drew Theological School. John Shelby Spong, retired as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark since 2001, spoke at the Madison, New Jersey, campus about his new book Eternal Life: A New Vision: Beyond Religion, Beyond Theism, Beyond Heaven and Hell. “We’re so excited about this opportunity to have this wise man in our midst and to hear his new thoughts,” said Maxine Clarke Beach, Dean of the theological...

JOHN SHELBY SPONG, whose books have sold more than a million copies, was Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark for 24 years. His admirers acclaim him as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary layperson. A longtime champion of progressive Christianit y, Spong is a visionary voice in the religious communit y, calling people to step beyond boundaries of tribe, prejudice, gender and even religion to create a new humanit y. He is a committed Christian who has spent a lifetime studying the Bible and whose life has been deeply shaped by it. Now he...

[Hat Tip: In Newark] Although I think it somewhat unjust to the originals, "Puritanism" has come to mean the application of pointless and wrong rules to systems and people. Most people may find themselves "puritanical" at some point in their lives. The Father suddenly realizes that his long-held, and strictly enforced, "Very Important Rule" about some household matter actually thwarts the good that he wishes to see in his family. The Sabbath-keeper suddenly realizes that her Sunday is not at all restful. In its extreme form, the Nazi guard at the camp realizes that the prisoners working out in the...

The Rt. Rev. Peter Jensen, Australia's Archbishop of Sydney, is making headlines for denying a heretic access to the pulpits of the churches under his care. The heretic is the retired bishop of Newark, New Jersey, The Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong -- a man who has denied virtually every major Christian doctrine.

The Next Christendom The Coming of Global Christianity By Philip Jenkins Oxford Univ. Press. 270p $28 A few years ago, the Episcopal bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong, penned a book entitled Why Christianity Must Change or Die. Spong argued that Christianity would inevitably decline unless it abandoned much of its traditional belief system. A few decades hence we may regard Spong’s prediction with the same bemusement with which we regard the predictions of those who believed that the United States was fated to be eclipsed by Japan as the world’s reigning economic superpower. This is the contention of Philip...

... Imagine what would have happened if, in the midst of America’s emergence as the world’s sole superpower, a leader said of those third world countries alarmed by American expansionism that they should submit to American ideals since they have “yet to face the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Einstein that we’ve had to face in the developing world.” What if an American, particularly an American bishop of one of the wealthiest Christian denominations on the planet, spoke so dismissively of Africa, Nepal, Tibet? Would anyone care?Well they should care, for what we are currently facing is a leftist neo-colonialism...

Newark re-enters Anglican frayhttp://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2006/06/newark_enters_a.html http://tinyurl.com/rumao Ruth Gledhill, Wednesday, 28 June 2006, 06:56PM I've been getting a little tired of this whole story, and want to start writing again about Hindus, Muslims, Catholics and the Jewish community. But I couldn't resist a brief posting on this new development, chiefly because the partner of the leading nominee to be the next Bishop of Newark, Jack Spong's old haunt in the US, is Father Paul Burrows, a rather impressive graduate of St Stephen's House who trained there when David Hope was principal and who was ordained into Southwark in 1980. Father Paul has...

Canon Arthur Middleton at Blackburn Cathedral Sermon preached in Blackburn CathedralAt the Annual Diocesan Festival of the Prayer Book Societyby Canon Arthur Middleton10/06/06 The Babel of AnglicanismI had a dream. I was in heaven with Michael Ramsey and Pope John Paul II. The Pope said to Michael ‘I am so pleased to see you here.’ ‘Why is that’ said Michael?’ To which the Pope replied ‘We were always taught to believe you wouldn’t make it.’ As I left them they were joined by Thomas Cranmer who was taking them to Prayer Book Mattins. So here I am not really...

Justice for All by John Shelby Spong The question of rights for homosexuals keeps surfacing in different guises. In November, Virginians will vote on an amendment to the Virginia Bill of Rights that will deny gays the right to marry. In New Jersey, my adopted state, the Supreme Court will sometime in the next few months hand down its ruling in the case of Lewis v. Harris. The final arguments from the attorneys for the plaintiff and the state have already been heard. All that remains is for the members of the court to engage in their own deliberations, to...

NEWS Episcopalians face up to decline Friday, December 9, 2005 By JOHN CHADWICK STAFF WRITER The Episcopal Diocese of Newark, for years the epitome of liberal Protestant Christianity in America, acknowledged Thursday in an unusually candid report that it has suffered a steep slide in membership and needs a bishop who can revitalize its struggling parishes. The diocese, which covers seven northern New Jersey counties including Bergen, Passaic, Hudson and Morris, has lost nearly 24,000 congregants, or 46 percent of its membership, since 1972. That's nearly three times the average decline in the Episcopal Church nationwide, the report said. "Many...

Gay priest: Vatican edict will force others away The Rev. Mariano Gargiulo, now an Episcopal priest in the Newark Archdiocese involved in a long-term relationship, said he believes an expected Vatican edict this week banning most gay men from entering the seminary also will force many priests from the clergy. "It will push many of them away," Gargiulo said of the document, expected to be released Tuesday. "The Vatican ... says that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered, and how many times can you be told that before you start to say, 'Hey, maybe I should go somewhere else.'"A report released by...

MICHAEL LERNER was back on campus at Berkeley. But this time he is a portly Jewish rabbi leading 1,200 mostly middle-aged "spiritual progressives," and not the young Students for a Democratic Society agitator targeted by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s. The "Politics of Meaning," Lerner's label for his spiritual liberalism, peaked in the early 1990s, when his supposed fans, Bill and Hillary Clinton, ascended to power. But Hillary disavowed Lerner when his quirky views attracted fire, and the old Berkeley activist, though still publishing Tikkun, seemingly faded. Now Lerner is back. And his "Conference on Spiritual Activism," held at...

Spong's lifelong quest to wrest himself from what he has called his fundamentalist evangelical North Carolina upbringing to understanding God in a radically different way is the subject of a sympathetic new drama, "A Pebble In My Shoe." The bishop plans to be at Sunday's 5:15 p.m. premiere at the Los Angeles Theater Center, 514 S. Spring St. After the 90-minute performance, Spong will be honored at a reception. He also will sign his latest book, "The Sins of Scripture." Other performances are scheduled for Oct. 15,16, 22 and 23. Written and directed by Cox, the play is based on...

Americans who don't believe in God have decided it's time they had a lobbyist in the nation's capital. Their new advocate describes herself as a "soft, fuzzy atheist." Lori Lipman Brown starts Monday as executive director of the Secular Coalition for America. Her two goals: keep religion out of government and win respect for a stigmatized minority. The magnitude of those challenges is, well, biblical. Think Daniel entering the lion's den, or David taking on Goliath. Christian conservatives wield enormous clout here through a network of advocacy groups and relationships with politicians from President Bush on down. Atheists, humanists and...

Time hasn't mellowed John Shelby Spong. Quite the contrary. Now 74, the famously provocative and liberal Episcopal bishop from North Jersey has become one of America's most outspoken critics of the powerful Christian Right. "I really resent having the Christian faith being taken over by people who identify with hating gay people and abortion rights," Spong said in an interview. "The public face of Christianity is being shaped by Pope Benedict XVI, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell." Spong led the seven-county Diocese of Newark for 24 stormy years before retiring in 2000. He still lives in North Jersey, in a...

The Party of the Left Wing, known best for its tax-increasing, huge-spending, pro-abortion sentiments, looked at the polls in the last election and noticed something big-time. First, seriously religious people vote. Two -- they didn't vote for the Left Wing. "Fixable!" they thought. And then they schemed. Let's start praying at meetings, mentioning people of faith in our speeches, and allowing Democrats to be pro-life if they really want (insults of the last three decades now to be overlooked). And a website. Oh, yes, a website is always needed. So, Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has hoisted his...