Section
A New Christianity
Transcript of a conference call on the last night
with Christine and Jack Spong - 1 December 2003.
[     ] designates tape is unclear, estimate or unknown   -   {     } designates audience reactions.

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Opening Remarks
Wayne. We have arranged up to an hour, which is about 10:15 their time so I think that is intruding enough on their evening. And they've been away and are just back home. They've emailed they're looking forward to this. Through the evening, we'll pass this card around. He's doing this for nothing so I thought at least we could send them a thank you note with all our names. Add little comments if you like. Please come forward to the chair by the phone with your questions. If you came just to listen I hope you'll change your minds and ask questions. That's why we've allowed so much time.
Jock. Wayne and I have questions ready, but hope your own questions will take up the evening. There's a certain tendency for Wayne and I to fill in any vacuum, (laughter) so we we wouldn't really want you out of politeness to lose your opportunity to ask. What we would really prefer is that your own questions of the author will lead the evening. How many prepared questions have we? Seems about a dozen.
Wayne. Then please be brisk and come forward. .
OPENING - Brenda 1. One of the things I have enjoyed most about the study of Spong has been watching him grow and learn and struggle with his faith. Every once in a while in life we have the opportunity to do this and I personally have watched a very favourite minister of mine go throught this process and the answers were not all there and clearcut. The ones that sort of worked towards it and if you have the courage to let somebody watch you do this I think that takes an ultimate amount of courage. And so over the years I've read a lot of Spong's books. So I tried to find some things to explain why some of the things he says resonate with the way I think.
"My life has been enriched by the opportunities. I have had to engage in a personal way public figures in a wide variety of fields of endeavor including the political leaders of both New Jersey and Virginia, including national leaders. I've been touched by authors like [ Estay ] and Funk, Borg, Crossan, Armstrong. Theologians like Kung, Ward, Cupitt. Difficult scholars like John Tribble ... and theres just a great long list of people including reactionaries like William Buckley Jr., and Pat Buchanan. Mine has been a tremendous ride around the course of life. I entered a priesthood I now recognize seeking security for my anxious and insecure soul. I discovered in that vocation not security but the expansion of life and the radical challenges that life brings when one is open to the depths of God who is for me the very ground of all being. Christianity ultimately provides no one with real security. Rather it gives to me and the others, the capacity to embrace the radical insecurity of life as free whole and mature persons. The path of dependency that I needed, and so many religious people, is surely an aberration of what true Christianity is. I would not change my life path in any way. I learned the wisdom of that prayer in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer that ultimately we must come to give thanks for all things, not some things, but all things. Life has been sweet indeed, but above all else I was throughout my life and am still deeply convinced by the reality of God. Indeed I am more deeply convinced in this reality at this moment than I have ever been before and I walk inside the wonder of this God in every experience of life. I've become more of a mystic that I ever thought possible for a rationalist like me. I still meet this God in the life of the one I call Lord and Christ who is supremely important to my spiritual journey. I still love the church at least as an idea if not in its corporate institutional form. The church of tomorrow will be radically different from the church of today, so different that some will not even see the continuity. But I take courage from the observations of history that the church of the catacombs did not look much like the Gothic cathedrals of the 13th century, and yet it was the same church. The church of the 3d and 4th milleniums will inevitably not look like the church of our day. So I urge my successors in faith to embrace not in fear, the changes necessary to enable the church of the future to be born."
[ selection not checked against source ]
Lord, we come before you this evening full of exitement and anticipation - willing to learn, willing to hear, willing to know what you want us to learn from you. Be with us as we formulate our questions as we listen to the responses. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen
Wayne. Good evening Bishop Spong.
Jack. Hello there.
Wayne. We might have to do a bit of adjusing until we've got this right. We've got 40 or so people gathered here at St. David's United Church in Calgary, Alberta.
Jack. I've got my wife on the line so I've no anxiety.
Christine. Hello everybody.
Everybody. Hello.
{ Wayne & Deb adjusted system as loud as possible - the connection was very very weak. }
Jack. We live on the side of a hill and often have problems.
Wayne. I would like to direct the first question to both of you. Is that OK?
Jack. Sure I'd be glad to have Christine answer.
Wayne. You've been making trips for presentations and I know that many of them have been to Canada - book signings - promotional tours for some years and what I'd like both of you comment on from each of your perspectives is "How have your audiences changed? And how have you changed? - Over all those years of trips and visits."
Jack. How many years are you talking about Wayne?. I might have changed more if you take more years!
Wayne. Just give us some general comments as to how you've seen the people that have come to listen to you. How they've changed in their questions perhaps. Yes, the last ten years.
Jack. OK.
Christine. That means that's 5 years from when Jack was an active Bishop to the 4 years that we've been on the circuit. Spending this time lecturing all the time. We're on the road about 75-80% of the time.

I would say that more and more people are coming. Perhaps that's because he's getting better known as his books are being read more. And it's rare from where we used to be picketed pretty frequently. That's less and less in places like Sidney, Australia where we've just come from. And that's people particularly in Australia and New Zealand and England and probably also in Canada and America, to some extent.

People come who are not active in the church any more but seem spiritually engaged with their faith belief systems. And the questions get ... people are pretty knowledgeable before they come to hear him speak. And that's got more ... But they're not necessarily church goers anymore.
Jack. The one thing I would add to that is that I believe the audiences are getting younger. The people in the church if you look out on Sunday morning look like it snowed on everybody's head. { laughter }
Jock. Have you noticed any difference between the Canadian audiences up here compared to various journeys across your own country?
Jack. I would say I find little difference. The most responsive audiences I address are probably United Church of Canada audiences and that's been true since 1988. I've practically joined the United Church. If I were in Canada, I think I really would be a member of the United Church because I've got great admiration for that faith community. They sing better than Anglicans. { laughter } And they seem far more open. I think it was really a remarkable thing, to go back to 1988 when the Anglican Church was putting Jim Farey on trial for being a gay man living in a partnership when the United Church of Canada was passing a resolution that says that such orientation is not a barrier to ministry in this church. And I think that is rather typical of the relationship between the two traditions.
Jock. And yet even in your own church, the ordination of Gene Robinson, must be of some special encouragement to you to have your own church backing what you've struggled so long for.
Jack. The thing that people need to recognize is that the people of New Hampshire elected him rather overwhelmingly. He's been a priest there for 14 years and a canon extraordinary.by all accounts. And then he was confirmed at the general convention by the bishops, the clergy and the laity. The laity gave him the highest percentage vote, the clergy second, the bishops third - they're usually more conservative than anybody else. It was a great step forward. That doesn't mean that there are not negativities about that, but Gene was consecrated. We were in New Zealand so I was not there, but the person who made the protest representing the "36 conservative bishops" (more than half of whom are retired) personally chose to do that. He's been a bishop about a year. He's the suffragen bishop of Albany, New York. Albany is a very rural, ultra-conservative diocese. And they take a suffragen bishop there and he becomes spokesman for that group? That helps you to know that this movement is not very strong. It's loud, but it's not very strong.
Jock. Do you see that then as a sign of encouragement?
Jack. I see it as an enormous sign of encouragement. It's not the issue of being open to gay people, it's the issue of being open - to change in realities. The reality behind the election of Gene Robinson is that there's a new consciousness developing. 50 years ago, nearly everyone defined homosexuality as people who were either morally depraved or mentally sick. It was an abnormality. And there's been so much research, so much scientific data in the last 50 years that indicates that homosexuality is simply the way some people are. It's like being left-handed. It's a very different definition. As soon as you get that definition in your mind then you can't discriminate against it. It's like discriminating against people because of the colour of their skin or because of their sex. Sexual orientation appears overwhelmingly to be a given and not a chosen way of life.

And so what's going on is this battle of consciousness - the new definition is breaking in and the old definition is dying - and the people that waiting for the old definition to continue to battle that ... but it's the same thing in everything that we do.

It's the old definitions of God being up in the sky somewhere - a sort of supernatural parent figure - those definitions began to die when Galileo discovered that the earth was not the centre of the universe and heaven was not a platform above the sky. Then the whole we had to think about God had to go through a revolution.

Now part of the world has said that revelation means there is no God. That is very far removed from where I would be, but my sense is that the way we have conceptualized God has simply died and we have to find a new way to conceptualize God. I'm quite convinced of the reality of what I would call the transcendent power that's present in this universe, but I don't believe that you can conceptualize this as a man, or an elderly man, or even an elderly woman sitting above a cloud somewhere keeping record books. That's the way we used to think about God.

So in sexuality or theological issues what's really going on is that new knowledge is forcing a re-definition of old prejudices and old theological concepts. And's its a very exiting time to be alive.
Larry. Going back to that question of a new reality or understanding of homosexuality, you say in your book that you don't want to argue with those people that accept the older reality, you don't want to convert them ... unless they become a majority, I think you said.
Jack. To me some issues get settled. I don't want to debate evolution anymore too. I don't want to debate whether the earth is flat. There are a lot of issues that people still have some feelings about, that the world has moved on from those so far, that you're wasting your time debating with those people. I think you love those people, you don't condemn them. I guess in some sense, I feel sorry for them because I feel they are so unenlightened. But it's not a matter of having a debate, I'm simply not willing to spend time debating those things. I've moved on and I think the world has moved on.

People need to remember that in a very conservative administration that we've got in Washington right now, and I don't want to get political, but it's not my favourite administration. { laughter }. But in that very conservative administration, Richard Chaney who is our Vice-President has a homosexual daughter and she has a partner and she is very much a part of the family. She goes to White House events with the Chaney family and her partner goes with her and nobody thinks anything about that. That's just a very different consciousness. You go back 10 years we had a speaker of the house named Newt Gingrich and he had a lesbian sister and he wouldn't speak to the lesbian sister and she wouldn't speak to him. As if it were a sort of embarrassment. That's just gone.

This world has moved a lot faster. The church is frankly out of date. The church is the only place where homophobia is alive and well. And I think it's time to get off that bandwagon and get on to something that's... I don't really want to say "more important" because anything, anytime, that you enable people who've been marching a long time, to become main-stream citizens, that you've done a wonderful thing ... a thing that I think is part and parcel of the gospel. But you know you get bored discussing sexuality all the time. It is not the end-all of the world.
Larry. What about Biblical literalism? Would you have the same attitude towards that?
Jack. What's the question about that?
Larry. The same approach ... love those people but you're getting tired of arguing with them?
Jack. If someone really is a Biblical literalist, and I find it hard to believe that anybody is ... I think most people are what I would call a "selective literalism". They are literal about a few verses that keep their prejudices intact.

You know, I'd like to say that you can go back to 1835, when a man named David Friedrich Strauss wrote a book called The Life of Jesus Critically Reviewed, and that was the time that Dr. Strauss put to the public into a published book the sort of discussion that's being going on in the Christian academy for decades. And he was fired from his job in Tübingen and he was never allowed to teach again at any university in Europe. He had to pay a price to break that ground. But the book today - I recently read that book, it's a tough read, about 800 pages of tiny tiny print - but when you read that book you become aware that all the things that were thought to be radical and revolutionary in 1835, are so commonplace today that nobody would debate the issues of David Friedrich Strauss brought out.

It's just a matter of getting them out into the bloodstream of the population. And I think the church has done a very poor job of doing that. I think they are afraid of their lay people and afraid that they'd get upset if they knew the truth about various and sundry things. So they try and protect them. I think that's treating people like children and I don't know if the church is ever going to do very well if it intellectually insults the way people every Sunday morning by thinking they're not big boys and girls and can't know everything that "we" know. It's sort of like believing in Santa Claus. I don't think we're going to make it in the world we live in.
Reference Links to The Life of Jesus Critically Reviewed.  Peter Kirby (his Early Christian Writings site is on our Web Links Reference Page) is translating it into the public domain and has much of it on line. You can certainly get a flavour of what Bishop Spong is saying by sampling Strauss' work at LINK. See also amazon.com.
Deb. Bishop Spong, here's a question for you. "If there is no unseeable unknowable entity, like if there's nothing that we would ... demythicizing the "God Up There". My concern is is that the alternative is dreadfully worse. Is that... and we're seeing a lot of it today with all the upswing and brutality and killing and violence. You pour your love, your anger out on this being that we used to have and to me the alternative is that now we're pouring it out each other and none of us are built to withstand that."
Jack. Had a hard time figuring part of your question. Please repeat the question part.
Deb. OK. What do you see as the alternative ...
Jack. Alternative to what?
Deb. The alternative to the "God Up There" that we used to pour our love on, our anger on, and now we're doing it to each other and I don't think the human being psyche is prepared to withstand that.
Jack. It seems to me as you look around the world and you're pouring out anger on each other in the name of God! Osama bin Laden invokes God when he sends his airplanes into the World Trade Centre and George Bush invokes God when he sends his missiles into Iraq. The Palestinians invoke God when they strap dynamite to their bodies and walk into a restaurant or get on a bus. The Jews invoke God when they send their tanks into West Bank. I don't know that's there's any great progress in all these people that are invoking this "God Up There" to do violence to one another.

What I'm trying to do is to get people to think of God in a different sort of way with some different concepts, like I define God as the source of life. That's the way I experience God. I don't know if that's the way God is, but I experience God as a life force. I experience God as a love power. I experience God as the ground of being that calls me into being and calls everybody else into being. I think you have to determine, to distinguish when you are defining God, because I don't think anybody can do this. You know I say that I don't experience God any more as a beautific deity up in the sky, but that doesn't mean I don't experience God. It just means I experience God in a different way. There's the power of life and the power of love and the ground of being.

Does that mean God is not a person? I can't say that. I do think that if horses had gods, they would look like horses. If dogs had gods, they would look like dogs. It would typical that if human beings had gods that they would make their gods look like human beings. Does that mean that God is a like human being, personal like a human being is? I can't say that. Nobody can say that. It's absolutely idolatrous when we think we can define God. All we can [ do is share ] our God experience. So I'm content to find a new way to talk about my God experience and can not let it be terribly concerting to me that I can't tell you or anyone else who God is.

I don't think any human being can tell another human being who God is. We can tell each other how we experience God - nothing more. And when we get to that level there's all this stuff about pouring our love out on God? Why don't you pour out your love on the world that God has made, and the people that have the image of God in them? Why shouldn't that be the proper way to pour out your love for God? I don't see that having God in our lives has stopped us from pouring out our hatred on one another.
Jim. I have a question that may build on that theme a little bit. I find the image of God that you offer very helpful at a personal level, but as I read the gospels, I find that the imagery that we're provided from Jesus is often, seems to me to be, theistic. And I'm not sure whether that's because Jesus was a theist or because that imagery was helpful to the people of his time. Can you comment on that a bit?
Jack. I think Jesus lived in the first century, and I don't know if it would be possible for a person in the first century to think like a 21st century person.

[ some loss during change tape ]

Jesus said "By this it shall be known that you are my disciples, that you love one another," not "that you say the right kind of creed." Once again, I find a sort of mysterious God underneath the popular images of the Bible: the God who cannot be named in the old testament, the God whose name cannot be pronounced, the God of whom we are not to make any images - even the images of words - which is what we have done - we thought we captured God in the words in the Bible, the words in the creeds. And you know, I don't think you can make an image of God out of human words. So that, I think that if you read the Bible carefully, and deeply enough, you will find all sorts of images that are not theistic images of a supernatural parent figure up in the sky.

Now there is no question that a supernatural parent figure is comforting - until that supernatural parent figure doesn't deliver for you! And I think that's where the whole thing breaks down. When people say I prayed and God saved my mother, I say well that's wonderful, but I can tell you the story of a thousand people who prayed and their mothers died. It's when it doesn't work for you any longer, then you feel like maybe you've been disillusioned. That's what I think we've got to look at and be concerned about.
Wayne. We're waiting for another question.
Jack. You should ask my wife a question. (pause) What it's like to live with me. { laughter }
Jock. What comes to mind then is an interesting question from the Honest to God Debate, and we recall how you feel in many ways that you're picking up the burden and the job and the inspiration of John Robinson. And in the end of the Honest to God Debate, there are 2 appendices, one of which is a lovely little essay by his wife Ruth called "Honest to Children". And as we think in the direction of your book about what new forms the church might have., and as we talk about theological issues, Ruth Robinson made some awfully interesting points about being honest to children - and not necessarily going through this theistic issue. So Christine, connected as you have been all these years with these notions, what think you of the church, this new church, the family and some of these other issues?
Christine. In an earlier time in my life, I had small children and ended up running a Christian Education program and I think that from that experience that it hasn't changed that much. I think there's some pretty good stuff coming into being now. But honesty, truthfulness, recognizing that what you're telling often is a story - children can distinguish between story and between this is an historical fact - and just answering questions.

I always loved the one about the child who asked where do I come from and the mother gives him the story about how she and daddy fell in love, duddley duddley dum. And he says no, no, no, Johnny comes from Detroit, where do I come from? { laughter }

We just have to be who we are and let the children be who they are. I'm not sure I've answered your question.
Jock. No that's very excellent. In the children also of course are some of the youth. Earlier, Jack was saying he see's a lot of gray hairs in the church but we're also seeing a lot of young people in the church. We're very fortunate here our church in Calgary to have a very good representation from the children and the youth. It is one of our concerns. Appreciate your comments m'am.
Christine. I think that as the children get older giving them something to do in the service and doing it together so that they have fun always works with kids. Helping them design their own liturgies and the like.
Deb. Christine, I'm the youth leader here, one of the youth leaders here, and I find we are exploring the Bible, we are not teaching one way.
Christine. Excellent.
Deb. We are allowing them to take what they can where they're at, and we work with that, we don't work against it, we don't say "No this is the way it's written therefore this is what you have to believe", because they are at an age, whereas where I was 20 years ago, where they have so much more access to what I call "streetsmarts" about things, that to try to gloss over something - well they can spot a fake so quick it's not funny. So my question is "When you're talking about openess, with them, are you also saying that - how do you phrase to them that what is written may not necessarily be the ultimate truth?"
Christine. You can answer that Jack. { laughter } .
Jack. I think you need to face the fact that in language, we speak symbolically all the time. That's all words are - words are symbols. And you can't express an ultimate reality except symbolically. So why does that bother people? If I were to say "Wayne looks like a million dollars," people would know that I wasn't assigning those actual words to his body. If I said "He was a big hearted man," they wouldn't call an ambulance because he had an enlarged heart. We need to learn that in every area of life we speak symbolically all the time. I had a professor in the university who once told me that you should never try to explain why you love your wife. You might convince yourself you don't. { laughter } There's something irrational about that. Love illicits something out of a person that cannot be quantified.

That's the way religion is. That's the way God is. And the tradgedy of Christian history is that we've acted as if could nail God down in some creed. If you would come back to the Council of Nicea in 325 when the Apostles's Creed was adopted, you would discover it was a wheeling dealing political church convention. The Holy Spirit wasn't ruling that! Various bishops were negotiating with each other - you give me this, and I'll give you that. That's the way church conventions operate. They're all politically motivated. And that's how the creeds came into being - with great compromises.

When we decided the Apostle's Creed wasn't strict enough, that there was too much wiggle room in it, they just simply got together and wrote the Nicene Creed which took the wiggle room out. And that's why we say in the Nicene Creed, that "Jesus is God and God of light , very God of very God, begotten not made and one substance with the Father." All those mean the same thing, but we felt that by putting every one of those reasons in, we could cut down the wiggle room where people were interpreting things differently. And they discovered that you couldn't do it even there. So after the Nicene Creed was written, they found people were interpreting it very and sundry ways, so they came up with the Athenasian Creed which is about 3 pages long, and thank God it isn't used in worship.

But you can't define God! That's what we ought to learn from that. The human mind is not capable of defining God. Until you can convince me that a dog could explain perfectly what it means to be human, then I'll never believe that a human being can ever explain what it means to be God. And I think that's something we need to embrace, and religion is scared to face the ambiguity of that because we are so frantic - we want to make sure we've got it right and we have certainty.

That's why we pretend that we have an infallible Pope, that we've got an inerrant Bible, or we've got the One True Church, or we have the corner on the market on Salvation ... or all of the various authority claims that people are always making. But you can't do that. That's not the way it works with human beings talking about God. The quicker we learn that, the better we'll be and more humble we will be.
Reference Links to the Creeds. Here is a Dutch site.with the 3 above mentioned historical creeds (well, only the highlights of the 3 page one). And just for perspective, our own current United Church Creed.
Christine. Another thing is that we cannot capture ultimate truth, for everything is relative. Einstein gave us that. And there may be an ultimate proof, but you and I capture it from our particular perspectives. You capture it as people who live in Calgary, Alberta, and are brought up in a particular way and at a particular time, and I capture it from having been born in England, and now living in America. We cannot capture ultimate proof. We think, particularly religious people, we think we can nail it down and make it concrete. But we cannot. It changes all the time.
Ruth. Bishop Spong, in reading one of your books, you described Katie at the end of the book at Harvard, as one of your theological students. Whatever happened to her? What kind of decisions did she finally make?
Jack. She got a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Iowa as she left Harvard divinity school. She published a book of poetry that actually got reviewed in the New York Times book review section. And now she is teaching - I think it's at Loyola University in New Orleans - and she's teaching poetry and she's still debating whether or not to be a Lutheran pastor. { laughter } And she's gotten married. The name of her book is Deposition. People all over the world ask me about Katie and she's a lovely lovely young woman, probably 28 by now.
Ruth. Thankyou.
Reference link to Katie Ford's picture and 2 of her poems from Deposition from a review at Poetry Daily, with a link to Amazon to the book.
Jennifer. I'm one of the younger people here so I'm not so much interested in taking away from the theistic perspective because that's something I haven't really bought into. But one of the things that I'm curious about is considering that many individuals believe and hope for an existence beyond this life, I was surprised to see that you didn't seem to address that in this book. Perhaps there wasn't enough space or you had another book?
Jack. You're talking about A New Christianity for a New World?
Jennifer. Yes.
Jack. The reason that I didn't have it in that book is that it's the next to last chapter in Why Christianity Must Change or Die which was written before A New Christianity for a New World. I've written twice on that subject. One is the last chapter in Resurrection - Myth or Reality? and the other is the next to last chapter in  Why Christianity Must Change or Die. So it's there. It just didn't seem like I should repeat it, which I would probably have had to do. I don't know if could say it any better today than I said it in Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

Basicaly I believe in life after death. I don't think any of the traditional content is worth while. That is the reward and punishment concept - I think we ought to get rid of that. I can't imagine God running a world by saying "Be a good boy and you get a reward, be a bad boy and you get punishment." Because I think God should know better than that. But I do think that there is a reality called God who is eternal. I believe that I am in a relation with that God. I believe that will participate in that God's eternity.

And I don't know if I can draw any picture any better or any worse than that. That's simply the way it seems to me to be. I find that among "liberal theologians" that I'm one of the few still trying to make a case for life after death, but I think it's a very important consideration of the Christian story.
Reference links to reviews on the mentioned books above:
Why Christianity Must Change or Die at Amazon
Resurrection - Myth or Reality? by Lloyd Geering of whom he speaks next.
Jennifer. Did you just say that you were one of the few that still continue to ...
Jack. Well when I get into the Jesus Seminar in the United States, I would say that people like Lloyd Geering, and Don Cupitt and Bob Funk who are leaders in that body would say that they specifically don't believe in life after death. I happen to believe in it rather profoundly.
Reference links to Westar's Jesus Seminar Fellows List for Lloyd Geering, and Don Cupitt and Bob Funk and for balance, Jack Spong.
Jennifer. OK. Well I have your other book at home so I'm going to read those chapters when I get home. Thankyou.
Peter. Bishop Spong, it seems to me that your "New Christianity" is coming very close to the Unitarian Church. Do you have comment on that?
Jack. Well, I don't know that I think that's accurate. But I can understand why people say that. Some of the Unitarian church claim that I'm a closet Unitarian. I could say closet Christian, myself. { laughter } Once again it goes back to my issue as to how you can define.

I don't think God is a trinity. I think that's absurd - for anybody to say what God is. But I do think that we can say that I am a trinitarian. I believe that I experience God as ulitimate beyond, as depth within and as present in the lives of other people, and to be uniquely present in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. So I don't have any trouble saying I am a trinitarian. But when you translate that and say therefore God is a Trinity, I think that is where you become idolatrous. Who is God? God might have 16 sides and we've only experienced 3 of them. It's that kind of human idolatry. So I don't think I could say that God is a unity either, because that's what the Unitarians say. They accuse the Christians of being tri-theists while they hold on to the unity of God. I think that's all semantics.

I have great respect for the Unitarians, primarily because they are the only church in the western Christian world that allows open theological debate on all subjects. And I think that's what the church ought to do. I think the church ought to be a community that invites people into a journey and in the core of that journey let them walk where ever they can walk - just walk in community - that'd be the only thing I would say.

I don't have the answers. I don't think anybody else has the answers. But I think we have to walk together and constantly inquire of one another where we are and constantly challenge each other where we are. I have no trouble walking with the Unitarians. I think they are wonderful people. On the gay issue, they are by far the most open, and the rest of us are just catching up to the Unitarians on that. I wish we could catch up to them on our abilities to discover openly without getting scared to death that somehow you're destroying God when you talk about positions reviewing what God is all about. I don't think I could ever be a Unitarian. I visit Unitarian churches with some frequency, but I don't think it would satisfy my soul every Sunday of my life.
Wayne. Bishop Spong, I have a question. I think that the chapter that was the most difficult for me to appreciate in your New Christianity was the one on mission. I have have a concern that your theology of mission, because of what the church has done in the name of Christ in the past, closes the door to any possible future for the church. "How can the church survive without mission?"
Jack. Let me say that we haven't done a very good job of missionizing so I don't think it'd be a great loss. { laughter } In that part of the world where the Christian church has been successful as a missionary force is in Africa. We certainly haven't penetrated the Buddhist world and the Hindu world and the Shinto world, except in the most miniscule way.

Christianity is basically a religion of the western European world - that's what we are - and frankly, the reason we did so well in Africa is that there wasn't a developed religious system in Africa. Africans had what I'd basically call an animistic religion that was quite primitive. The Christianity that has come into Africa on the heels of colonial exploitation, has been a very superstitious kind of fundamentalist religion - both Catholic and Protestant.

It's interesting that the Islam that has also gone into Africa ... Africa is a battlefield between fundamentalistic Islam and fundamentalistic Christianity today ... but both of them are quite fundamentalistic because by and large the people of Africa have not gone through the intellectual revolution that the people of the western world have gone through the last 500 years. It simply has not been their opportunity and I think that's where the problem is today.

People say that Christianity is growing in the third world. Well, it's growing in a kind of primitive superstitious way. There are great exceptions to this - like in South Africa. I think it's interesting that at the Lambeth Conference where the general press said the African bishops were totally opposed to homosexuality, the 3 most outspoken people in favour of gay and lesbian people were South Africans. One was Desmond Tutu, one was Njongonkulu, Desmond's successor as Archbishop of Johannesburg, and the third one was Khotso Makhulu who is the Archbishop of Central Africa. Now all 3 of those people have had the priviledge of beautiful educations. They haven't gone to little bible schools with well intentioned but not very well informed people that have marked the lives of so many other parts of Africa.

So I think it's just a matter of time. There's nothing about the African people that says they're less competent intellectually than anybody else. It's just that they haven't yet had the opportunity. But I guess they won't have the opportunity because the world is so small. And when they do they're going to have to deal with evolution, they're going to have to deal with relativity, they're going to have deal with the fact the earth is not the centre of the universe and God's not a supernatural parent up in the sky pulling strings all the time. And when they do, they'll have the same sort of crises that we have in our world today and they'll have to rethink the same symbols.
Reference links. The Lambeth Conference referenced was the last in 1998. The Lambeth Conference is a meeting of all Anglican Bishops each 10 years). The conference dealt also with liberal and conservative issues and Jack was in the thick of it. Worth reviewing - it illustrates many of his comments above. A BeliefNet article on the gay issue at the conference including comments by Makhulu. You may wish to visit the website of the Diocese of Johannesburg, and review their rather full and fair Debate Around Consecration of Practicing Homosexuals as Bishops. A  press release Aug 2003 by Archbishop Njongonjulu on Gene Robinson's ordination. The majority consensus is for acceptance of gay persons but not of gay practice - celibacy is expected.
Wayne. Thankyou for that. Another question coming.
Darren. Bishop Spong, this may be a little bit of a step back to some of the earlier conversation. But first I'd like to say that I found your book to be an amazing discussion of the things that I've struggled with for many years and the articulation of a new relationship with faith spoke to me in a very profound way and I simply want to say thankyou for providing that articulation because it put me back on a path that is probably most exciting to find a path that's got a Christian heritage to it that I can approach in an honest way and some of what you've articulated has helped in that.

One of the problems that I've struggled with and I think that led to me struggle and my joining the alumni of the Roman Catholic Church, was difficulty with many traditions not least of which was prayer. But I find that today, I continue to turn to those familiar things when faced with the serious perils in life - with mortality. I find myself praying to Jehovah God the Father as it were for intercession almost, going back to those very traditional ways of thinking when faced with the ultimate. I've not found a spiritual response to those situations that meshes with the new understanding that you've brought forth.

The question I'd have is: "That once we've started down this path, can we honestly say "Abba, Father" when that's what we need to say, or what do you say when that need arises?"
Jack.. That's a good question. That's almost the first question I get asked every time I lecture anywhere in the world. So it's one that comes up all the time. The thing that I think we need to do is to try to define what we think prayer is.

Is prayer a means by whereby I tell God what God must do? That's the way so many of our prayers seem to me to be ordered. I don't believe that's what prayer is all about.

Is prayer an attempt to change God's will? Is God is perfect, why would you want to change God's will? That kind of prayer is totally anthropocentric. It looks at God from my human perspective.

Now I think we have to face the fact that human beings are frightened people. I think the nature of humanity is to be afraid - to be frightened - to be insecure. I think there's a lot of religions that I regard as not much different than an opiate. They are designed to take people's insecurity away from them - take their fear away from them. I don't think that's appropriate. I think the purpose of religion is to give you the courage to embrace the fear and insecurity of life and to live courageously with that fear. That's very different.

Now what does prayer do? When people define what they mean by prayer, then I think we can talk about it. But until they do, I think what they are really doing is writing adult letters to Santa Claus, saying "Dear God, I've been a good boy please do a, b and c for me."

And I'm not sure that's what prayer is all about. I pray every day of my life. I lived in relations with people about whom I care very deeply and if they are sick or in danger, I lift them up in my prayers. Do I think my prayers are going to cause God to do something for them that God wouldn't do otherwise? No, I don't think I think that. So I'm meeting my needs. I can't say that God can't work through my prayers because I don't know how God works. But that I know that I have to do what I have to do, because that's what it means to be human.

That make any sense?
Darren. It does. I still struggle - is there still room for the personal connection? Is there room for that idea that is expressed in that phrase "Abba, Father"? Is that something we simply have to let go of?
Jack.. Well, I think when you call God "Abba or Father", what you're doing, assuming that you're experienced with a father figure that is positive - a lot of people don't have that - but if you assume that that's positive, to call God "Abba or Father", then one of the qualities that you're ascribing to that God - can a father take care of a child if a child gets sick with diptheria or scarlet fever or polio? Can a father save the child? The father can suffer with the child, but can the father save the child? If your child is out in the street and gets run over by a drunk driver, does having a God that is a father save the child? What are you postulating when you say that? I think we need to think about that and that what we are afraid to do is to live as if God is in each of us and that the only way that God is going to get out of us into the world is through ourselves. I think that's what we've got to face and that's what prayer has ultimately got to do.

Let me tell you this quick story now. I don't know if I've printed this in a book or not, in an autobiography, at this point I don't know what's in which book. But my first wife died in 1988 with cancer. We got the cancer diagnosis in 1981. The doctors told us she had less than 2 years to live. She actually lived 6½ years. When the word came down that she was critically ill and had this illness that was life threatening, and that the prognosis was that she wouldn't live for 2 years, prayer groups started all over New Jersey for my wife - a Catholic prayer group, Protestant prayer groups, Episcopal prayer groups, all sorts of prayer groups.

And when she lived 6½ years instead of 2, these prayer groups began to say, "It's our prayers that are keeping her alive." Well, I thought to myself, suppose that the garbage collector in downtown Newark which is American's poorest per capita city, also had a wife who had a cancer, and he wasn't a public figure and he wasn't well known, and nobody knew about his wife and her cancer, so nobody prayed for her, would God let my wife live longer than his wife because I was a socially well known person? That the newspapers would write stories about my wife's sickness but wouldn't think to write stories about the garbage collectors wife's sickness. Is that the way God operates?

Well I came to the conclusion that if God operated like that, I didn't want to worship such a God. That would be too capricious a God. Maybe a God who rewarded social status - now that can't be who God is. And so I had to work through that and get beyond that.

Am I glad that those people prayed for me and for my wife? Of course I am. That's the way they were expressing their love for me. Did those prayers do any good? I would never say they don't because I think when you release energy, that you are releasing the power of God. I think that does surround people and makes their lives very different. And it's a very quieting and beautiful experience in life. But you know that's all I know how to say about it. I'm not into magic and I'm not into telling God how God must operate in order to save human beings from the peril that we've got ourselves into.
Marjorie. Bishop Spong;. My husband and I have had the pleasure of hearing you lecture in Calgary 4 times.
Jack. There 3 not 4 times actually.
Marjorie. Well it was twice on one time! You spoke downtown and then you spoke at SAIT and we followed you up.
[??]. You're coming back when?
Christine. May. I think it's about the 14th we'll be at Knox United.
Marjorie. Good, well we'll see you there. But what I wanted to say - we've been with this group that have met for the last 10 Mondays and I've read your books for years. I found 2 pages - the second and third page of this book were where I found my greatest reward - was in the preface where you said "I must follow the truth where it will lead me, regardless." And then to just skip over of course, your list of dogma, the 5 things that you say "I can't accept," and then the page following where you maintain that "I am a Christian, and I call Jesus my Lord ... and so forth ... and I define myself as a Christian believer". That is where my own position has been that it is a breath of fresh air. I'm in my 80's and for at least 60 of those years, I have had those views and it really is great to get to the point where you can discuss them and not just have them.
Jack. It's nice to know you're not crazy isn't it?
Marjorie. Is is you know. There may be other indications that that is not so. { laughter } I also am very pleased that you avoided the temptation at the end of this book to tell us how to set up a new church and what it was going to be like. We're not very good at predicting the future, are we?
Jack. No, we're not.
Marjorie. I would like to ask you, "If you could fantasize what this new church and the new way of thinking of God would be? Could I tempt you into that?"
Jack. Well, I don't know that I can say much more about it than I said in the book. I think the church needs to be first of all a community, I think it ought to be a community on a journey. To be on a journey means that you're not static, that you don't have it all written down, that you haven't reduced it to a set of propositions, that's it's always a process.

And I think we invite people to come as they are and to walk with us - together - and to share our stories together.

What I think we've got to get out from under, is the sense that we possess the truth, that's in our particular form, and that all we need to do is to learn the words.

It's interesting how we translate certain parts of the bible. In Mark's gospel, when Jesus is dead upon the cross, Mark puts a Roman soldier at the foot of the cross to interpret the meaning of that Jesus. And the words get translated, "Truly this man was the son of God." And you think that centurion has taken creedal lessons in the second person of the trinity. That's not what that man was saying. He was saying in this life of perfect love, given away freely, even to the point of death, that's how you see who God is. To me that's what we've got to be doing as a church - trying to find who God is and where God is in the life of our experiences - nothing more. If you do that you've gone from that authoritarian "We have the truth, it's all in the creeds", or whatever else we've said over the centuries.

We used to burn people at the stake for not believing certain phrases in the creed. Now I recently got some information on an exhibit in a San Diego museum. There are the torture instruments that Christians used during the inquisition. We were as evil as anybody else that has ever tortured any other human being. They had hot irons that were put in people's mouths. They had hot irons that they put into the other more private entry places into their bodies. All of that in the name of the God of love because they weren't willing to say the creed, to believe the creed the same way the church had handed it down.

I think we've missed the point totally. Our life with God is a journey into the mystery and wonder of God. We do not possess it.

And of course all that stuff is going on in our world today. Religous imperialism is killing people. The Christian fundamentalists, the Jewish fundamentalists and Islamic fundamentalists are killing people.

[ some missed as changed tape ]

We've got to get it right or the the human race won't survive.
Marjorie. That's right. Then we don't need to worry about whether the church is going to survive.
Jack. I think that's [ ??? ], that' s to correct the church's mind. God can get along without the church. { laughter }. What is unique to me about human beings is that we are self conscious. That because of self consciousness, we can transcend the limits of our humanity. A sheep can't get outside of being a sheep. But a human being can get outside of being a human being, and speculate about what it means to be human. I've never known a sheep to speculate about what it means to be a sheep. They just are content to be a sheep.

We are the only creature in the universe that can contemplate our maker. The only creature in the universe that can commune with the source of our life. That's really dramatic and I think we are important to be understanding of who God is. I'm sure that there would be God without human beings, but no one would know it! There's a new thing about human beings that we can commune with the reality of God and that's what makes us hopelessly religious people.

And the tragedy is that religion has turned so negative instead of uniting us to this powerful God person. It divides us from one another because each of us is claiming that we possess the true knowledge of God. We've got to get beyond that. That just won't do in the world we live in.
Marjorie. Thanks again.
Wayne. I think we have one more question.
Red. Bishop Spong, I'm a guest here tonight of Wayne. I haven't been part of this group here but I've heard a lot about you in the past. Have you been involved in any way, in the 12 Step Spirituality.
Jack. I can't hear you.
Red. Have you been involved or read anything in what is called the 12 Step Spirituality - the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous?
Jack. Sure, yeah, I had an alcoholic father and we know a lot about that.
Red. Dr. Dan Anderson, who was the President Emeritus of the Hazelden Foundation Minnesota, made the statement at a conference that I was at that (it was his own statement) that God's great gift to the 20th century (we're now in the 21st) was the 12 Step Program, which as I look at it, is quite Unitarian in concept, but is something which as a Christian person, has personally moved me very deeply, and its one I try to follow in my daily living. Talking about honesty, and openness, and willingness, and fellowship, and you know, connectedness with people, and very non-judgemental. Is this the kind of format that maybe the Christian churches might go for or any churches might go for?
Jack. Oh I certainly think that those aspects of AA where people are able to be who they are without pretending, where they are accepted for what they are, where nobody stands in judgement, that when you fall they try to lift you up instead of kicking you - which is what happens with so many Christians - I think that Christians shoot their wounded more often than they help their wounded - you know, I think those are the marks of what the church ought to be.

That's why it doesn't concern me greatly whether or not the church as an institution presently constructed lives or not. I'm not sure that some parts of it are worthy of living. But if we can begin to build community where people can come as they are, where they can be accepted as they are, that doesn't mean you have to accept all of their opinions, but you have got to accept the people.

Especially when we talk about homosexuality, people say do you mean we have to accept all the behaviour of homosexual people? No of course not! You also don't accept all the behaviour of heterosexual people - some of that's pretty awful - prostitutes and pimps, and all sorts things go on. Child molesting goes on in the heterosexual world. And of course we don't accept that. There's nothing life giving about that. But that doesn't mean that you don't accept people who are heterosexual. I've never known anyone to refuse to hire a heterosexual to teach school because they might molest children, but the fact of the matter is that far more heterosexuals molest children than people that are homosexual. But we don't think that way - we think irrationally out of our fears.

So I think that we've got a lot to do to build the church of the future. But I think that AA is one model. I wouldn't go quite go as far as the gentleman you quoted saying it was the greatest thing in the 20th century. If you've got a person whose life has been saved by AA, he would certainly think it's the greatest thing in the 20th century. And you give thanks for that experience without judging it ... but you know I think anytime you find a community ...

When I lived in a little town in Eastern North Carolina named Hawthorne, we had something called the Elk's Club which was thought of in proper society as the den of iniquity. It had slot machines and a lot of drinking went on over there. It was a sort of low-life community where the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers, the truck drivers and the cab drivers would have membership and the wives - they really didn't like to have wives there - some of the men would hide out - they'd go in and they'd play cards and they'd gamble and they'd drink.

And you know, I said one time that for many people, that's what the church is, their church is that Elk's Club because that's the only place where they're accepted just as they are. They were generally people that lived at the bottom of society and there, nobody could sort of scrape them and tell them how inadequate they were. Of course, when I said that it scandalized the proper religious folk around town and the next week lightning struck the Elk's Club. { laughter } What I was trying to say is that for those people, the Elk's Club is the one community where they felt loved and accepted and welcomed and I think there's something wonderful about that. We ought to recognize that that happens in lots of communities and lots of great AA ones among them.
Reference links. Emmanuel Episcopal Church in California has developed a little book on spiritual development with a chapter on 12 Step Spirituality. Dan Anderson died last February. Here's an article of his life and his contribution to the 12 Step Program.
Wayne. We have one more question.
Jack. I thought that's what you said last time! { laughter }
Betty. Bishop Spong, I have a personal question that I'm a bit nervous about because I'm afraid of the answer. But I heard you speak in front in Saskatoon last March - I think it was on homophobia - and you told us about each of your 4 daughters and their credentials and I believe it was your youngest I believe you said was the pilot in the US Army.
Jack. Marines. She never wanted to be in the Army. The US Marines.
Betty. Oh, sorry, but she was I believe a helicopter pilot and she was going to Iraq. And I've thought of you often and wondering if she's all right.
Jack. Well Rachael is home. She was over there for about 3 months. She's home, by that I mean she's at Camp Pendleton in California. There's always a chance that she will go back because that war is such a lousy war and the president has no earthly idea of what he was doing when he got us into that war and he has no idea about how to get us out of that war because he didn't have any plan. He thought everybody would welcome us and he was simply naive. Mr. Bush was terribly qualified when he was elected president, his total foreign experience was one trip to Mexico from Texas. (laughter) And I think we have a very serious crisis in this country. His surprise trip to Bahgdad is supposed to be a great coup, but I think that in the long run it will remind people what a terrible mess he's gotten this nation into. We don't a friend left in the world.
Betty. Well I hope she doesn't have to go again.
Jack. In Canada, my audiences have applauded. In Australia and New Zealand, give standing ovations. We're not a popular country in the world today. So, I'm glad she's home. God knows she may have to go back because that things going to be like Viet Nam before it's through. We're going to be heading out of that country probably forever. And we've made such a terrible mess of it. We now have a responsibility to do something to rebuild that nation.
Betty. Oh well, 'cause she's wonderful anyway.
Jack. Yes, she is wonderful. She'll be home for Christmas. We're looking forward to that. But thankyou for asking. She's a sweetheart and we're very fond of her and very very proud of her. She's fighting a war that neither her mother nor I approve but we have learned to let our children make their own decisions. We let them know what we think. We respect what they think.
Louise. We thank you for that. We learn from you. Can I ask you really, really just one more question? { laughter }
Christine. That's it guys!
Louise. OK, this is it. I was wondering if both of you have as difficult a time as I do, thinking about and celebrating Christmas among people who still have the very traditional views of Mary and the Birth and the whole Christmas Story.
Jack. Well, I don't have any trouble with that. Do you have any trouble with that Chris? We have Christ scenes out in our house. I just think they're beautiful and wonderful stories. In fact I think that if I had to believe that stars really did wander through the skies solely that Wise Men could follow them, and that Angels really did sing to Hillside Shepherds, and that the fetus in Elizabeth's womb could really leap to salute the fetus in Mary's womb, I think that if I really had to believe those things literally I would have given up those stories a long time ago. But I think the stories are wonderful and I'm in favour of telling them as stories because I think that what those stories are saying is that we've met something in Jesus that human life could not have, could never produce by itself.
END TELEPHONE CONFERENCE. Tape failed here - stuck for possibly 3 minutes. This was Jack's last answer. Jim then gave a heartfelt thankyou to Bishop Spong for his writing of the book and for the evening's conversation, making personal reference to attending a Spong seminar a few years ago in Calgary in 1999, and its importance to him then. The group was most appreciative of Jim's spontaneous thankyou as reflecting their own feelings and with that the connection was ended.
SPOOLDOWN. A general conversation continued, examining the matters of the course and the gentle strength of the Spongs. Again a few minutes are missing at the start till the tape picked up.
Jim. ... The book almost sounds like the right way to think about God and the helpful ways to think about God in our times in a non-theistic way. [ ??? ] I really appreciated reading the book. This was a really nice way for me to ... avoid an angry way. I was sort of uncomfortable with a "my way or the highway" image of God often on display.
Jock. Al, is your tongue bleeding? { laughter }
Al. He's a much more pastoral individual in person. { (general comments of agreement. } One must respect that.
Jock. Did some of your concerns through the book get softened by hearing the man in that sense?
Al. Well, no, if you'll read the book for it says ...
Jock. Agreed, but the man the author and the man the ...
Al. I certainly see in the man, the effort to reconcile, which never came up before. And so, I guess on balance, having heard the man, I see more than the [ ??? outrage ] of his book - somebody who is very dedicated, and trying, and sincere, in his beliefs, and equally naive. Naive in his belief that a new understanding of God will produce a new spontaneous morality. That's how he sums up his book. That if we get to know and understand God this way, a new world sense will arise. And therein lies the greatest deterent that this... that all those parallels that I've drawn to other ...
Jock. It's very interesting that you say that, because I don't get that at all from the book. My feeling is not so much that A then B, but that the A stands in the way of B. And I think that a lot of the issues that he covered tonight, whether it was the continued meaningfulness of a Christmas story, or whether it was the aspects of prayer where I thought he was a lot less rigourous and an awful lot more sentimental and an awful lot more something we could all identify with ...
Marjorie. ... and belief in an afterlife.
Jock. Yes, where he stood aside from Bob Funk and others was very interesting as well. I sort of see it not so much as if we get rid of God, we don't have good moral underpinings, so much as, here's this group of beliefs that he's arrived at, and I think he sees a central obstacle to be that - but I don't see a cause and effect there. What do the rest of you think of Al's point there?
Darlene. I found the book reading very uncomfortable - until the last 3 or 4 chapters.
Jock. Because of Al's point about the God thing being necessary to the rest of it?
Darlene. But when I listen to him now, it was he was a totally different person!
Others. ... Yes ... I kind of get that impression too. ... Yeah I found he's nice, he's gentle. I didn't find the book gentle by any stretch of the imagination. I did not find it gentle.
Jock. Often times through it Larry, you came to his defense, because you were particularly aware of his ... other works and so on, whereas for many in the group, this might have been their first introduction to this man' and in his retirement even. He's not as sharp as he was in some of his earlier work and so on.
Marjorie. I'd be interested in knowing of how many here of our class, that it was the first book they read of Spong.
{ Agreement. Hands raised a bit more than half. }
Georgie. And I agree. When I heard that he'd written another book and that he deals with the afterlife in it, ... because he didn't deal with the afterlife at all ... .[ ??? ] ... one of the things that bothered me in this book is he denigrated the idea that you were a person with a connection with God. But tonight, he didn't do that, he actually came to realize that he was trying to make points, but he wasn't saying that you can't have a personal connection.
Jennifer. When he was talking about prayer everybody kind of went like this { gestured a stepping back } { agreement } you know because of a personal connection. I think that's where most of the challenge for a physical connection with the church keeping it [ ??? ] for everybody at the same time.
Wayne. I think in a way he's the kind of author that is more emboldened to write bluster but when he comes to sharing interpersonally, he doen't have that in him. { general agreement }
Jock. Perhaps that's one of the reasons for his commercial success. { laughter |
Brenda 1. Perhaps when he's dealing with people, he's more careful when he says person to person than in his books.
Wayne. I think it's for effect.
Brenda 1. Gee, it's to create controversy and get you thinking. LIke, he says some of these things in a way that just knocks you over and we wonder who in the world would say this! And of course you're curious to go on.
Brenda 2. I just finished taking a course in church history at St. Stephens College, and I think that one of the things that we forget, is that when we read Chirstian history and of the Christian church ... I walked away feeling ... like this is nauseating ... it's one of the most disgusting accounts of what has happened over 2000 years that we tend to forget. [ ??? ] I'm talking about 2000 years of persecution. And I think that the one thing that comes out that understanding is that if ... I mean are we going to do this for another 2000 years folks? Or are we going to get real? { agreement }

I mean, I've met Spong, and when I worked at St. Stephen's College you couldn't ... I remember when he laughed, I cried, because I felt this must be what it's like to have met Jesus. I've never met a more kinder, more gentler, more attentive person. He will meet you and he will remember you. He'll remember meeting you. He's that kind of person. But at the same time, I think he's trying to say "Wake up and smell the coffee!", people.

And I think the point that he made that's really important is he is not ... I mean how many books has he written? 5, 6, 7, 8? I think that he is not going to say the same thing over and over again. Reading the Bible, taking lessons from the Bible from memory, he makes it really clear about this personal relationship with God. He makes it very clear how much he loves the Bible. He's not going to go over all that territory again, as a way of introducing himself into each book. So I think ...
Jock. Although he did, to some extent. One of the things that has come up from a variety of people noticing, was the high degree to which he quotes his earlier work to sort of assist people in that direction. { agreement }
Jim. One of the things that you know, that I was discussing ... I really appreciate the fact that he does quote himself as much as he does so we don't have to go through all those books { laughter }. You know, I think that sort of, intellectuals do this all the time ... You're the same person that wrote all those other things. And you know, I'm in a completely different field ... I'm quoting myself fairly frequently, not because you know it's that spectacular, but if you want more about a certain thing ... you know, here's what I think about that ... and I appreciate it in the book that he doesn't go over the same ...
Wayne. He's not politically correct. When he sees something going on in the Catholic church that he doesn't like, he says it. Whereas most of us who are Protestants at this day and age, would say, well yeah that's true, but we really shouldn't say that at this point. We don't want to, you know, upset anybody. He's the kind of person that doesn't, you know, suffer fools gladly, you might say. ...
Jock. Even look at the positive and negative things he said about the Unitarians. He upheld them and he also criticized. Well not so much criticized as differentiated himself from that.
Georgie. What he exemplified was a tremendous amount of courage. That's what communion is, to ... to go on, to go beyond all this ... with security, you know, the negative feelings that we get from those stories. And he recognizes that yes, there is a fear, that's a genuine one that we have, and cannot deny, because we don't ... we don't have the answers. And that's what I liked about his message tonight, was that he said, "Yes, we can't know the total of truth, we can't define God". And that to me was the crux of the whole thing. The more we start to say "We can define God, we have all the answers", that's when we close our minds, you know, and like he said, you can't, you know, approach true religion. [ ??? ]
Jock. What do you say about courage I think, is extremely central to a lot of this. One of the most successful images to replace the theistic one is the Tillich idea of "ground of being". He used it tonight. And Tillich said that the way to discover this ground of being is to have "the courage to be". Courage was his avenue to discovery of this "ground of being".
Georgie. And it's the faith to know that we will find it. And that's why even behind all the old ideas, it doesn't mean we're going out to where a faith where there's nothing. Or maybe if it is that's an exception just to know that we will feel that groundedness ...
Jock. But not a search for God, as we used to do, but a search for the ground of being, because the courage to be, means to be - it means activity, it means fellowship, it means relationship and that's not in the desert, that's with your neighbours, that's with the church in its active form, and that's why courage is not necessary in the desert, it's necessary in the streets.
Georgie.. That's what I think too - out among the people. To isolate yourself into groups or churchs or anything is not a [ ??? ] of Christianity but to go out where the people are and maybe they don't believe anything like you do, and you never thought you might learn something from.
Jock. What do you think Georgie, of what he said so often "This is what I find meaningful, and I'm not going to shove it down anybody's throat."?
Georgie. Yeah, I like that. You know, you don't shove any of your ideas down anybody's throat because everyone has a different interpretation or understanding or Christian experience and you can't nullify your own Christian experience because somebody says "I don't believe you."
Jock. We went down an avenue similar to that a long time ago though didn't we Jim, about "Does that mean anything goes?" ... and I think it was, that not anything goes.
Georgie. No. Definitely. It just means that when you deal with other people, you accept them for what they believe, what they are, and then you just journey with them, you try to help them get better thoughts, better beliefs, better actions, better whatever, and hope that some of them will do the same for you and you'll get better too in the process! But, you do not [ change ??? ]other often and not talk to each other or point your finger and say "Oh, don't do that" [ ??? ] well wham, you know, I mean don't have to deal with that person or believe that, or "Don't try that because it might destroy your faith." It shouldn't destroy your faith.
Jock. All that you've been saying Georgie, reminds me of the thought that Red introduced tonight about the AA being an interesting model. What did you think of Spong's answer to the point you raised then?
Red. Oh, what I'm hearing from him is that it's one model. I find it a very acceptable model for a lot of people. I work with [???] and you know, miracles happen, we see it every day, when these people go on it, actually miracles that some people coming out of a, you know, snake pit of life, and just rising up and {thrown] a whole new life and there's a resurrection right in front of you. It's marvellous to behold. And it's why I got involved in AA. And I know that it has profound effect on ... has changed my whole relationship with my mother ... totally totally changed the relationship with my mother ... a good from what was a sick relationship. When I started getting honest with her, and taking a stand with her, and letting go of being her prized son with a good education and everything, my life changed. [ ??? ] huge. That's what it did for me anyway.

What the church ought to have done for me, and the Christian faith, AE, was, that 12 Step Program did for me and the church didn't. And that's what I continue to use as my healing meditation, the 12 Step Program.
Jennifer. [ ??? ] I think in some sense that spong is simplifying [ ??? ] things for very individual [ tastes ]. Individual relationships vary. Individuals challenge courage, etc etc etc, or his individual answer. I will understate this. And yet in publishing books he read big figures you know. He doesn't want to throw a big church together 'cause it's individual [ ??? ] huh! [ ??? ] I think it's bad. It wasn't a church [ ??? ]
Mary. He's very big on community.
Wayne. We're getting near the end. Does anyone want to make a comment? We don't want to shut anybody off.
Jim. Can I have 2 cents worth on the courage please? I think the topic is another separate and interesting and important thing for discussion this evening. I think there was a part when we were talking about prayer and the people recoiling a bit ... one of the things happened to me was quite the opposite .. I mean I was pulling up my chair.

I think that what I really found in spiritual contemplation is that there is an enormous wealth of power and strength that you can draw on. God is right there, and will be. And some of the things that I've gone through in my own, have called for that courage. In getting off an airplane ... it's beyond the point where there's a [ ??? ] people where my father died. My father's going to die. I need strength to help my father and strength to help my mother and my sister. And the feelings of this today is you know, just is ... you sometimes hear it sensed that God is weak and unable to view ... to sort of change their life. My own experience is God is strong. You can tap into that and it's very remarkable. And you see the reason for me ... it's one of the first times that I really became aware of how important God was - at that Spong seminar - and that's why I wanted to say thankyou. I hadn't time to go into detail as to why I wanted to say what I wanted to say, but that was the event in the evening that made me go off my chair and want to thank him.
Wayne. That was a very authentic thought. Thankyou.
Brenda 2. I just wanted to comment that when Spong takes all this stuff away, what remains for me, is everyone in the church - the church itself all through the ages ... continues to be heard. And that core is what it comes back down to today, it usually works out to that.
Jock. It seems one of the characteristics of Christian history that you were pointing out that it has been continuously regenerative and multi-voiced and many communities. The message, the core as you say, is always there to be discovered fresh again with each generation, and each new circumstance. We just need to be careful of what our interpretation of those 2 simple things is.
Deb. What's our comment about the man for himself? From reading the book, I came across this impression of a pragmatic, very point driven man, yet after the conversation that he had, he's [ ??? ] himself, though he doesn't believe the [ ??? ] - he still considers himself a [ ??? ]... that was very interesting for me to gain a sense of ... throughout this conversation ... because the book is very pragmatic, very .. this is you know, the block to us ... it is, it's a very hard read ... it is very "edge" ... yes
[ change of tape - in the flip over time Al appears to have raised a question.]
Larry. ... They could work out the problems of a Kosher kitchen - the whole bit - and they say "That's what we do at the liberal United Church and the liberal Synagogue! Wow!". You could something, Al, from that text which is ... yes he does attack liberalism. He does it in his autobiography too, but that's quite select. He'll be looking at the problems of conservatives and how they've done ... yes, over and over again ... but there's also these weaknesses in liberals as well.
Darren. Also if you read the quote, he says that liberal solutions that focus the church on these things ... I think his point is that the church has spiritually been displaced ... and the social action and so on today.
Wayne. I'm conscious of the time. { laughter } and I really think we've had a really wonderful ending to this 10 week series { agreement } but we have a special and particular person to lead us in our final thoughts. Just before you have your final words, I just want to remind everybody that the winter series will be on Ron Rolheiser's book, The Holy Longing. We've got books here. Monday nights will begin again on the 11th of January, and go for 8 weeks. So if you are interested in that you are welcome, and if you are guests tonight I hope you'll not think you're guests anymore. { agreement }.
CLOSING - Thelma. .I feel a bit apologetic about this - I'm about a week late on it. Last week we had a bit of difficulty getting ourselves deciding just how we had done at the meeting and this pertains to this really. I want to share with you some of my favourite things.

The first treasure is a short text. These 8 words sustained me in times of trouble and in times of great anxiety, when I could not even find words to pray. These words appear in the 46th Psalm in the 10th verse."Be still and know that I am God."

We were having trouble defining how we found God - do you remember that, last week? at the end of the meeting? Well we hear a lot today about dynamism, energy and jet-setting, and couch potatoes even, but not much about stillness. [ ??? ] Most people take holidays and some go on retreats. Others have regular prayer, worship times. We like to go to the mountains or the coast or somewhere in the country. There seems to be a basic need to get away from our busy man-made activities. I think it is our need to be still, to be still and "know that I am God." So here then our only relationship is to hear what our own relationship is to God.

This is the second treasure. When I was quite a small child I had a red sled and a great hill behind my home on which to slide. One day I tired of sliding so I rested on my sled. As I lay there looking up at the sky, and clouds, I saw above me the smiling face of God. And I was very happy. I was about 6 or 7 years old. I was happy with the time of happiness that comes from the sure and certain knowledge that God was in the heavens and in charge of my world. Now if you were thinking, "Oh, just the play of light and shadow, coupled with a child's imagination," I would have to agree, but I would remind you of a third element. It was stillness. Also I must ask you "Who do you suppose gives to us all the great good gifts of 'light and shadow'? And who but God gives a child the gift of imagination?" I suggest to you that God is here and everywhere. That in times of stillness, we do hear for example. And each of us knows great joy and assurance when this happens

And the third thing I was going to do is to read to you Bliss Carmen's poem, but I won't read it all to you, because it's long. This is called Vestigia .
Vestigia
I took a day to search for God,
and found him not. But as I trod
By rocky ledge, through woods untamed,
Just where one scarlet lily flamed,
I saw his footprint in the sod.
Then Suddenly, all unaware,
Far off in the deep shadows, where
A solitary Hermit Thrush
Sang thru the holy twilight hush
I heard His voice upon the air.
And even as I marvelled how
God gives us Heaven here and now
In a stir of wind that hardly shook
The Poplar leaves beside the brook
His hand was light upon my brow.
At last with evening as I turned
Homeward, and thought what I had learned
And all that there was still to probe
I caught the glory of His robe
Where the last fires of sunset burned.
Back to the world with Quickening start
I looked and longed for any part
In making saving Beauty be
And from that kindling ecstasy
I knew God dwelt within my heart.
Bliss Carmen
I think we need stillness, and lots of stillness. We need to be beside the brook and hear that nature, and just be quiet., if you want to contact God.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas. { applause }
Reference links. This excellent poem Thelma shared was also used by Richard Fairchild who hosts the Kir-Shalom and United Online sites in Kelowna. His sermon God Is In Us - To Will And To Work fits the God focus of our study and Thelma's ending very appropriately. Hear the song of the Hermit Thrush courtesy of Tony Phillips.
If there is a jumping off point from here, it might well be the next study. For Fr. Ron Rolheiser's Holy Longing is all about the practical aspects of spirituality in the context of the issues Bishop Spong has raised. Check out Wayne's review in the Western Catholic Reporter.
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St. David's United Church.Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
December 26, 2003