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A New Christianity in a New World
John Shelby Spong, HarperSanFrancisco, 2002

There can be no more difficult task in the Church today than to attempt to change the way its members think about God and Jesus. It requires both courage and imagination in the face of an aggressive resistance which tenaciously clings to tradition in the face of all reason.

To put it another way: If John Spong had written this book in 17th century England he would have been burnt at the stake as a vile heretic. Fortunately, Spong has retired from his work as an Anglican bishop. He is now more or less beyond retribution by the system.

If I had been Spong's editor, I might have suggested that he put the last chapter first. This is because it consists of a personal witness which sets the tone for the rest of the book. He writes:

I have tried for a lifetime to live faithfully, if not always comfortably, within the confining boundaries of the institution called the church ... But I no longer believe that this institution - or the Christian faith as this church has traditionally proclaimed it - can continue to live without dramatic change in our post-theistic world.

The book is something of a catch-all. The first part consists of material which Spong has covered elsewhere. He is deeply concerned with the effects of literal interpretations of the Bible and deals with the results in some detail. This focus is understandable if you are a North American. In Europe such people have less influence and so Spong's emphasis is consequently of relatively less interest in those parts.

A central thesis of this book is Spong's conviction that theism is a dead way of construing the divine. His arguments are compelling, if perhaps a little shopworn for anyone who has already explored this territory.

That Jesus neither claimed to be the Messiah nor allowed others to claim that for him is old hat. Also well known is that Jesus as God or the "Son of God" was an interpretation of the early Church. Many weighty tomes have covered every detail of the gradual building of Jesus into the second person of the Holy Trinity.

Spong supplies the missing element - a frank acknowledgement by someone high up in the Church's leadership that none of this means much to people today. That does not, of course, render it "untrue". It was a valid expression of faith for the times. We must not denigrate our forebears in the faith for having taken it seriously. But it will not do for the open modern mind. If only Spong had made this point forcefully ten years before retiring ...

The struggle now, as Spong points out, is to find new ways of expressing the divine in place of the traditional teachings of the Church. Lying behind the massive body of Christian teachings is "something" about Jesus. It compelled Christians to use as their image of God a person who cares for each of us as a parent cares for a child. Spong continues:

It is that "something", that God-presence, that we seek to find. That "something" antedates the theistic takeover, and because it does, it does not have to die when theism collapses.

Spong thinks that when all the add-ons are stripped away, when the ancient sacrificial images are put aside, the figure of Jesus will retain the ability to bring the God-presence to us. And explore that possibility we must, for unless we restore to Jesus this pride of place we can expect the worst.

I can offer no security that will enable seekers to risk this journey with confidence. In fact, the reformation I am proposing may well kill Christianity ... The greater risk which motivates me ... is the realization that a refusal to enter the reformation will certainly kill Christianity.

The first step in restoring the power of Jesus is to restore his full humanity. Spong is refreshingly honest. It will not do to continue to make Jesus into God. Spong proposes that Jesus become the way into God for those who so choose.

Jesus will always be for me the standard by which I measure the God-presence of any other. I can view him in no other way. In that sense ... he remains for me the way, the truth, and the life, the doorway through which I enter the holiness of God.

It helped me when reading this book to recall that Spong is a thinking preacher (not, thank goodness, a preaching thinker). As such he tends towards hyperbole and somewhat loose statement. So, for example, he advances a theory about why and how human beings originally adopted theism. The fact is that there is no hard evidence to support him. We can only guess at the processes by which humanity invented God.

Similarly, I'm not sure that Spong understands the meaning of "hysteria" in the sense that he uses it. He thinks of hysteria as uncontrolled emotion which was held in check by theism. This is not what is usually meant by the term in clinical psychology. Nor is it likely that theism controlled it. Just the opposite - theism has provided an excuse for the emotional excess which energises fundamentalist unreason and unreasoning persecution of those who oppose Church authority.

What mediates and thus positively channels emotion is reason, not religion. Spong must be careful when he offers wide conclusions on so narrow a base. Indeed, it is reason which now spells the inevitable death of traditional doctrines - not the loss of a personal, other-worldly deity.

Spong is not at his best when dealing with theism. What he says will no doubt help some and perhaps persuade others. But the problem is that God belongs to everyone, not just to Christians. There are many more constructs of God in the world than Spong's theism. Above all, while God is in some sense central to being Christian, theism does not define a Christian. It is a deep, personal attachment to Jesus of Nazareth that sets some aside as Christians, not just a certain type of "belief in God".

What then are we to make of Jesus? This is the crunch - and it is here that Spong gets into his stride. "I cannot remember a time," he writes, "when Jesus was not important to me." He continues:

I do not come to the task of seeking to redefine Jesus easily or lightly ... as I approach this subject, I am not an objective bystander ... Yet I must for my own integrity's sake seek to answer the question ... "Who do you say that I am?"

The chapter Jesus Beyond Incarnation comes alive in a way previous chapters on theism do not. Spong is forced to play some word games in order to express what he means when he tries re-envisioning Jesus. But that in entirely forgivable since, by his own admission, he is venturing into a world where few bishops have gone before.

I have little doubt that the ways in which Spong has sought to express his non-theistic understanding of Jesus will prove most valuable to any seeker who reads this chapter. While his Jesus is still somewhat skeletal, the general direction of Spong's thinking is challenging and exciting.

It is important to note, I think, that the chapter Original Sin is Out; the Reality of Evil is In fails in most respects to get to grips with the problem of sin. It's all very well to demolish the now wicked doctrine of original sin. What sensible soul would wish to harbour that serpent? But nobody today that I know of has come to grips with the concept of sin in today's world. We are gradually beginning to formulate a concept of evil which is divorced from satanic demons. Unfortunately, Spong doesn't seem aware of these beginnings.

However, readers should keep in mind in the latter chapters that Spong was for many years an ecclesiastical civil servant, officially vested in preserving the Christian tradition's appearance of verity and probity. His observations about evangelism, prayer (that perennial "must have" of Christian living) and the ecclesiastical establishments are consequently both interesting and stimulating.

Spong correctly focuses on what exiled Christians are to do about the Church. How is it possible to stay in the hallowed pews if Jesus is not God and God is dead? Nothing obvious presents itself and Spong admits that he doesn't know what lies ahead in the long run. But I suspect that he's too sanguine about the Church of tomorrow. Will it die?

That is what the process will look like initially, but that is not what will occur ... sources of new life will feed individual communities of faith within dying worldwide churches and denominations.

If he is correct, I wonder how the Christian establishment in its many forms will be able to tolerate rank heresy within. Even in the broad Church of England, for instance, there are apparently inexorable moves to outlaw free speech from the pulpit. Any clergy who break ranks and expose the stupidities of much doctrine will feel the lash of canon law.

In other words, I suspect that Spong has failed to grasp the enormity of the challenge which faces the Church. That challenge is not merely how to understand God and Jesus if you are a Christian. It's how to understand God and Jesus if you're a normal secular person living in an almost totally secular society, and how live out that understanding amongst those for whom it is to all intents and purposes irrelevant.

In this situation a mere reformation such as Spong envisages is unlikely to get very far. I don't like to talk of revolution, for that sort of change destroys without altering the fundamentals. The latter take a very long time to modify.

Even if not a revolution, I think that what must happen before Jesus takes a new lease of life in the world is much more radical than Spong imagines. Having said that, this book is an excellent introduction to the Christian exile seeking new life and light in the name of Jesus.

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