![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/533\/2017\/11\/grand-canyon-1235221_960_720.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a quiet weekend so I pulled out a book I had picked up at the library, Unbelievable, Why Neither Ancient Creeds Nor the Reformation Can Produce a Living Faith Today<\/em>, by John Shelby Spong.<\/p>\n Yes, that<\/em> Spong, who is still writing at the age of 87, though in the introduction he says it\u2019s his last book because of a stroke.\u00a0 I started to read the book, then concluded that hate-reading isn\u2019t a particularly good use of my time, so I wanted to briefly reflect on a few of the things he says in the first few chapters, and in my skim of the rest.<\/p>\n His general theme for the duration of his career has been a rejection of Christian belief.\u00a0 While I haven\u2019t read other things he\u2019s written, he\u2019s pretty unrelenting here:\u00a0 it\u2019s not just a matter of what he believes, but he writes that traditional Christian beliefs, even the very idea of a \u201cmiracle\u201d or some sort of supernatural intervention in the world, is patently unbelievable<\/em>.\u00a0 \u00a0No one believes this anymore, he says, not anyone who\u2019s got half a brain, and if a seemingly-educated and intelligent person tells you otherwise, say, a minister in a mainline denomination, they\u2019re lying.<\/p>\n But he still claims to be a Christian, and to believe in \u201cChristianity\u201d as he defines it for himself.\u00a0 What\u2019s it mean?\u00a0 It\u2019s his version of the sort of Jesus-ism that we\u2019ve seen before, that Jesus, if properly understood and shorn of supernaturalism, was the Great Role Model.<\/p>\n And the rest of his creed is this:\u00a0 God is the Source of Life and the Source of Love.\u00a0 I am not certain if he believes there is a transcendent supernatural \u201csomething\u201d or if it is merely that God is the sum of all those experiences in which we feel and experience something<\/em> transcendent, whatever it is.\u00a0 He proclaims that, whatever God is, he has \u201cexperienced God.\u201d\u00a0 And what we are all called to do is to be on a mission of self-improvement, \u201cto be all that I can be\u201d and to \u201ctransform the world\u201d into a better place.<\/p>\n But the argument of the book is not merely, \u201cthis is what I believe; come believe it with me,\u201d but rather \u201cif Christianity wants to live on as a religion, it must adapt and preach according to my prescription.\u201d\u00a0 The next generation simply will not believe anything else, but is still seeking:<\/p>\n there was, and I suspect continues to be, a yearning for a meaningful religious experience or, at least to have one\u2019s life enhanced by something beyond itself.\u00a0 (p. 5)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So his prescription is that, however much Christianity might have had as its original purpose the conversion of souls, it can find a new lease on life, much like the March of Dimes moving on from polio to birth defects, by switching to a goal of helping people find meaning and purpose.<\/p>\n Which, on the one hand, seems awfully cynical, yet also pretty much in line with all those insisting that because people don\u2019t believe in, say, traditional Christian sexual ethics, we have to abandon them.<\/p>\n