John Shelby Spong’s Seriously Supportive Statement

This morning John Shelby Spong was kind enough to write and send me this:

John Shore is a gadfly, calling the Christian Church everywhere to act the way it says it believes about love and justice, which of course makes him an uncomfortable presence in those churches that do not like to be forced to face reality. So were the prophets of old. So was Jesus of Nazareth.

And he wrote what he did knowing of my 16-point theological expression—the first point of which I imagine caused the great progressive lion to roll his eyes.

But what do I know? Perhaps it didn’t. All I do know is that today Jack Spong (as he’s known to those of us who learned that via the email he sent us this morning), the indefatigable proponent of feminism, gay rights, and racial equality within both the church and society at large—one of our time’s great champions of the underrepresented and oppressed—today went out of his way to encourage me in my work. And for that I will certainly always be most deeply appreciative.