“The issue for me is that God seems to be on the wrong side of most issues,” Spong said in a telephone interview. “The public God we see today is mostly opposed to abortion and gay and lesbian people, and I find that really rather fascinating.”
Thirty-some years ago, God was mostly mentioned in the context of the anti-war and civil rights movements, Spong said.
“That was the public voice of Christianity,” he said. “Now it’s the Religious Right, centered in the South and basically homophobic and anti-female.”