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I read an obituary today in my local paper. It was for Bishop John Shelby Spong who died this month at the ripe old age of 90. I had heard him talk on the radio in the mid-eighties and he came across as a radical Anglican with modern views. He openly admitted that he considered himself an atheist and then went on to explain that he believed in God, it was Organised Religion he had a problem with. Well, they had a problem with him at times. He was ordained in 1955 and served in North Carolina and Virginia before becoming Bishop of Newark, New Jersey where he stayed for 24 years.
You may ask why I am posting this; well, he ordained the first Englishwoman in 1981 and Britain did not do the same until 1994.
He also ordained the first openly gay priest in the USA in 1989 - an act that led to a great debate and finally to same-sex marriages in 2012.
He was well spoken and logical but wanted to bring the Episcopal church into the 21st Century, something that caused a great deal of backlash from his peers.
He wrote 26 books and travelled widely and was, by far, the most intelligent priest I ever heard on the radio.
That he was declared 'public enemy number one' by the Eastern North Carolina Ku Klux Klan says it all.
He would have hated the Trump era.
Marianne G
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I remember Jack Spong
He was hired as the minister (rector) at the church I grew up in when I was a teenager.
At the time, I was thoroughly disenchanted with the church and the people there and with religion in general. This was in the South -- you know, the place where the past isn't dead, it isn't even past. The whole city worshiped tradition and the past and doing things the way they'd always been done, and our church in particular. For instance, the pew we usually sat in was right behind Jefferson Davis's pew (there was a little plaque saying so), and over on the side closest to the Virginia State Capitol was the pew that General Robert E. Lee was sitting in when they came to tell him the Yankees were getting ready to take Richmond (at least, that's what everyone said.) Original thought was, let us say, not welcome in Virginia, at least not in those days. I was convinced that the church and religion in general and probably the entire adult world was all just snobbery and pretentiousness and self-worship and ancestor worship and hypocrisy, and had started telling everyone I was an atheist, just to shut them up.
So you can imagine the reaction when Jack Spong became rector. (I guess there must have been some less backward people there, or he would never have been hired.) He actually thought about things, and wasn't content to do things just because they'd always been that way. For instance, he challenged the practice of the minister "blessing the hounds" before their fox hunts. He instituted a bible study before the Sunday service (which was pretty well attended), where he discussed all kinds of (by Richmond standards) radical new ideas. (The Passover Plot was one of them.)
He had a huge effect on me. He was like a breath of fresh air in the intellectually stale, stuffy tomb that was Richmond, VA in the 1960's. It was the first time in my life that I'd heard anyone express a thought that hadn't been thought back in Robert E. Lee's day. Everyone still looked at me like I was a Martian, but at least now I had the feeling that I wasn't the only Martian on the planet.
To the extent I can see any value in religion at all, it's due to Jack Spong.
Organised Religion
I'm not surprised that someone would have trouble with "Organized Religion". Religion is man's attempt to reach God. Somehow they get the idea that they can whip themselves in shape to earn their place in heaven. They invent rules more and more strict to attain the goal. As a result they repel more people than they attract.
Christianity, on the other hand, is God's attempt to reach man. It's about a relationship with God. It's not made up of rules and regulations, but the same kind of love a parent has for a child. I have a daughter that really walked the wrong direction for a long while. During that time, I was displeased with her, but I always loved her, even when she went against everything I had taught her. That's like the God of Christianity.
I've never heard of Bishop John Shelby Spong, but I've heard of the Anglican church. Anglicans generally are pretty legalistic. I can understand their displeasure with a Bishop that rocked there "live by the rule" norm. He sounds like my kind of Bishop.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Not Much to Dislike
Maybe an inch or two too practical.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
The Morals of King Henry VIII
The Church of England separated from the roman catholic church when the pope would not grant Henry VIII an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. To this day the English Crown is the head of the Church of England. The Church of England is the "mother church" for the Anglican Communion churches world wide. The fracturing of the Catholic church into the many different protestant denominations is fascinating. It is broad and deep and includes some amazing and horrible stories.
It is heartening to see good people within these denominations. John Shelby Spong appears to be one of them. I'm sure he will be missed.
Peace
Crescenda
AKA
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Crash