Octogenarian Modernist Has No Regrets

In a recent interview, 82-year-old retired Episcopal bishop John Spong says he has no regrets for his liberal views. During his long career as an Episcopal minister, Spong has denied every cardinal doctrine of the Bible, including the virgin birth, vicarious atonement, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. In his 1988, book Living in Sin: A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality , Spong said, "The time has surely come not just to tolerate, or even to accept, but to celebrate and welcome the presence among us of our gay and lesbian fellow human beings" (p. 199). That year Spong visited a Buddhist temple and said, "As the smell of incense filled the air, I knelt before three images of the Buddha, feeling that the smoke could carry my prayers heavenward. It was for me a holy moment for I was certain that I was kneeling on holy ground" ("A Dialogue in a Buddhist Temple," John Spong, The Voice, Jan. 1989). In his 1991 book Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Spong called the apostle Paul "a self hating, repressed homosexual," and in 1998 Spong said, "I would choose to loathe rather than to worship a deity who required the sacrifice of his son" (Christianity Today, June 15, 1998). In the recent interview, Spong said that the time in which he made such statements "was really a very exciting time" and he is proud of the fact that by his retirement in 2000, his own diocese "had 35 openly gay and lesbian clergy" ("An Aging Maverick," Religious News Service, Oct. 10, 2013). Spong's days on this earth are quickly drawing to an end, but he will have plenty of time to regret his apostasy.

(Friday Church News Notes, October 18, 2013, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143)

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