A participant in the life and struggles of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A. for more than a decade, I heard of John Shelby Spong many years ago. I first heard of the controversial former bishop of Newark when the media trumpeted his debunking of the dogma of the Virgin Birth of Jesus. I was caught up in my own struggle with my Christian faith and didn't look up the bishop's views.
Half Price Books here at Castleton has been my serendipitous source of books. Last week it yielded me a dollar clearance copy of Spong's Why Christianity Must Change Or Die. He was scheduled to retire from the bishop's chair in 2001 so this was in effect a manifesto summing up the 21 years he had spent as bishop (from the Greek, episkopos, from epi 'above' + skopos '-looking') and defining his faith for himself and his flock. In particular, he addressed the book to "my audience of seekers and searchers, to those who are either members of the church alumni association or who still hang onto their Christian identity by the skin of their teeth."
Today if forced to categorize myself between these two groups I would have to say I am a "church alumnus" but perhaps like the bishop himself since this book was published I don't merit even this category. I feel I have moved out completely from the two categories the good bishop addressed in 1998. What I am hanging onto by the skin of my teeth is not Christian identity or even theistic belief in God but religion itself.
For years the people who have entered my life tell me they are "not religious but spiritual." These are largely educated, worldly sophisticated and materially successful Americans and Europeans whose fundamental stance was profoundly challenged on September 11, 2001 when the U.S. was attacked by Islamic fundamentalists. Islam is still largely a religion of people who like the minority but vocal Christian fundamentalists cling to outdated notions about God and religion in the face of scientific and technological discoveries they nonchalantly use daily without seeing their incompatibility with what they believe.
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