Aging maverick.
Posted on 10/19/2013 7:19:42 PM PDT by boatbums
At 82, retired and enjoying life, Bishop John Shelby Spong doesn’t have to be the liberal enfant terrible whose pronouncements for gay rights and against traditional dogmas once scandalized Christendom. Indeed, many of the views that once turned the Charlotte native and former Episcopal bishop of Newark into a lightning rod are now regarded as so matter-of-fact that they barely occasion much notice: Ordaining gay clergy and blessing same-sex marriages, for example, or having a female presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman elected to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion.
On a range of issues, Spong can point to advancements that he helped push during a long and remarkable career – 20 years as a priest in North Carolina and Virginia and 24 years as a bishop in Newark. Through it all, Spong never retreated an inch. By the time he retired in 2000, his own diocese had 35 openly gay and lesbian clergy, and he also helped promote a new generation of church leaders who can carry his progressive torch: 11 clerics from his tenure are now bishops, more than from any other diocese, he says. At the same time, Spong also became a best-selling author who routinely, and infamously, questioned long-held doctrines and literal interpretations of the Bible. The Virgin Birth, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the historical accuracy of Jesus’ sayings in the Gospels – all these and much more were targets of Spong’s pointed pen during his heyday. “It was really a very exciting time,” he said of the fight for rights for gays and women. “That battle was very controversial. But that battle is so over today. That battle is won.”
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/10/17/4394687/an-aging-maverick-charlotte-native.html##storylink=cpy
(Excerpt) Read more at charlotteobserver.com ...
After he dies he might have a few.
One of many Anti-Christs... And there’s something about a millstone and the deep blue sea that awaits Spong’s reward.
Just another reprobrate scumbag.
People like those nice big churches .....regardless of whats being taught there.
Spong is Wrong
Another achievement. The Episcopalian Church went from 4.2 million to 2.4 million members during this same period. And it continues to fall.
The Episcopal Church was once a fine and beautiful denomination. The homosexuals must have noticed that and pretty much took over...very sad.
Aging maverick.
John Spong is a character right out of a C. S. Lewis book.
Unfortunately for him, it’s the Episcopal Ghost from “The Great Divorce”.
Add to those heresies, he denied the immutable sin of homosexuality. It IS a choice people make since there is NO "gay," "bisexual" or "asexual-nonsexual" gene. Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve or Adam, Steve, Mary, Joan, etc.
Reprobate scumbag...you have an accurate way with words.
A raging heretic. . . .
There, fixed it.
So, not only does he completely IGNORE historical Christianity AS written by the first Christians who WERE eyewitnesses to the accounts of Jesus as told in the Gospels, he ignorantly denies that Greek was the lingua franca of Palestine ever since Alexander the Great (300's B.C.) as well as the Jewish religious leaders would have NO reason whatsoever to write favorably about a person they rejected nationally as the promised Messiah (even though that WAS one of the prophecies concerning the true Messiah). It's too bad that people respect a man because of status and supposed intellectualism yet neglect to do even a minimal amount of deductive reasoning and research on their own. I wonder how many he has lead away from the truth and WILL answer for at the Judgment?
As do all protestants.
whatever, the damage he’s done continues on today.
Nor were the congregations Spong "pastored."
In fact, the diocese of which he was bishop - across its 100 parishes combined - had smaller Sunday attendance than many individual congregations in Evangelical or Catholic churches.
Newark's diocesan cathedral is half the size of my local Catholic parish and probably an eighth the size of a Saddleback.
Spong's real "congregation" has always been the media and academia.
Thanks.
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