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The Non-Tribal Religion of the Future?

I stopped being a Christian minister forty years ago, and don’t now attend any church, but I’d gladly have listened to the late Bishop John Shelby Spong. And if I were to have my time over again, this is along the lines of what I’d want to say, not that it might be welcomed. Bishop Spong was loved by the few, but hated and reviled by many. I’ve here juxtaposed a quote from Albert Einstein with the conclusion of a talk by Shelby Spong. At the end, I’ve added a link to the talk it comes from. Not many may listen to it – it’s 50 minutes long, which is 49 too many for lots of folk in these ‘tweety’ days of ours. But if you still have any interest at all in religion, it’s well worth listening to, and thinking about ….  

Bishop John Shelby Spong.

“It’s a life-centred, human-centred God who calls us out of our tribal prejudices, and the worship of our tribal deities. And this God calls us not to be religious. God knows, we’ve got quite enough religion in this world, and most of it is quite destructive. God’s call is to be fully human – to live, love, and be – and then try to build a world where everybody, whether white or black, male or female, gay or straight, bi-sexual or transgender, has a better opportunity to be all that each of us, in the infinite variety and fullness of our humanity, can be. 

Unless this God of the future is finally perceived, I don’t  think there is any future for the enterprise that we call religion. And if religion has no future, then I think it’s fair to say that neither does humanity. For humanity is marked most uniquely by its yearning, and its driving out beyond its limits, into a full humanity that finally opens into the divinity that marks this universe. 

I want to see a religious revival that centres in our humanity, that is dedicated to building a more human and humane world, and I think every religion of the world can participate in that kind of humanity. We can each walk the path of our own cultural religious tradition, but never be limited by that, for the pathway to God always goes beyond the religious systems of men and women the world over. 

God is not a Christian, or a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. God is that ultimate dimension of life to which each of those systems must point, and we must walk through our faith systems, never making an idol out of them  We walk through them, to escape their limits, and to enter into the mystery and the wonder of what God is. That’s where the future of religion lies.

calgacus83

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11 responses to “The Non-Tribal Religion of the Future?”

  1. SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ avatar
    SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

    Dear Ray,

    Indeed! I have known of the late John Shelby “Jack” Spong (June 16, 1931 – September 12, 2021) for more than two decades. He was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church, whose “Twelve Points for Reform” were elaborated in his 2001 book entitled A New Christianity for a New World:

    Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
    Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
    The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
    The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
    The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
    The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
    Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
    The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
    There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
    Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
    The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
    All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

    Spong was one of the first American bishops to ordain a woman into the clergy, in 1977. He was the first to ordain an openly gay man, Robert Williams, in 1989. In his 1991 book entitled “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture”, Spong argued that St Paul was homosexual.

    All in all, the late John Shelby Spong was to religion what the late Edward Osborne Wilson was to science, as discussed in my post entitled We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology“, published at

    http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/we-have-paleolithic-emotions-medieval-institutions-and-god-like-technology/

    This is a very substantial and topically important post, even dealing with the fundamental problems and the existential crisis of the human species, looming ever larger. I look forward to your perusing my said post and welcome your input and feedback there.

    I am delighted to have come across your writings. In light of your intellectual pursuits and analytical interests that have so far come across in many of the well-reasoned essays that I have perused on your blog, I am certainly very curious of what you will make of my lengthy post regarding Wilson.

    Wishing you a productive November doing or enjoying whatever that satisfies you the most, including but not limited to composing highly commendable blog posts!

    Yours sincerely,
    SoundEagle

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  2. SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ avatar
    SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

    Dear Ray,

    Hello! This is my second attempt at submitting this long and detailed comment.

    Indeed! I have known of the late John Shelby “Jack” Spong (June 16, 1931 – September 12, 2021) for more than two decades. He was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church, whose “Twelve Points for Reform” were elaborated in his 2001 book entitled A New Christianity for a New World:

    Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
    Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
    The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
    The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
    The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
    The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
    Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
    The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
    There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
    Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
    The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
    All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

    Spong was one of the first American bishops to ordain a woman into the clergy, in 1977. He was the first to ordain an openly gay man, Robert Williams, in 1989. In his 1991 book entitled “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture”, Spong argued that St Paul was homosexual.

    All in all, the late John Shelby Spong was to religion what the late Edward Osborne Wilson was to science, as discussed in my post entitled We have Paleolithic Emotions; Medieval Institutions; and God-like Technology“, published at

    http://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2021/12/31/we-have-paleolithic-emotions-medieval-institutions-and-god-like-technology/

    This is a very substantial and topically important post, even dealing with the fundamental problems and the existential crisis of the human species, looming ever larger. I look forward to your perusing my said post and welcome your input and feedback there.

    I am delighted to have come across your writings. In light of your intellectual pursuits and analytical interests that have so far come across in many of the well-reasoned essays that I have perused on your blog, I am certainly very curious of what you will make of my lengthy post regarding Wilson.

    Wishing you a productive November doing or enjoying whatever that satisfies you the most, including but not limited to composing highly commendable blog posts!

    Yours sincerely,
    SoundEagle

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    1. calgacus83 avatar
      calgacus83

      Thanks for this, and for your kind comments. I have a number of Spong’s books and have a high regard for him. Your paragraphs on Theism etc. make an excellent, concise summary of my own thoughts. I couldn’t have written it any better than you have done. I’ll certainly read your Wilson post, and get back to you in due course.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
    2. calgacus83 avatar
      calgacus83

      Hi! Apologies for the delay in replying, but I usually have a few pots on the boil at the same time. Yours is a rich, meaty read. Like a full-bodied wine, it can’t, and mustn’t, be swallowed in a gulp. You’re a skilled word-smith and enjoy ‘forging’ them (in the best, creative sense) into an impressive finished product. You’re erudite, fluently articulate, widely read, and able to see ways in which a very broad range of ideas and insights can complement, and throw light on one another, and give the reader plenty of thoughtful and stimulating material to chew on.

      To respond in detail to your piece would mean producing another one of at least the same length, which would be a ‘pot’ too many. I think in a similar manner to yourself, so I found myself largely in agreement with what was being said, and stimulated by it.

      If I might make a few observations, your occasional long lists of nouns and adjectives can make for very long sentences, and some readers might lose track of the key points that are being made. As for key points, I found the sections in bold very helpful. I wondered if these would be well placed at the beginning or end of separate paragraphs as useful maps to the terrain ahead or behind. I also thought that some of the material on Wilson, his debate with Watson, and his book “The Social Conquest of Earth, might have been helpfully placed at, or near, the beginning of your piece, to facilitate the reader’s mind travelling in the direction thereafter to be explored. These, of course, are not ‘criticisms’, but simply the passing on of some of my own thoughts. We must each do our own thing in our own way.

      I had heard of Wilson, but had not read, or read about him, until I recalled a book on my shelves, “Oracles of Science” by Giberson and Artigas, which devotes a chapter to his thought. It’s now on my reading list. I’m intrigued by the linkage of stone-age emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology, and look forward to following this up. So thanks for this, and more power to your free-flowing brain and writing elbow.
      My warm regards.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply
      1. SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ avatar
        SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

        Dear Ray,

        Thank you for your feedback! I would be very delighted if you could kindly leave your comment in my said post as a token of your visit. You could simply copy and paste your previous reply as part of your forthcoming comment to be submitted to the comment section of the post, to which your previous reply clearly pertains and also belongs. Please feel free to expand on your comment if you have additional matters to convey about the expansive post and any salient aspects of its contents. Thank you in anticipation.

        Yours sincerely,
        SoundEagle

        Like

  3. alan avatar
    alan

    Well worth listening to? Perhaps if you are specially interested in American fundamentalism. For Dr Spong writes and speaks as an American shaped by an American fundamentalist background from which he has extricated hmiself but cannot as I have observed free himself from the assumption that as such he has a normative wisdom to impart to those who have been brought up in a fundamentalist-free Christianity. There is little here to interest a non-American Christian unless one seeking to represent American experience as the norm rather than a neurotic perversion of the norm. When Dr Spong goes outwith the American context he sounds weak. “Tribal”: obviously the higher religion have tribal origins (Bar Christianity which is not basically Ebionite but Pauline). But in what sense now is it sensible to call Buddhism or Hinduism tribal religions?. The present UK PM is a faithful Hindu-in what way is his faith tribal? His reference to the Armada shows a totally naive understanding of history: the struggle between Spain and England was part of the development of the early nation state in which religion was incidental rather than motivational. Time and again Spong wants to isolate the word “religion” when religion cannot be separated by culture which it shapes and is shaped by. When he gets to positives Dr Spong is hardly different from any half decent preacher you might have heard in this country over the last thirty years . Yes the prophets do show further understanding of what worship of God might develop. The Bible represents a historical understanding in the development of God. It is easy of course for a modern rationalist to mock Leviticus. What is of rather more interest is to seek to understand out of what human norm at an earlier stage of development is being expressed. THat takes historical imagination of which quality Dr Spong would appear to be from this talk severely lacking. What one wishes for in ex-fundamentalists whose understanding is shaped by reaction is that they would free themselves to see their ways to a deeper wiser faith that does not simply uproot itself itslf into a rational minded progressivism following the zeitgeist but is organically related in understanding to its origins. (as for the Einstein quotation it reminds me of John Lennon’s Imagination-so much blah. For a good song relating in part to Spong’s theme try BobDylan’s “With God on our side” -three minutes worth rather more value than the fifty minutes here)

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  4. calgacus83 avatar
    calgacus83

    Well I didn’t expect you to be impressed by this blog, Alan, so I haven’t been disappointed. The one point I’ll make is this. À la Wittgenstein, the meaning of words is contingent on the context in which they’re used. As I hear him, Bishop Spong could legitimately talk about the ‘tribalism’ that one finds, for example, in the multiplicity of Christian ‘tribes’, from Roman Catholicism, to Mormonism, to Pentecostalism, to Jehovah’s Witnesses.
    What he’s actually talking about, as I hear him at any rate, is the ‘tribalism’ of a multiplicity of different religions, most of whose members are likely to imagine that their particular one is the custodian of ‘the ultimate truth’, to the detriment of all the others. That’s the kind of ‘tribal’ thinking that one would long to see, not just in words but in actions, put into the dustbin of history where it belongs. It’s not going to happen, of course, and it might be thought that your own negative reaction to this blog arguably underscores that fact.
    Apart from that, as far as your derisory comment on the Einstein quotation is concerned, people are not talking nonsense and ‘blah’ just because you don’t happen to agree with them. That almost seems like a game of playground insults, but I’m sure that wouldn’t have been your intention.
    And as far as the good Bishop is concerned, my respect for him, as a significant thinker, and able communicator, and a good and decent man, well worth listening to, continues undiminished.

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  5. alan avatar
    alan

    You like to think -perhaps for your self -reassurance, no doubt that when I express an opinion -it is merelyill-considered egotism (“because you don’t happen to agree with them”) and “my negative” argument merely reinforces your superior argument(“your negative thinking…” ( completely oblivious to the fact that there might be counter arguments that are positive and not negative). Actually the “blah” carefully places the Einstein in relation to John Lennon’s “Imagine”-as well as Dr spong’s being compared with Bob Dylan’s song. It does appear however that the difference between a spiritual feeling -such as the “cosmic awe” we might feel on asccnding a mountain with a wonderful view-can only be developed into a communal religion-and it is contradictory to speak of a private religion-by ideas, theology and the expression of a world-view. In pretending otherwise Einstein is not expressing serious thought: another word for which is “blah” : emotional expression without thought. As for Dr Spong I am aware you are too near him to be critical of him; but it is sometimes good for one to have one’s predilections challenged. .

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    1. calgacus83 avatar
      calgacus83

      Alan, I’m not into the nonsense of “superiority”, and so feel no need whatsoever for “self-reassurance”, and I’ve said (but seemingly not been heard) dozens of times in our discussions, that for every argument there are “counter-arguments”, and that I don’t regard myself as having the best (or ‘superior’) or final word on anything. Let’s agree to ditch this ‘superior’ and ‘inferior’ stuff. I don’t want any part in that.
      The Einstein quote is not one you can agree with. The interpretation you place on it, however, is your own. I, and many others I reckon, understand it differently, and to us it makes excellent and timely sense. I think it unfortunate that you write, “In pretending otherwise, Einstein is not expressing serious thought”, as if this were indisputably the case and therefore a plain statement of fact. It isn’t. It’s an expression of your own opinion and, to me, beginning that sentence with “In my view” would make that clear, and do justice and give respect to one of the 21st century’s great thinkers.
      The one thing that occasionally troubles me, Alan, is not your opinions. I’ve no problem with the presentation of an opposing view. Otherwise the world would be a duller place. As I’ve said before, as well as giving opinions about points that are made, you feel the need to also make comments about the people who make them. So Einstein’s quote shows someone who engages in “emotional expression without thought.” Oh, really? If he’s looking down from above, I’m sure he’ll be suitably amused. Spong becomes weak, naive, hardly different from any half-decent preacher, a modern rationalist etc. Ray Inkster becomes someone who needs ‘self-reassurance’, who indulges himself with “superior arguments’, who feels “too near” to certain people “to be critical” of them. Perhaps it’s this ad-hominem stuff which is “blah : emotional expression without thought”?
      But anyway, Alan, as I say in the intro to my blog site, “Ideas, in my view, are for playing with, not fighting over”. So I refuse to fight with you, and look forward to our next encounter. After all, “he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God”.

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  6. alan avatar
    alan

    I merely responded in a personal way because it was there in your response to the post(“just because you don’t happen to agree with them”). I agree however the mischievous response to Einstein was a weak point of my argument-a kind of Achilles heel as it were because my main focus had been a very careful analysis of Dr Spong’s argument. You made here a reasonable answer to one point- what you say in extenuation of his use of the word “tribalism”. I read literature and criticism ,in preference to philosophy. In literature and philosophy the reader is interested in how the literature is emotionally and culturally shaped. This may not be of interest to you. You may for all I know think that you prefer argument to be sealed off from such matters so that it is uncontaminated by ones emotions; but ideas working in society do not work in a sealed container. .Anyway we shall leave it that you prefer not to engage with my other points on Dr Spong.

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    1. calgacus83 avatar
      calgacus83

      You write, Alan, that I *may* think that “argument” needs “to be sealed off from … emotions”. I’m glad to note your use of the word ‘may’, because I think nothing of the sort, and see no creditable foundation for the suggestion. Not so long ago, I wrote to you on the subject of assisted death. What I wrote had a strong emotional as well as a rational basis. I was, however, aware of the emotional element, which I acknowledged and explained in relation to a family experience. Emotion is safeguarded from being a ‘contaminant’ when there is awareness, acknowledgement and explication. You recently mentioned my ‘sensitivity to music’. That is emotionally and rationally based. I not only ‘feel’ the music, but study its structure to enrich its impact. I have a particular interest in 19th century Russian music, and have devoured several studies of the underlying social, cultural, political, emotional, rational, psychological background. I don’t think of anything as being “in a sealed container” – that’s a ‘no-brainer’ to me.
      My difficulty with ‘personal’ responses is that no one can enter into the experience of anyone else. The most one can do is offer speculations, with whatever supporting evidence one can adduce. My own view is, that if one chooses to do this, out of respect, it’s best accompanied by a clear indication that an opinion is being offered which may or may not be correct. In my last response to you, on the possible linkage of ad hominem remarks to ‘blah being emotional expression without thought’, I begin with the word “perhaps”, and end with a question mark. These are little things, but I think they matter – and this has nothing to do with being ‘superior’ or ‘holier than thou’.

      As for a response to your comments about Spong. Yes, he’s speaking out of his American background, but there are still plenty of Christians in this country who are far from being “fundamentalist-free”. In any case, what he’s saying can equally apply to many “conservative evangelicals” who aren’t fundamentalists. So, for me, there’s no significant “weakness” involved here. Your point about what was ‘incidental’ and what ‘motivational’ in relation to the Spain/England struggle is clearly an opinion which you’re sharing. Not being a historian, I’m not in a position to say whether or not you’re right, so I don’t. You say Spong “wants to isolate the word religion”, but don’t adduce supportive evidence. That’s not how I hear Spong, is all I can reasonably say.
      I don’t regard Spong as ‘mocking’ Leviticus. I think that may be perhaps an emotional over-statement. I hear him saying that a great deal can’t be made of the contemporary relevance of a single verse, while ignoring a whole lot of other ones whose contemporary relevance would not be insisted upon because totally unsustainable. It’s about consistency and integrity (and, arguably, common sense).
      As far as your other comments about Spong’s “lack of historical imagination”, and needing to see his way “to a deeper and wiser faith”, and embracing “ rational minded progressivism”, these again are opinions of your own, which I see and hear no evidence for accepting. If I don’t say something, it’s most likely because I haven’t anything to say. I assume the same is the case when you don’t respond to particular points I’ve made. We see things in different ways, so perhaps we should be happy, some of the time at any rate, to live and let live.
      Regards to both. Hope both are well on the mend.

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