A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying and How a New Faith is Being Born - Hardcover

Spong, John Shelby

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060670843 ISBN 13: 9780060670849

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2001

Synopsis

Bishop John Shelby Spong has devoted his life to championing an authentic Christianity based on love, not hatred. In his bestselling book Why Christianity Must Change or Die, Spong convincingly demonstrated the limits of traditional faith and the toll its outmoded beliefs take on human life. Now the controversial champion of a more open and progressive Christianity courageously presents his inspiring alternative of what true faith should be today, offering a unified vision of authentic Christian belief for the third millennium.

What does God look like beyond theism? How do we understand evil? Who is Christ when traditional concepts such as incarnation, atonement, and the Trinity no longer communicate any meaning? In answering these questions, Bishop Spong goes beyond abstract theology to present his vision of a radically new humanity rooted in God, yet matured beyond the need for a supernatural parental deity.

A New Christianity for a New World offers an understanding of Christianity that is free of exclusivity and shame. Bishop Spong empowers those who are disillusioned by religion to discover a God who is the source of life and the source of love, unbounded by the limits of any tradition. The Church of tomorrow, lie writes, must be able to "incorporate all of our reality. It must be able to allow God and Satan to come together in each of us . . . . It must unite Christ with Antichrist, Jesus with Judas, male with female, heterosexual with homosexual."

After explaining why the traditional understandings of God, Christ, and the rules and dogmas of the Church are not just inoperative but dangerous, Spong offers his contemporary vision of the Church as a community of love, equality, and truth. This work is the ultimate legacy of his struggle to discover and promote a faith system that can live in our new world. Only someone who has spent a lifetime crusading for change and the rights of outcasts in the Church could give voice to such a reasoned, just, and loving faith. With Bishop Spong we can take the brave step to discover the Christianity of tomorrow.

About this title

Review:

In this brave and important book, Bishop Spong continues his life-long quest for a living faith and church worthy of the Christ in whom we can find God in our time. His call for a new reformation is honest, deep, provocative, and needed--one hopes there are those with ears to hear. --Matthew Fox, author of Original Blessings and One River, Many Wells

About the Author:

John Shelby Spong was the Episcopal bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000. As a leading spokesperson for an open, scholarly, and progressive Christianity, Bishop Spong has taught at Harvard and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has also lectured at universities, conference centers, and churches in North America, Europe, Asia, and the South Pacific. His books include: A New Christianity for a New World, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? Why Christianity Must Change or Die, and his autobiography, Here I Stand.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0060670843
• ISBN 13: 9780060670849
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 308