Examining the Meaning of Resurrection, Part VI: Seeing Through a Glass Darkly

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 7 July 2011 3 Comments
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Question

I've read Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and am now reading Jesus for the Non-Religious In chapter one of Jesus for the Non-Religious you wrote "The religious debate in our time results rather from the exploding new horizons of learning that have re-shaped our perceptions of reality, coupled with a new biblical scholarship that previously had not been allowed to escape the academy for fear that it might erode the confidence of the people who sit in the pews"  Having been raised Catholic, I can remember sitting in the pews during mass and reflecting on how little the mass involved the Bible - three brief passages, the same ones every year - and thinking that if the Bible is the word of God, why the church didn't do more to engage its parishioners in biblical history and education.  So, I'd like to find out more about deliberate efforts to keep people in the pews - the lay person - from biblical scholarship that "previously had not been allowed to escape the academy."

Answer

Dear John,

I will address your question in detail in my next book out next fall from Harper-Collins entitled Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World.

Scripture is frequently treated in an idolatrous way in liturgy.  It is carried high in procession as if it is an object of worship.  The Gospel is marched into the congregation to be read in the Eucharist.  It is announced with words like “The Holy Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ according to” and then we name the book from which the gospel reading is taken.  In your church and mine, the one who reads the gospel has to be ordained.  We make magical crosses on the book and on the reading and sometimes over the gospel we swing incense before reading it.  When lessons from anywhere in the Bible are read in almost all churches we conclude the reading with some version of the statement “This is the Word of the Lord.” All of these customs inhibit any sense that this book is to be studied or debated.

When Bibles are published, they are deliberately made to look different.  They are frequently printed on tissue thin paper inside a black leather cover.  They are printed in two columns like an encyclopedia or a dictionary to indicate that this is not a book to be read but a resource to which to go for answers.

I think the Roman Catholic Church ignores the Bible because many of its customs, practices and doctrines are not biblical in origin.  I think Protestants refuse to engage the Bible openly because they know it contains things with which they disagree and they want to preserve the myth that it is inerrant.

My sense is that a church that wants to be vital and alive in the 21st century is going to have to engage in a serious, scholarly and critical study of the scriptures of the church.  When this is done, I find the response of lay people overwhelmingly positive.  If I were you I would seek out a church that does just that.

~John Shelby Spong

 

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