Spong Sung Blue

At the beach, doing busy, stressful-type things like play poker, watch Sonboy kayak, lie on the beach and read while Sonboy boogie-boards, and drink wine. And of course, read.

I've been neglecting the books I brought in favour of John Spong's áutobiography 'Here I Stand'. If you haven't heard of him, he's America's most famous liberal bishop in the Episcopalian (Anglican) church.

It's interesting. I haven't read much of his other works, but now I guess I''ll have to, to put flesh on the ideas he proposes, and see if there's any backbone to them.

Spong is wonderfully open to ideas of social justice while seeming to be oblivious to the inherent classism of the Anglican style of doing things. He seems, to this quasi anarchist, to be overly comfortable with hierarchy and power. It's not surprising he's so political when his church is so full of rich folks trying to be good.

He writes quite openly of the rudeness of others, notably the 'fundamentalists' both within and without his church. Yet he makes rude comments about them. Perhaps that's the result of years of being insulted for his beliefs. Nevertheless, one wishes for more graciousness from one who supposedly preaches grace. He also has an unsettling certainty he is right that smacks of a liberal fundamentalism in its own right.

Still, Judeo-churchianity - as any human group - has always had flawed leaders from Moses through Paul, Augustine, Luther, Martin Luther King et al.

He has lots of worthwhile insights into leadership, and i liked his ideas of church leadership thinking through issues in public rather than trying to pretend they have all the answers from day one.

One thing I identified with:

In my typical left-brained way I retreated to my library. I must master my inner debates intellectually before I can master them emotionally.

This indicates to me that on Enneagram terms, he's a typical 5. A healthy 5 moves to the leadership of the 8, which also makes sense of Spong's life.

Again, one wonders what differentiates him from the Glen Benton's of this world when one reads his "twelve theses", in an appendix - Spong does insist they be read in the context of the book they come from, which I shall do in due time.

Nevertheless, the first two being (in my words):

1. There is no theistic God
2. Jesus, as expression of said God, never existed.

It's hard, in the light of those two, and the rest of his theses to see how, in any sense, he can be called "christian". He insists he loves the "church", which I can only guess means a kind of social club for people who want to do social justice and be nice to others. Why not ditch the ecclesiology and just join Rotary then?




If I don't get back to the 'puter beforehand, Merry New Year, all.