Jesus for the Non-Religious
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4.2 • 6 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Writing from his prison cell in Nazi Germany, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer envisioned what he called “religionless Christianity.” In Jesus for the Non-Religious, John Shelby Spong expands on Bonhoeffer’s idea; the result is a strikingly new and different portrait of Jesus of Nazareth – a Jesus for the non-religious.
Spong challenges much of the traditional Jesus story, from the Virgin Birth to the ascension into Heaven. He also addresses those contemporary critics of Christianity who call God a “delusion” and express fears that Christianity has become evil and destructive. Spong proposes a new way of understanding the divinity of Christ: as the ultimate dimension of a fulfilled humanity.
Jesus for the Non-Religious may be the book that finally brings the pious and the secular into a meaningful dialogue, opening the door to a living Christianity in the post-Christian world.
John Shelby Spong was the Episcopal Bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000. He is one of the leading spokespersons for liberal Christianity. His books include Sins of Scripture, 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. He has initiated landmark discussions of controversies within the church and has become an outspoken advocate for change.
“Sparkling with personal anecdotes and nurtured by a wide range of scriptural scholarship, Spong’s book deconstructs conventional religion and then fashions a new Jesus consonant with modern consciousness.” – Hal Taussig, author of A New Spiritual Home: Progressive Christianity at the Grass Roots
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Spong, the iconoclastic former Episcopal bishop of Newark, details in this impassioned work both his "deep commitment to Jesus of Nazareth" and his "deep alienation from the traditional symbols" that surround Jesus. For Spong, scholarship on the Bible and a modern scientific worldview demonstrate that traditional teachings like the Trinity and prayer for divine intervention must be debunked as the mythological trappings of a primitive worldview. These are so much "religion," which was devised by our evolutionary forebears to head off existential anxiety in the face of death. What's left? The power of the "Christ experience," in which Jesus transcends tribal notions of the deity and reaches out to all people. Spong says Jesus had such great "energy" and "integrity" about him that his followers inflated to the point of describing him as a deity masquerading in human form; however, we can still get at the historical origin of these myths by returning to Jesus' humanity, especially his Jewishness. Spong so often suggests the backwardness and insecurity of those who disagree with him that his rhetoric borders on the fundamentalist. His own historical and theological reconstructions would be more palatable if he seemed more aware that he too is engaged in mythmaking.
