Doug Muder’s notes on Why Christianity Must Change or Die by John Shelby Spong

In Chapter 1, Spong goes through the Apostles’ Creed line-by-line and discusses why a modern Christian has difficulty saying it honestly. Chapter 2 defines the notion of a “believer in exile”; someone who finds traditional Christianity untenable, but cannot simply abandon it.

1. On Saying the Christian Creed With Honesty

Spong uses the Apostles Creed as a way to outline his differences with traditional Christianity. He goes through phrase-by-phrase and explains his difficulties saying the creed. UUs may not remember the creed word-by-word, so I reproduce it : I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of Heaven and Earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.

God is the ultimate reality in my life. ... Yet, when I seek to put my understanding of this God into human words, my certainty all but disappears. Human words always contract and diminish my God awareness. They never expand it.

The God I know is not concrete or specific. This God is rather shrouded in mystery, wonder, and awe. The deeper I journey into this divine presence, the less any literalized phrases, including the phrases of the Christian creed, seem relevant. The God I know can only be pointed to; this God can never be enclosed by propositional statements.

The words of the Apostles' Creed ... were fashioned inside a worldview that no longer exists. Indeed, it is quite alien to the world in which I live. ... If the God I worship must be identified with these ancient creedal words in any literal sense, God would become for me not just unbelievable, but in fact no longer worthy of being the subject of my devotion. -- p 3-4

Spong objects to the following:

Father -- the masculinity of God has led to the subjugation of women

Almighty -- if God is all-powerful and good, then how can bad things happen?

creator of heaven and earth -- our current understanding of the origin of the Earth has little to do with the Biblical account

only Son -- denies that other religions can provide a channel to divinity

conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary -- inconsistent with what we have since learned about biology

ascended into Heaven -- based on a primitive understanding of God as up

rose again from the dead -- Spong puts a placeholder here, raising questions he will address later. "This creedal phrase becomes the great divide for the modern man or woman who yearns to be a believer. Where each of us stands in relation to this issue will determine more than most any other whether or not we can still be defined as Christians." -- p 15

judge the living and the dead -- "Postmodern people who know the depths of human interconnectedness, who understand psychological wounding and blessing, cannot be moralistic in the way that these creedal images of judgment have always assumed." -- p 16

the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints -- the church and its members have a long history of being neither holy nor saintly

the life everlasting -- Spong puts this off to Chapter 13.

What I am requesting, however, is that modern believers be allowed, and even encouraged, to recognize that the words employed in the theological debate that formed the creeds so long ago have become empty and meaningless to this generation because the way we perceive the shape of reality has changed so dramatically. Our task is neither to literalize nor to worship the words of yesterday's theological consensus. It is, rather, to return to the experience that created these creedal words in the first place and then to seek to incorporate that experience in the words that we today can use, without compromising its truth or our integrity as citizens of this century. -- p 20

2. The Meaning of Exile and How We Got There

While claiming to be a believer, and still asserting my deeply held commitment to Jesus as Lord and Christ, I also recognize that I live in a state of exile from the presuppositions of my own religious past. -- p 20

Spong uses the image of exile, which for Christians and Jews has the historical association of the exile of the Jews to Babylon in the sixth century before Christ. He tells this story in some detail. (p 23-29)

They could not sing the Lord's song again, for they were in a strange and devastating exile, and in that exile the God they had once served lost all meaning. This God, quite frankly, could no longer be God for them. It is traumatic to watch the God who has given shape, definition, and meaning to life be removed from a people's awareness. There are but two alternatives for such a displaced deity. This God must either grow or die. That is what being in a spiritual exile is all about. ... In this postmodern world, those who still claim allegiance to the Christian religion find themselves, I believe, living in a similar kind of exile. Our God has also been taken away from us. For us, however, that removal of God did not occur in a single moment of violent defeat. It rather happened over a period of centuries as the steady and relentless advances in knowledge altered forever our ability to believe in the God content that stood at the heart of our sacred tradition -- p 29

He then goes on to describe (p 29-39) that process, beginning with the cosmology of the time of Christ. He describes how that cosmology was chipped away by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, and others.

The understanding of God as a theistic supernatural parent figure in the sky was finally rendered no longer operative. God was simply drained out of existence as a working premise in our society. Rewards and punishments, either in this life or in the life to come, ceased to be the primary motivators of our behavior. The exile was complete. The God of our traditional past, who was the source of our values, the definer of our sense of right and wrong, was simply no more. We, like the Jews of old, had been forcefully removed from all that had previously given life meaning. -- p 40