You will excuse me for choosing not to take any guidance from the writings and ideas of Bishop Spong. Amongst other things:

- He refuses to believe in the miracles of the Bible

- He places Science over Biblical teaching

- He sees the Bible as out of date
"Can modern men and women continue to pretend that timeless, eternal, and unchanging truth has been captured in the words of a book that achieved its final written form midway into the second century of the common era? Would not such a claim be dismissed as ludicrous in any other branch of human knowledge?"

- His view of God
"We have come to the dawning realisation that God might not be separate from us but rather deep within us."

- Without ever stating it outright (either clever or he doesn't have the courage of his convictions), he clearly does not believe in a physical resurrection of Jesus.

And on he goes.

If you wish to present a reasonable evaluation of modern Christianity, which I am all for hearing, please start from someone who actually believes it!

Jesus of course was a Jew, a radical Spiritual Teacher who appeared and taught on the margins of the tradition of Judaism as it existed in his time and place. While he was alive he taught and demonstrated a radical, universal, non-Christian and non-sectarian Spirit Breathing Spiritual Way of Life. As described here:

http://www.beezone.com/up/secretsofkingdomofgod.html

He did not, and could not have invented the religion about him, that is Christianity, all of which was invented by others after his death - and most often very long after his death.

Jesus certainly could not have created the "death-and-resurrection" idea/dogma that became the central idea of the Christian belief system.

In 2011 such a belief should really be considered as an early form of Urban Legend.

With extremely rare exceptions Christian-ISM is an entirely exoteric religion, the principal purpose of which is crowd control or social order. It is even aggressively anti-Spiritual. Their are many taboos in our culture, both secular and "religious" against any one getting "mystical".

The author of the above essay was the prize-winning student at the Lutheran Theological seminary in Philadelphia - he got DISTINCTIONS in all of his subjects. Ironically he was not in any sense a Christian and no real interest or sympathy for the masses of boring stuff that he was obliged to study. He was studying there at the insistence of his then Spiritual Teacher, as a form of discipline.

During his studies he was going through and experiencing profound psychic, visionary and mystical phenomenon.
When he confessed this to his dreadfully sane buttoned down professors they were all uniformly horrified that their prize winning student was a "Mystic".

These two references describe the origins and cultural consequences of the wide-spread prejudice against any kind of non-ordinary experiences.

The Purification of Doubt - which is chapter 1 in this reference.
http://www.dabase.org/nirvana.htm

The Psychosis of Doubt
http://www.adidam.org/teaching/gnosticon/universal-scientism.asp

Dear Rational Debate,
I think peoples' beliefs are their own, I am not religious, and I have
a hard time believing much of the Bible. I believe too, that "Spirit" resides within, no matter what beliefs people own. I heard a Muslim man on TV about 15 years ago, saying that "God is your life blood, he is as near to you as your carotid artery, Man is his own God.," I thought that it summed it up nicely for me.I feel that Man, is responsible for his/her own actions, and at the end of the day, we judge ourselves and our behaviour.
NSB

A further comment.
Both John Shelby Spong and Matthew Fox are either uniformly ignored or loathed in mainstream Christian circles. Protestant and Catholic - conservative or progressive, INCLUDING within the much hyped "emergent-church" phenomenon in the USA.

They seldom get mentioned in any of the hundreds of Christian blogs. This is especially so with Matthew Fox.

Fox was of course "excommunicated" by the Pope as a "heretic". One of the things he challenged was the absurd claim that the Pope is "infallible". Meanwhile it is completely obvious to the 5 billion non Catholics on the planet that the Pope is VERY fallible.

Meanwhile child-molesting priests were and are protected by the church hierarchy. Even by deliberate and systematic breaking and obstruction of the civil law.

One well known abuser was even made into a "Saint", with at the time, much fanfare.
None of them has ever been excommunicated - WHY NOT?

Two other modern scholars who have really done their homework are the well known Bart Ehrman and the lesser know Gerd Ludeman who is the author of several books including The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Enquiry.

So we toss out all the silly God stuff, and the crazy Jesus nonsense and the ludicrous Mohammed stories, and this ridiculous business about miracles, hell and an afterlife, and we're left with a religion that can inspire us in the 21st century?

I've had a religion like that for nearly forty years. It's called 'atheism'.

Jon J
LOL. Like your style