BLOGGING TOWARD SUNDAY…

Ever since I was a seminary student at Duke, I have take a considerable amount of heat and criticism over my love and admiration for retired Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong. I have just finished his latest, and he says “final” book, entitled

Eternal Life: A New Vision.

I thought it might help my friends to understand why I love Spong so much if I were to share a few quotes from the book over the coming weeks. Here’s the first. Spong, speaking of the fourteenth century mystic Meister Eckhart:

Eckhart was a Christian, even a priest….He stood inside an understanding of God that was not and could not for him have been bounded by creeds, forms, doctrines and dogmas. He was not popular with those ecclesiastical leaders who felt it was their duty to monitor behavior and to enforce conformity in belief. He seemed to be aware the the goal of religion had become little more than seeking to control life in the here and now in the service of a personal security. Religion’s weapons of choice in the struggle were guilt and fear. Religion made life in this world something to be governed by either the eternal reward of heaven or the eternal punishment of hell. The mustics through the ages have always stood against this mentality, which also means that the mystics have always threatened organized religion. Perhaps that is why we ought to look again at the mystics: they might turn out to be the means through which the essence of yesterday’s religion can be transformed into tomorrow’s spiritual understanding. (Eternal Life, A New Vision. John Shelby Spong, 2009, Harper One. Page 159)

Spong is not the first nor the only leader of today’s church who is calling for a return to the thoughts and practices of the mystics. Brian McLaren, Susan Thistlethwaite, James Forbes, and Diana Butler Bass, to name just a few, all argue for a new look at mysticism, believing that it has much to teach the emerging church if it is to survive in a post-modern world. More to come…

Filed under: Blogging Toward Sunday