Question & Answer
Jennie Hanzlik from Ohio State University writes:
Question:
What does it actually mean to you to be a Christian? Given the choice, why do you choose to “be” Christian versus not?
Are the doctrines/creeds of Christianity important to you? If so, which ones? And why? How much can you “not believe” and still “be” Christian? Is there anything that is essential to believe to maintain the integrity of the religion?
If you could create an entirely new religion right now – a brand new faith with new scripture, new traditions, new practices that reflected the totality of your consciousness, your hopes for the world, your understanding of God, your understanding of humanity, your realization of Love, what is the most essential to you in life, etc. – would this religion look different from Christianity? In what ways would it be the same? In what ways would it differ?
Answer:
Dear Jennie,
Your questions are good ones, but they do not lend themselves to anything but the briefest of answers in the format of the Question and Answer feature of my column. Why did I choose to be a Christian, for example, is something I addressed when I wrote my autobiography, which was published under the title, Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality. I was born into a version of Christianity that was rigid, lifeless and authoritarian. I have evolved into a very different understanding of my faith and countless numbers of times I have decided anew to remain inside the Christian tradition. I see Christianity as always growing, evolving and stretching beyond any limits that human beings try to impose on it.
Second, the creeds are important to me, but not as a “girdle into which I must seek to enclose my flabby faith,” but as a marker in the developing Christian story. I see Christianity as a journey, not as something contained in a prescribed body of official revelations. I addressed this question much more thoroughly in my book, Why Christianity Must Change or Die and its sequel, A New Christianity for a New World. The only essential aspect of Christianity is its call to love beyond all of our security boundaries. That is what the Christ figure means and that alone cannot be compromised. Creeds and doctrines are secondary. They have over the centuries come into existence primarily to give context and form to address that one essential requirement.
I have no interest in creating a new religion. It has taken me a lifetime of study to plumb the depths of the one in which I live. I literalize none of the artifacts of my faith journey-- not the Bible, not the Creeds, not the doctrines and dogmas and not the worship forms. God to me is a mystery into which I walk. God is not a noun that I am called on to define; God is a verb that I am privileged to live out constantly.
The questions you ask indicate a hunger for truth; I admire that. The answers you imply as possible to be given in response to your questions, reveal a lack of understanding about what the Christian life is. I hope you will keep exploring.
John Shelby Spong
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