O.K. I'll go next : )

1) Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead.
Theism is not dead, it is a belief system that still many follow. I think that Spong means that we as human beings are growing consciously out of the belief in a God sitting somewhere on a cloud. More and more people seek a direct connection to God, a personal relationship and experience of God.

So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. I don't think it is meaningless. It is only meaningless if one is incapable of translating so called theological God-talk into one's own understanding and language.

A new way to speak of God must be found. I don't know if Spong knows or not , but a new way has been found, actually many new ways to speak of God have been found: Spiritual, Oneness, Self, Self Realization, Christ consciousness and so on.

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May your awareness be perfection

Spong is extrapolating from a sample of one.


I think he means it is dead for him; he has outgrown it. I have run into this before, the atheist theologian; there are quite a few of them out there, still preaching to the congregation on a Sunday, but not believeing a word of the Creed or the Catechism. Sad, sad people....


I think you have hit it on the head. Too many rarified discussions of abstruse points that relaly don't mean a thing when someone is tortured by guilt because they had a child who died a few minutes after birth but was not baptised (or similar).

One of the best reasons for gettin rid of hieracry, for refusing to grant theologians tenure is that religion should be lived, and should be a comfort to the living, and a guide to the confused...not the source of confusion and pain.



Spong knows; Spong is being argumentative. He is challenging the more conservative types to get them to step up.... It's a bit like butting a twig on your shoulder and daring someone to knock it off; and about as useful and Christian as the average schoolyard fight as well.

I'm more convinced by people who live what they believe...

"Be seeing you..."

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Grassaf, Eolas