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• Bishop Spong's official site
• Article on Bishop Spong
• About A Pebble In My Shoe: The Life And Times Of John Shelby Spong
• Bishop Spong's bio

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Tavis: John Shelby Spong is the former Bishop of the Episcopal Dioceses in Newark, New Jersey, and a bestselling author of several books, including "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism." His latest is called "The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Text of Hate to Reveal the God of Love." Bishop Spong, nice to have you on the program, sir.

John Shelby Spong: Thank you, sir. Good to be with you.

Tavis: Good to have you here. Let me start with what so many people in the world of Christianity and beyond are talking about: the selection of a new Pope to lead the Catholic church. Your thoughts?

Spong: Well, he wouldn't have been my choice, but I don't think it's my right to tell the Roman Catholics who they have as their leader. He troubles me in a lot of areas, but the most important one is his dismissal of the sex-abuse scandals in this country as something created by the media. 'Cause I think that's really out of touch with reality. His definition of homosexual people as "distorted or unnatural" I think is simply wrong. And the attitude of the Roman church toward the place of women in the life of the church continues to bother me. To say nothing of end of life issues brought to the public in the Terri Schiavo case more than anything else. But it's like Supreme Court justices. You know, when they're appointed, you never quite know what they're gonna do because it's a lifetime appointment. And he's certainly a brilliant man, and he will respond to the issues out of who he is, and--we'll see. It's always an open mystery. It's clear the Roman church wanted to continue in the tradition of John Paul II, because I suspect Cardinal Ratzinger has been the acting Pope for a significant number of years.

Tavis: You mean in terms of theology?

Spong: No, in terms of the fact that John Paul II has been infirmed and ill, and somebody's gotta run the enterprise, and he was sort of the number two man. So he's sort of been running the enterprise. And time will tell.

Tavis: What do you make of the fact that they chose one that seems not to be in keeping with where and how the Catholic church is growing in terms of new converts and new members?

Spong: Well, that's true, but they did choose one who is with those people in terms of his very conservative theological orientation. Because the third world is a far more conservative place, religiously, for both Catholics and Protestants than the first world. The biggest trouble he will have will be in Europe where the Roman Catholic church is dying for all--by all measures, and in the United States, where many of the lay people do what I would call cafeteria-style Catholicism. They pick and choose what they will do and practice, and the hierarchy's not able to control that.

Tavis: Let me ask you, as we segue out if that into this conversation about the book and the interesting ideas you put forth here. What you've just suggested in terms of cafeteria Catholicism, isn't that, do you think, honestly, the way most of us practice whatever our faith is? We pick and choose those things we want to believe in and practice?

Spong: Yeah, and I sort of like that because if you're straight down the line, you tend to become fanatics. And what worries me a great deal, and that's part of what this book is about, is that religion has turned in, I think, a very conservative direction in this country. And I don't mind that until they begin to want to impose that on the body politic of this country and suggest that the only way you can be a Christian is to be a sort of very conservative Christian. I'm sort of amazed. I was raised in the south, Tavis, and I'm sort of amazed that the most religious section of the country is called the Bible Belt, and it's the south. It's my homeland. But that's also the section that practiced slavery for the longest time, practiced segregation and didn't want to give it up until they were forced to, did more lynchings than any other part of the country, executes more prisoners than any other part of the country. And you begin to wonder where is the impact of this gospel of life and love?

Tavis: So how do you juxtapose those two realities?

Spong: Well, I think that's something that they need to juxtapose. But it worries me, and it worries me particularly when you see things going on in our country where a very literal and conservative attitude toward the Bible is used for authority. We have a president who wants to have a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage and quotes the Bible to sort of justify that. We went through the Terri Schiavo case where religious people began to say that to allow a person to have a dignified end to their life is against biblical teaching. We get people justifying the war on the basis of religious quotations. I begin to worry when I hear that kind of thing. I want a secular government that allows freedom of religion to all people without trying to impose a religious attitude upon the body politic.

Tavis: When you write a book and you entitle it "The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible's Text of Hate to Reveal the God of Love," what kind of response do you expect to get?

Spong: Well, it's an in-your-face title. HarperCollins does titles. I don't do titles. I called it The Terrible Texts of the Bible, which is still provocative. But I feel it's important for somebody inside the religious community to rise up and say there is another way to look at the sacred tradition of the Christian faith other than the one that is constantly gay-bashing and telling people that they have no decisions to make at the end of their lives and the other things that we use the Bible to justify. I think more people have been killed in human history in religious causes than any other cause.

Tavis: Sure.

Spong: And one of things that bothers me is that every time a religious system decides that "We have the truth," then they immediately begin to persecute anybody that disagrees with them. And so I worry about religion that gets to the place where it makes excessive claims for the truth. Another thing that worries me about Cardinal Ratzinger is that he said that Christianity can't be relative, that it's absolute truth. Well, I think that's silly. My way of illustrating that is to say that if a person has an epileptic seizure in the first century, and a person has an epileptic seizure in the 21st century, the experience is identical. Epilepsy doesn't change. But the way we understand epilepsy changes dramatically in that period of time. If you had a epileptic child and took your child to a doctor, and the doctor treated your child by saying, "Come out of him," you wouldn't go back to that doctor even if you were a very conservative, religious Bible-quoting person. Because you know better than that.

Tavis: Let me challenge you on that respectfully, though. How do you respond to people who say, though, that, when talking about human behavior and what God expects and demands and requires of us, that there is a standard? The Bible does, indeed talk about a standard, and if, in fact, with every generation we keep changing the rules to please ourselves rather than please God, and we no longer live by a standard, and the standard then becomes anything and everything goes, what are you going to end up with, Bishop?

Spong: Well, I think that's not an accurate diagnosis, so let me try to unpack that. I think people that say that have never read the Bible. If you read the Bible, you'll find that it starts in a very tribal mentality, where God loves a particular tribe, and hates everybody that tribe hates. Read the story of the Exodus. God seems to hate Egyptians. God sends plague after plague after plague upon the Egyptians. At the time of the Passover, the story says that God kills the first-born male in every Egyptian household, then drowns the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. That's a pretty tough view of God if you happen to be an Egyptian. Now, I think that's where all religion starts, in tribal identity, and I don't believe we live there anymore. Secondly, and this is another one of the issues I deal with, the Bible treats women dreadfully. I mean, polygamy was practiced through most of the Old Testament. Polygamy means you treat a woman as property because a man can have as many wives as he can afford because that's part of his property. The Tenth Commandment says, "You shall not covet your neighbor's wife nor his ox." The woman is property. I don't happen to believe that. I'm the father of 4 daughters. I don't want anybody treating my daughters as if they're property, but that's a biblical attitude. But it has changed dramatically. You know, we didn't allow women to vote in this country until 1920. My church would not allow women to serve as priests and bishops until 1977, they became priests, and 1980--I've forgotten when...-I think '89 we had our first woman bishop. And we still have, the Roman Catholic Church and the orthodox churches of the world who say that women cannot represent God before the altar because somehow women are defective. They aren't created in the image of God. I happen not to believe that.

Tavis: I wrote this down because there's so much provocative stuff in this book, and we don't have time on this program to get into all of it, but I wanted to give you a chance to extrapolate and explain and, quite frankly, explore more about this particular comment. You write in the book, "Christianity as we have known it cannot endure. Christianity as we have known it cannot endure. It has 2 choices only: change or die." I'm not even gonna ask a question. I just want you to talk about that statement.

Spong: Let me take you back to what I call the basic Christian myth, the way Christians interpret the life of Jesus. The presupposition of the way we have traditionally talked about Jesus says that we were created perfect, in God's image. And then, through an act of disobedience, we corrupted the creation and fell into sin. That's the original sin.

Tavis: Fell out of grace.

Spong: Fell out of grace, necessitating a rescue operation, and we tell the Jesus story in terms of God coming into the world from the outside in the person of Jesus, rescuing us by paying the price on the cross for our sins. I think that's a guilt trip. If I have to say, you know, my sins are responsible for killing Jesus the Divine Son, then I think that is a pretty heavy load to bear. But we live on the other side of Charles Darwin, whether we like it or not. And Darwin says there never was a time when we were created perfect only to fall into sin; that we are constantly emerging. So if you have a different anthropology, I think you have to tell the Christ story in a different way. I don't see the Christ as a rescuer of fallen people. I see the Christ as

God's call to people to become more deeply and fully human, because it's out of our impaired humanity that we kill each other and beat up each other.

Tavis: Maybe I'm missing something here, but I don't see those 2 things as oxymoronic, though.

Spong: Well, I'm not sure I'd use that word to describe it. I think they are very different, because you either--look at the Eucharist in the Christian tradition. The Eucharist is designed in every tradition, from high mass at Saint Peter's in Rome to the most protestant last supper on Maundy Thursday. But what the Eucharist is designed to do is to re-enact the drama where Jesus comes and pays the price for our sins on the cross. Well, in the first place, what kind of God is it that demands a human sacrifice and a blood offering before this God can forgive? I think just the way to tell that story makes God something that I don't want to be engaged in worship. I want a God who creates life. I want a God who creates love. And when I look at Jesus, I see a life fully lived, I see love wastefully, provocatively given away, and I see him calling us to be all that we can be.

Tavis: And I don't argue that at all. The reason why I used the word "oxymoronic" a moment ago is because I don't see these 2 things as mutually exclusive. That is to say he can be a God of love, but if, in fact, there is a standard, and we violate the standard that he has for us to live our best lives, that he can become a God of wrath, no different than your being a parent. You mentioned those daughters you have earlier. When your daughters behave, you reward that good behavior. When they misbehave, daddy has to spank them or punish them. Why can't you be a father of love and a father of wrath, and why can't he be a God of love and a God of wrath at the same time?

Spong: Well, one of the things I try to address in this book is that corporal punishment, which is supported by the Bible, spare the rod and spoil the child. I don't know of any child psychiatrist today who thinks that's positive or good.

Tavis: My mom and dad didn't get that memo.

Spong: Well, I understand. Mine didn't, either. I was raised in another part of the world, but I'd still say that I don't want to get--nor do I want to see God as a punishing father. I don't want to see the Jesus story as God doing divine child abuse. To me, that's just not the way to explore God. Now, I think that makes it imperative for me to say something about what's the source of evil. Because I think people do dreadful, evil things to one another, and evil seems to me always to come out of our insecurity and our inadequacy. If I feel inadequate as a white man, then I look down, and create a system that helps me prove I'm superior by having a victim. So that's what we did in race relations. If my insecurity as a male causes me to have to define myself as superior to females, then we organize a society so women are second-class citizens. If my understanding of heterosexuality is such that I can look down on and scorn homosexual people, then I feel superior. What I think we've got to do is to get human life to the place where you have the capacity to become all that you can be so that you don't need to create victims, and you don't need to hate, and you don't need to persecute. And the text for that to me is in the heart of the Gospel, but it's not the sort of thing that we talk about about standards. Because Jesus says in words that, whether he spoke them or not, I don't know, but I think they capture him. He says that his purpose is to give life and to give it abundantly. Now, the task of the Christian church, it seems to me, is to enhance life. Anything we do that diminishes life, I think, violates the Gospel. See, you can't look down on people because of the color of their skin or their gender or their sexual orientation or even their religion. To me, that's the heart of what I'm talking about in the Gospel.

Tavis: Sometimes on this program I feel like I've scratched the surface, and other times, I can't even do that, so...tonight we have not even begun to scratch the surface of what you will find in a new book by Bishop John Shelby Spong, "The Sins of Scripture, Exposing the Bible's Text of Hate to Reveal the God of Love." A book before that that I would also recommend if you're interested in his philosophy, "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism." Bishop, nice to have you on.

Spong: Thank you, sir. Good to be with you.

Tavis: All the best to you. Glad to have you here. That's our show for tonight. A quick reminder. Starting April 29, I'm back on public radio. So I'll talk to you on Public Radio International. Check your local listings. We'll talk to you on the radio soon, but I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, good night from Los Angeles. Thanks for watching, and, as always, keep the faith.