The Religious Write: Bishop for the non-religious

[...] The problem I have with Bishop Spong is not that he is an interesting and challenging thinker, the problem I have is that he is a bishop. Because I cannot see in what meaningful sense of the word he could be called a Christian. I think he is a secular humanist - an entirely respectable position but not one that should be funded by the Anglican church. And I suspect, though this may be unworthy, that he wouldn't have received the same notoriety as plain Jack Spong.

Of course, Christianity - if you'll forgive the cliche - is a broad church but it is generally thought to contain as an irreducible minimum a belief in God and commitment to Christ.

Bishop Spong, as the title of his latest book shows, isn't writing for the traditional Christian. He believes traditional Christianity is in its death-throes, and doesn't mourn its passing. "I'm not trying to convert conservative church people, but to deal with people that conservative church people have run out of church or bored out of church," he told me in 2003. His task is to "spell out a way to be Christian without checking your brains at the door of the church. You can embrace the fact that you are a citizen of the 21st century". Read more

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