Episcopal Bishop Says It’s Time to ‘Rescue the Bible’

Outspoken liberal Episcopal Bishop John S. Spong says the mainline Christian churches should either “rescue the Bible” from fundamentalists with frank, honest teaching about the Scriptures or “retire this noble book to the shelves of our libraries and museums.”

In an address Friday night to the annual convention of his Episcopal Diocese of Newark, N.J., Spong said he has appointed a task force to devote most of 1989 to making a report on the Bible--”its authority, its power and its relevance for the 21st Century.”

Spong has drawn attention in recent years for his advocacy of women as priests and bishops and for urging that rites to bless committed homosexual couples be instituted in the Episcopal Church.

It was expected that the diocesan convention would endorse Spong’s proposal, according to Archdeacon Leslie C. Smith, spokesman for the Newark Diocese.

Spong said the drift of many parishioners “out of the church’s orbit” can be blamed partly on their perception that the church is “basing its authority claims on very weak reeds and striving to repress its own scholars who cannot and will not be bound by the narrow understanding of truth that marks the corporate life of the church.”

Studies at mainline seminaries and major universities have raised numerous questions about the historical reliability of many sections of the Bible. By contrast, evangelical and fundamentalist seminaries reject any research that casts doubt on the Bible’s reliability.

“The issues here are complex, profound and deeply threatening to the theological claims and maintenance needs of the institution called the church,” Spong said.

“When churches say they are doing Bible study,” Spong added, “they seldom mean that these issues are being engaged.”

Reflecting on what is often taught in mainline scholarship, Spong said the Bible in both the Old and the New Testament “assumes the legitimacy of slavery.” Also, “the Bible is quite specific that only men, not women, are created in the image of God.” He also pointed to what he called contradictions in Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of Jesus’ Nativity.

“Can we separate the essence of biblical truth from the time-warped vehicle that distorts the truth in the prejudices of the past?” Spong asked.

“Is one of the reasons that our clergy do not teach the Bible rigorously to their congregations the fact that we clergy ourselves have come to dismiss much of Holy Scripture as no longer valid?”

“I am tired of the Bible being thought of as the private possession of the fundamentalists and the television evangelists,” he said. “I think it is time that mainline churches rescue the Bible from the Falwells of this world.”