Bishop John Shelby Spong to Deliver Mendenhall Lecture April 1
March 25, 2003
March
25, 2003, Greencastle, Ind. - How is one to be a Christian
without compromise while also being a citizen of the 21st century without
compromise? John Shelby Spong, retired
Anglican Bishop of Newark, New Jersey and author of 14 books, will examine
that question when he presents
the 2003 Mendenhall Lecture, "God Beyond Theism," Tuesday, April 1,
2003 in
Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church on the campus of DePauw University.
The speech begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to all.
The most-published member of the House of bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Bishop Spong's books include Why Christianity Must Change or Die, A New Christianity for a New World and Here I Stand. His published articles now number in excess of 90. Since his retirement in 2000, Bishop Spong has taught at Harvard University, where he delivered the William Belden Noble lectures; and at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
Admirers of John Shelby Spong worldwide acclaim his
legacy as a
teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary
lay person -— he's considered a champion of an inclusive faith by many both
inside and outside the Christian church. But his challenges to the church
have also made Bishop Spong the most vilified of modern clergyman. His
books, which have challenged the way Christians view the Bible, and his long
fight for equal rights within the Christian church for women and homosexuals
have made the Bishop the target of hostility, fear, and even death threats.
The Bishop has said that he writes as a "Christian who loves the church, not a hostile critic. When I left fundamentalism I did not leave my love of the Bible." He explains that his books are "about hope, and returning the Bible to thinking Christians," and asks: "Read them with an open mind."
Born
in 1931 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Spong was educated in the
public schools of Charlotte, was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1952 and received his Master of Divinity
degree in 1955 from the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in
Virginia. That seminary and St. Paul's College have both conferred on him
honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees. He served as rector of St. Joseph's
Church in Durham, North Carolina from 1955 to 1957; rector of Calvary
Parish, Tarboro, North Carolina from 1957 to 1965; rector of St. John's
Church in Lynchburg, Virginia from 1965 to 1969; and rector of St. Paul's
Church in Richmond, Virginia from 1969 to 1976. He was consecrated bishop on
June 12, 1976.
Bishop Spong's recent writings, accessible online, include "Is This War Necessary?" (click here), "Terrorism and the Shallowness of Religious Talk" (click here), and "Is Christianity Going South?" (click here).
The
Mendenhall Lectures, which were inaugurated in 1913, were endowed by the
Reverend Doctor Marmaduke H. Mendenhall. His desire was to enable the
University to bring to campus "persons of high and wide repute, of broad
and
varied scholarship" to address issues related to the academic dialogue
concerning Christianity. Although Mendenhall was a pastor in the North
Indiana Annual Conference of what was then called the Methodist Episcopal
Church, one of the parents of the United Methodist Church, he explicity
dictated that lectures be selected without regard to denominational
divisions. Thanks to this endowment, DePauw has been able to bring
theological and religious scholars of international repute to campus for
nearly a century.
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