It's kind of hard for me to talk about Spong's books. They have meant so much to me, and being about the core of Christianity, pretty much anything I say is going to make someone's head explode. Somewhere.

But you guys are tough. You can take it, right?

I really can say that I wouldn't be where I am today (physically, mentally, anything), without Bishop Spong, and his book Why Christianity Must Change or Die. I know I've talked about this here before, and maybe some of you are sick of hearing me rave about it, but it's kind of essential to talking about how I received this book. I dumped Christianity pretty much the second I got out of my parents' house and moved to college. I'd had it with the hypocrisy I perceived in evangelist preachers, with the atrocities throughout history commited in the name of the church, the exclusive practices, the role the Christian religion had in the oppresion of women, the justification of slavery, etc. And in my own church, I was sick of sermons on the father being the head of the household, and endless ruminations on the book of Revelations in Sunday school. So, like any good hippie, I read a lot about Wicca, but as a physicist, I could never make any of the hippie-dippie watered down texts designed for mass consumption resonate for me. And in Winfield, Kansas, I didn't have access to much information that wasn't available for purchase as Barnes & Noble 45 minutes away.

So I spent a few years just vaguely unsatisfied with anything. Interested in teachings from various religions I'd picked up here and there, but frustrated with the idea of always practicing alone. Spiritual dabbling was big in the news, just then, and the endless debates I was reading were starting to convince me of a couple of things: 1) What mattered was commitment to a path, any path, and constantly knocking on that door. 2) I, as a small town white girl, was never going to have the kind of insight into Buddhism, Wicca, whatever, as I had been steeped in every moment growing up, as my entire culture was saturated with. But still, there was that bad taste in my mouth.

Then I read Why Christianity Must Change or Die.

You know that feeling, when you find a book that articulates all your best thoughts in a way that seems both incredibly familiar and yet completely revolutionary? Like someone took all the thoughts that had been swirling in your head, added a whole lot of research, and then wrote it all down in a thoughtful and brilliantly lucid manner?

Spong told me I could still be a Christian and not believe in the Virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, physical heaven and hell. All those things in the creeds that I had been taught to memorize and recite, that had been represented to me as the core of Christianity. That there was another way. And that there were thousands more like me, to whom the old symbols had not just become meaningless, but actual obstacles to faith. Spong wrote that these things weren't the origins of the faith story. But were signs and interpretations attached to Jesus to try to make sense of the miracle of his life. They weren't the miracle. He was.

Anyway. That book convinced me that Christianity could be big enough to include me. It got me back into the church. And it opened the door for Andrew. Because, I don't know if you know this, but we met at a party, and I thought he was cute, but then it was listening to him in a discussion about religion that made me decide to stalk him into submission.

But then, here I am, many years later. And suddenly my whole life is kind of religion. It's my job. It's 80% of the people that I know, 95% of the people I see on a regular basis. It's what I do in the summer, during the week, on the weekends. And people are asking me questions about "my faith journey," and asking me to lead devotionals. And I'm starting to panic a little, because really, I'm still struggling with all of this. Like someone learning a new language, who can far more easily understand someone else speaking than putting their own thoughts into words, it's so much easier for me to translate their stories and sermons into something I can live with than to translate my deepest beliefs into something that they can live with.

So when I read again about A New Christianity for a New World, I scrambled and bought it. It's intended to be a sort of sequel to Why Christianity Must Change or Die. It's the "So Now What?" book. Okay, so you told me all those miracles weren't essential to the faith. You told me the church needed to be big enough to include people like me. You agreed with me that a church that is always drawing lines of exclusion is a church that is dying. But now what? If Mary wasn't magically inseminated by a spooky father figure in the sky, if Jesus did not literally walk out of his tomb three days later, then doesn't that just make Jesus a really nice, really smart person? So then why am I calling myself a Christian? Not say, a Gandhian?

While Spong makes some over generalizations and over-justifies some of his arguments, something that grinds a little on those scientifically-minded of us, this book was essentially a personal faith story. And it's in that sense that the book works. Spong explains why, for him, Jesus is the door into the divine, while acknowledging that others may find other doors. Spong gives his readers and in-depth exploration of what his practice looks like, to illustrate the forms this new understanding of Christ could take. He gives examples of groups he has participated in all over the world, people who are trying to build a whole new base for their religion. Find new metaphors that work. Sift through the old and see what survives.

What Spong doesn't give us is a map. He acknowledges that he really doesn't have any idea what the new definition of the church will end up looking like. But he convinces me again that the leap is worth it. That the box we've built is too small for God, and it's time to break it.

Really, I could go on and on and on and on and on. There's so much I feel I've left out, but this has already gone far beyond the original scope of what this review was supposed to be. I will close by saying that I can be no impartial observer for Spong and his books. Though if you've read him, I would like to hear from you.

I'm really wishing right now that I had at some time finished the religion icon I had once planned. It would be so appropriate for this post.