Hero to Some, Heretic to Others,
Spong Hangs up His Miter

NEWARK, N.J.--After nearly a quarter of a century of merrily doing just about everything bishops aren't supposed to do, John Shelby Spong has finally hung up his miter--if not his reputation as the unrepentant bad boy of liberal Christianity in America.

Certainly for conservatives inside and outside Spong's Episcopal Church, his Jan. 28 farewell to his northern New Jersey diocese couldn't come soon enough. As most any churchgoer who hasn't been asleep since the Reformation can tell you, Spong rarely passed up an opportunity to upset Christianity's equilibrium.

It was Spong, for example, who ordained the nation's first openly gay priest (and within weeks suspended him for various indiscretions), and Spong who led his Newark diocese into a bitter national heresy trial to defend another homosexual priest.

And it was Spong--a Beliefnet columnist-- who questioned the Archbishop of Canterbury's integrity for not toeing Spong's liberal line, and Spong who labeled African Christians "premodern" because they would not follow the trail he helped blaze on behalf of women and gays in the church.

But it was Spong's media-savvy pronouncements on theology--in a steady stream of news releases, books and lectures--that gained him as much attention as his campaigns for equality. Yet his legacy in matters of church doctrine is far more ambiguous than his record on social justice.

Dismissed by many serious scholars as a popularizer in need of a good editor, Spong has always been considered more of an attention-seeking polemicist than a theologian. Indeed, it could be said Spong is to Christian theology what Jerry Springer is to network television--a flashy performer with big overnight ratings who wound up undermining the medium that gave him a stage.

That judgment is not surprising considering that during his career Spong debunked the virginity of Mary and the resurrection of Jesus, declared all morality relative to time and place, and said that God as a being to pray to "is dead." Most recently, Spong has begun telling Christians that if they didn't adopt his skeptical model of faith the church was doomed. And those are just the high points.

Given this track record, an obvious question comes to mind now that he is preparing to leave the active ministry: After 45 years of scorched-earth iconoclasm, what exactly does Spong himself believe?

His answer may come as a surprise.

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