Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 288 pages
• Published by: HarperOne April 10, 1992
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0060675187
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0060675189
• Book Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 7.4 ounces

Product Review
"[Spong is] striving to revive the imaginative possibilities of ancient Scripture for the women and men of today." -- Mirabella

Product Description


By popular demand—study guides to two of Bishop John Shelby Spong's bestselling and controversial works, including questions, reflections, and summaries for group and individual use.

Reader Reviews
- My purpose in this volume is first to resuce the Bible from the exclusive hands of those who demand that it be literal truth and second to open that sacred story to levels of insight and beauty that, in my experience, literalism has never produced. - I honor fundamentalism's demand that the Bible be taken seriously. - To traffic in guilt as the church has done, to take the beauty and life-giving quality of sexual love and distort it with layer after layer of sexual guilt is simply no longer defensible, if it ever was. - When the love of God is contained inside human barriers, it dies. It ceases to be the demanding, searing, opening love of God. It has become instead the perfume of human respectability, sprinkled on the cesspools of human negativity. - Religion almost inevitably tries to take our anxiety away from us by claiming that which religion can never deliver - absolute certainty. These are just a few of the many passages I highlighted when reading this volume. A book that I"m sure to read again and again for a different point of view, one that talks about the Bible not as a devinely inspired, unchanging thing, but as a tome that was written by men of their time trying to convey the deep meaning of the life altering experiences they encountered. A must read for it's measured, thoughtful, direct and stance. Since reading this book two weeks agao I've been wondering why I hold certain beliefs, pondering new meanings and finding new insights. In short Spong has done something no other Priest or theologian has done for me in a LONG time - he's got me thinking about the Bible and my relation to it on a daily basis.