Firstly, I want to thank Sue Bolton for mentioning the Flying Fruit Fly Circus. It must be twenty years or so since I saw them perform and I was interested in that segment. Although I taped the complete Insight program, I only had time to watch Jack Spong last Thursday night.
When Sue said that Jack had "claimed to speak for Western Christianity" and that "he implied that all Muslim fundamentalists are Shiites", I had another look at the tape because that was not how I remembered it. He was making the point that fundamentalist views occur in other religions "not just Christianity". In Judaism there are the Reformed and the Orthodox and "you see it in Islamism where the Shiites are quite fundamentalistic". Sure, he didn't actually say that there might be other Muslims that are fundamentalistic as well as Shiites although that might have strengthened his point that Christianity is not the only religion with fundamentalists. But he did not "imply that all Muslim fundamentalists are Shiites." Maybe Sue objects to the term fundamentalist. The Concise Oxford describes fundamentalism as "Maintenance, in opposition to modernism of traditional orthodox beliefs such as the inerrancy of Scriptrue and literal acceptance of the creeds as fundamentals of protestant Christianity". What word describing such views does she find acceptable. If she was just wanting to find fault with Spong, she could have pointed out his slip of the tongue when he said that "Galileo said the sun revolved around the earth". I commend her for being willing to watch the interview with Spong. He makes sense to me and I hear him gladly. I would not like to think my secular friends, who know that I am very involved in my Church, thought that I believed the kinds of things that some Christians insist are necessary beliefs to hold, if you commit your life to following Christ. The audience Spong seeks are those that have given the Church away. I am in touch with quite a few such people who welcome what he has to say about living this side of Galileo, Darwin, the discovery that women have egg-cells contributing genetic material to the children they bear, and lots of other things not known between 1000BC and 135AD when the books that became accepted as the Bible were written. Anyone interested in linking up with others who hear Spong gladly might like to send me an email. Margaret ------------------------------------------------------ - You are subscribed to the mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe, email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put in the message body 'unsubscribe insights-l' (ell, not one (1)) See: http://nsw.uca.org.au/insights-l-information.htm ------------------------------------------------------
