Award for Spong

[aleggett]

I thought some of our readers might be interested in the following:   On the 5th day of the month of Iyyar, 5764 (26 April 2004) at a national meeting of the Tikkun Community, Bishop Spong was honored by this Jewish organization with the Title "Moreynu Le Shalom, Our Teacher of Peace." The citation read as follows: Bishop Spong, you have been our brother and our friend in the work of healing and transforming the world. For many decades you have been known as one of the most courageous voices in the entire Christian world -- a voice for social justice, for peace and for moral sanity. You have championed the oppressed wherever you encounter oppression, speaking out for the rights of minorities not only outside but also inside the Episcopal Church, which you have served faithfully. At a time when many Christians have been unwilling to stand up for the revolutionary truths and insights taught by Jesus, you have insisted that the message of healing must be taken seriously. You have followed a path in the Christian world very similar to the Jewish renewal that we are seeking to build in the Jewish world. You have insisted that the God of the universe is real, and hence have sought to understand and encounter God in ways that are real and true to experience, thereby transcending theological conceptions which no longer make sense to the contemporary mind. You have been God's advocate when others sought to fit God into deadening belief systems from the past. You have insisted on understanding Jesus in his Jewish context -- understanding the Gospels as fundamentally Jewish documents and Jesus himself as part of the Jewish people. In so doing you have made a major contribution to re-envisioning Jesus and his message and have helped Christians and Jews to see ourselves as fundamentally aligned. You have helped many Jews, still reeling from the impact of the Holocaust and the 1900 years of Christian teaching of anti-Judaism, to overcome our resistance to acknowledging Jesus as one of our prophetic figures, thereby restoring to us this innovative and insightful Jewish teacher. In recognition of a lifetime filled with acts of goodness, generosity and moral clarity, TIKKUN MAGAZINE and the TIKKUN COMMUNITY hereby bestow on you the title 'Moreynu Le Shalom, our Teacher for Peace' - and offer our gratitude for your years of doing good.