This engaging, fluid memoir from Spong (Liberating the Gospels, 1996, etc.), Episcopalian Bishop of Newark, of his theological odyssey is five parts theoretical, ten parts intramural, and perhaps one part personal and spiritual. Spong’s controversial positions regarding racism, sexism, and homophobia in the Episcopal Church have won him responses from “I believe you are a prophet” to “if all else fails, I will try to rid the world of your evil presence personally.” Spong chose to “move the theological debate out of the structures of sacred space and into the homes and professional lives of our people,” bucking the church hierarchy when he saw it “sacrifice truth and justice to the sensitivities of the majority of those who made up the ecclesiastical body politic.” Questions of moral credibility moved him to defend the rights of African-Americans, women, and homosexuals within his church, and the need to make his church relevant to this day and age prompted a reconsideration of biblical narratives in the light of Einstein and Darwin and the Big Bang. Though Spong is clearly a man of the mind, he has spent much of his time dueling, when not actually duking it out, with a reactionary church hierarchy, calling them on their professed convictions, straightening his words when they have twisted them, taking heat for tinkering with entrenched—and, he feels, outmoded and potentially lethal to his faith—theological concepts that nonetheless have dispensed much religious security over the years. Ultimately, this is a professional memoir, with little personal material—Spong’s wife’s long mental illness is treated here with the same distance he suggests he handled it with at home—and scant spiritual probings. While Spong makes both church politics and his theological cerebrations fascinating, readers may feel dismayed that a man who has so much so say about biblical exegesis consigns the transcendental and the divine to the back seat.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-067538-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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