John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal bishop, in a Q&A following a talk he gave last summer, was asked his opinion on why the Christian church seems so hesitant to accept scholarship. Here was his response: Spong: There’s almost a conspiracy of silence in some parts of the Christian church lest lay people might learn what all the scholars already know. I think that’s motivated by economic considerations, you know, it might upset lay people and they might withdraw their pledges...a young minister or priest will come out of seminary just bursting with knowledge and excitement about the things he or she has learned and he’ll trot them out in a sermon or two and people are just scandalized because they still think Adam and Eve were real people or that Noah really put those dinosaurs on his ark...and so after a few people go to the lay leaders of the church and say “hey, this new minister might be fine but he’s upsetting Miss Susie,” then the leaders go to that minister and say “son, why don’t you preach what you do know and not what you don’t know, why don’t you tell us about things of which you’re certain and not about things of which you have doubt,” and so they dumb down the congregation to the lowest common denominator. And that means that you accept all the people that can’t think and drive away all the people that do think. And the Christian church is in statistical free-fall today. Here is his entire presentation that day, which is well worth the time:
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 19:42:05 +0000
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