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    Jesus for the Non-Religious
    Jesus for the Non-Religious
    Jesus for the Non-Religious
    Audiobook12 hours

    Jesus for the Non-Religious

    Written by John Shelby Spong

    Narrated by Alan Sklar

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Writing from his prison cell in Nazi Germany in 1945 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a young German theologian, sketched a vision of what he called ""Religionless Christianity."" In this book, John Shelby Spong puts flesh onto the bare bones of Bonhoeffer's radical thought. The result is a strikingly new and different portrait of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jesus for the non-religious.

    Spong challenges much of the traditional understanding, from the tale of Jesus' miraculous birth to the account of his cosmic ascension into the sky. He questions the historicity of the ideas that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, that he had twelve disciples, or that the miracle stories were ever meant to be descriptions of supernatural events. He also speaks directly to those critics of Christianity who call God a ""delusion"" and who describe how Christianity has become evil and destructive.

    Spong invites his readers to look at Jesus through the lens of both the Jewish scriptures and the liturgical life of the first century synagogue. He proposes a new way of understanding the divinity of Christ as the ultimate dimension of a fulfilled humanity. Jesus for the Non-Religious may be the book that finally brings the pious and the secular into a meaningful dialogue, opening the door to a living Christianity in the post-Christian world.

    Read by Alan Sklar

    Preface, prologue, and epilogue read by the Author

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 27, 2007
    ISBN9780061262555
    Author

    John Shelby Spong

    John Shelby Spong, the Episcopal Bishop of Newark before his retirement in 2000, has been a visiting lecturer at Harvard and at more than 500 other universities all over the world. His books, which have sold well over a million copies, include Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy; The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic; Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World; Eternal Life: A New Vision; Jesus for the Non-Religious, The Sins of Scripture, Resurrection: Myth or Reality?; Why Christianity Must Change or Die; and his autobiography, Here I Stand. He writes a weekly column on the web that reaches thousands of people all over the world. To join his online audience, go to www.JohnShelbySpong.com. He lives with his wife, Christine, in New Jersey.

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    Reviews for Jesus for the Non-Religious

    4.5/5

    13 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I am writing this having been an atheist for about forty years. I picked this up to learn about the ideas of progressive Christianity. It certainly didn't convert me, but large parts of it were quite interesting, which is more than I can say for Spong's previous book Christianity Must Change or Die. I am trying not to judge it on the basis of my views, but on its quality as a book of argument.Part one and two were interesting: he argues that the gospels were intended as liturgical documents to be read to the congregation over the course of a year, with the stories organized to be appropriate to the events in the calendar. The miraculous events were intended to be understood symbolically, and the gospel writers didn't believe in them. He creates an attractive Jesus and an appealing account of the gospels. I enjoyed this section, and it was impressive, if you aren't too familiar with the New Testament. He argues at times that parts of the gospel cannot be true, because Paul doesn't mention, for example, the Virgin Birth, and his letters precede the gospels. Therefore, he reasons, the Virgin Birth is a late addition. Paul also doesn't seem to have heard of female disciples and equality between men and women (see 1 Cor. 14:34-36 {for they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate} and 1 Tim 2:9-15 {I permit no woman to teach or have authority over a man}); this despite the eloquent passage in Galatians 3:28 (there is no longer male and female. Despite this, Spong believes the gospels when they speak of female disciples and argues for equality between men and women in Christ.Spong also ignores any gospel passages that don't support his argument, including those that have lead other scholars to argue that Jesus was a failed apocalyptic prophet (Mat 14:15-44) or a zealot (Mat 10:34; Lk 22:35).Part three starts off strong, but eventually becomes a bit dull as Spong repeats himself. A rap of the knuckles to Spong for misusing the word "literally", in chapter 21, note 6 in which he says that Martin Luther and John Calvin "wrote about the Jews in words that literally drip with anger." No, they metaphorically drip with anger. If they literally dripped, their words would have to be kept in tubs to contain the liquid.Spong is a famous and apparently popular speaker for a certain type of progressive Christianity, so if you are looking for his point of view, this is a pretty good book. If you share his point of view, I suppose that you will love it. I will just consider myself better informed about opinions that I don't share.
    • 5/5
      This is the book I wanted to read. Spong deconstructs what he perceives to be myths in Christian religious ideology not by claiming that such parts of the faith are too outlandish to be true. Rather, he develops reasoning behind the insertion of various miracles to create a Jesus that could be worshiped by Jews and Gentiles alike. At the same time, he presents a Jesus and Christianity that I can understand—an ideology not reliant on theism or religion. For anyone that wants to understand what Jesus meant outside the two thousand years of dogma that has slowly built up, this is a must read.
    • 5/5
      If anything useful can ever be salvages from christianity, it will be philosophers like Spong who do it. His works are always thought provoking, well worth the effort.
    • 5/5
      I love the way JS Spong can take everything you believe and chop it into tiny logical bits. He then explains the "historicity"of what was said, i.e. when it was written, did this author live at a time he could have known the original apostles, who the intended audience was, etc. About the time you wonder if you will ever believe again, he puts it back together in a way that makes the reader have an even clearer faith than at the beginning of the book.
    • 5/5
      Intriguing takes right there! A couple of unlearning lessons required!