RIP - RT. REV. JOHN SHELBY SPONG

Bishop Spong died yesterday, at the age of 90. No one did more to champion the rights and inclusion of all people in the life of the Episcopal Church. He was the towering giant in the modern history of the Church implementing the horizontal nature of religion, particularly for human rights. In church history he will be remembered mostly for this. However, Spong was much more than a great reformer, he was an innovating thinker perhaps ahead of this time. He made us reconsider the basics of religion, to move them from the pre-modern world into the post-modern world. One of his mentors happened to be the one who, more than anyone, drew me from my childhood fundamentalism into the Episcopal Church. Bishop J.A.T. Robinson challenged us to see religion anew in his landmark work,  Honest to God. At the age of 21, it changed my life forever. It did Spong's too.

Indirectly, Spong had much to do with the schism in South Carolina. In the 1990's, he was the appointed bête noire of the conservatives in the diocese, led by ardent evangelical Bishop Fitz Allison who longed to be the antidote to Spong but was mostly ignored outside the diocese. The reactionaries in the diocese used Spong, whom they saw as a heretic, as the reason why the diocese should oppose the prevailing tide of the national church. He was a useful tool. However, in the end, it was Spong who prevailed and the conservatives who drove the grand old diocese into schismatic ruin. Thank God he lived long enough to see full and complete equality and inclusion of all people in the life of the church.

For more on Spong, see this article in ENS.