A dialogue by Gene Marshall with John Shelby Spong’s essay
Tribal Religion: Recasting the Christian Message for Century 21

I have recently read the presentation/essay by John Shelby Spong on Tribal Religion. I count it as one of the best essay’s I have read by Spong. I agree entirely with Spong’s critique of what he means by “tribal religion,” namely the popular religion of our times (or any times) in which people worship their nation, their religious group, their gender, their race, their sexual orientation, and then project the quality of that group upon the cosmos or upon the God of the Bible, and call that projection of their own selves, “God.”

I also appreciate Spong’s presentation of the prophetic thread of biblical literature as a thoroughgoing departure from tribal religion. I appreciate his insistence on seeing Jesus as part of that prophetic thread and thus an inspiration to live entirely beyond any and every “tribal” boundary.

Spong does not mean by “tribal religion” the religious life of pre-civilization social groups. Some, not all, of that ancient religion, I find (and Spong might also find) to be a challenge to the types of popular “tribal religion” that Spong so strongly and colorfully rejects. If you want a copy of Spong’s full talk, email me and I will send it to you.

I have been a persistent critic of some of Spong’s theological views. And toward the end of his presentation on “Tribal Religion,” he makes a number of statements that I find inadequate. I am going to quote below the closing paragraphs of his ten-and-a-quarter-page essay, placing my comments of affirmation and critique in relation to his words.

If our world is ever to move beyond our relentless drive toward self-destruction, a pathway to which we seem to be incredibly drawn, and if our world is ever going to move beyond our selfish exploitation of our own environment and realize that human beings are the only animals that foul their own nest regularly, and if our world is not drawn beyond our mindless participation in an exploding and irresponsible population growth, and if our need to dominate other people in the service of our own national interests and national well-being. If we’re going to do those things, then the God we human beings worship must grow beyond that of being our tribal deity. It must grow beyond that supernatural parent figure who lives in the sky; who blesses us, protects us, and answers our prayers, and serves our need as if that God is our servant.

I agree entirely with the basic content of this passage. In fact, I can say that I agree with every word, except the word “grow.” But this is a very important word, and the way Spong uses this word is a deep violation of a basic theme of the Bible. It is unbiblical to talk about human worship growing. A worship of the non-tribal biblical God cannot grow from some narrow tribalism to some bigger and better image of God. All images of God, including the tribal images of God, including Spong’s image of God, including my image of God, must be killed, destroyed, shown to be illusory. Then and only then can the God of the Bible appear as a living Presence not an image or projection created by humanity. We do not grow into an experience of this Eternal Presence. It happens to us. It shatters us. It brings us immediately back to who we always were in the first place. There is no growth involved. We might even call this experience a demolition. We have been unconsciously assuming to be something we are not, and then that assumption is shown to be sheer delusion. In that moment we may, if we stay alert, catch a glimpse of who we are, always were, and always will be. THERE IS NO GROWTH INVOLVED IN THIS BASIC EXPERIENCE OF THE TRUE GOD OF THE BIBLE. If we are going to speak of growth at all, it is merely growth in our regularity of surrendering to being what we always were, still are, and will always be.

We’ve got to go beyond that until we see God as a power, a presence and a reality, a love and a life and a ground of Being that calls us beyond limits, beyond barriers, beyond our survival mentality into the “new humanity” that we have not yet achieved.

God is not “a power” or “a” anything. God is ALL POWER in which each “a power” appears. Or we might say that God is not “a thing”, but the EVERY-THING in which each thing coheres. Or we can also say that God is NO-THING out of which each thing comes and into which each thing returns. This God is an inescapable PRESENCE in every temporal experience. I am using this convoluted language to promote an experience of this ACTUALITY of God that is beyond language, beyond images, beyond understanding with the mind. This is the biblical God stripped of all tribal projections. The experience of this God and the experience our own true being is one and the same experience.

And we do not “achieve” our “new humanity.” It is a gift. And this is not a “new” humanity in the sense of being something novel in history. It is actually the same old humanity we were before we became inhuman.

You see, we human beings are not fallen creatures that need to be “rescued”. We are still evolving creatures who need to be empowered to become more fully human.

Using the “evolution” metaphor to talk about Spirit life is misleading. Humanity has always been fully human, we are now fully human, and we always will be fully human. And we are also fallen creatures who need to be rescued from our having lost our fully human humanity. Full humanity is simply ordinary everyday humanity that is awake and devoted to That Mysterious Presence that is not reducible to any human image. Our biology is still evolving, but our Spirit Life does not evolve. The Spirit Life of Moses, Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Second Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Mark, Mathew, Luke, John, Augustine, Aquinas, Hildegard, Teresa, Luther etc. is exactly the same as our Spirit Life today – the same as it will be ten thousand years from now. No evolution is required – only surrender to being our TRUE BEING. Our words and means of communicating the Spirit Life change. Perhaps one generation is clearer than another about some aspect of Spirit Life. For example, Luther was clearer than Spong that our Spirit Life is a gift, and that Jesus does indeed function as a rescuer of thoroughly fallen humanity.

We still primarily tell the Jesus story as if he was the “rescuer” of the fallen. We need to tell the Jesus story as if he is the one who empowers us to become more fully human.

What exactly does “empowers us” mean to Spong? And what does “fully human” mean? Any humanness that we have to achieve is not fully human in the Jesus-sense of fully human. Jesus rescues us by challenging our escapes from a humanness empowered by God from the dawn of time. So we are already empowered to be human. We need to be rescued from using that power to be inhuman. And when rescued by Jesus (by the living community of Jesus), we are then empowered not by Jesus but by the POWER that has posited us in being.

The rescue that the living community of the resurrected Jesus provides is: (1) the critique of our illusions, (2) the welcome home to Reality, and (3) the beckon to live our actual humanity. Many religious practices other than Christian ones provide this same rescue. Jesus is just our symbol for this universal rescuing process. Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and others also participate in providing to fallen humanity this universal rescuing process that Christians have called “Jesus’ or “Jesus, the Christ” or “grace.”

You see, none of us can KNOW God; none of us can capture God or possess God, not in our creeds, and doctrines and scriptures. All any of us can do is experience the transcendent and the holy. God is beyond our boundaries. And that’s why we need to begin to think about God as something different from a “person in the sky.” I think we’ve got to begin to think of God as the source of life that flows through every living thing, as the source of love that calls us always into a deeper and fuller life, and in the words of Paul Tillich, we’ve got to see God as the “Ground of all Being” that gives every one of us the courage to be everything that we are capable of being.

Yes, Spong comes close to the core biblical message here. We cannot capture God or possess God. But does Spong actually KNOW in a Spirit Way what Tillich is pointing to with the “Ground of our Being”? Does he know that this Ground, this God is the Mysterious Presence that has created us, sustains us, limits us, and demolishes us? And what is the “courage” that is involved here? I see our true Spirit courage as that profound Trust that we can simply be what we already are in our innate human essence. It is not the courage to be “everything we are capable of being.” In our essence we are beings who never know what we are capable of being. And we do not have to become anything else to be our authentic being.

Further, God is not some force alongside other forces, not some inspiration alongside other inspirations. God, the true God of the Bible stripped of all tribal corruptions, is none other than the Eternal Overwhelmingness that eliminates every image we have of ourselves and leaves us with nothing but what we are already created to be. Yes, freedom and intentionality are part of what we are. But it is not freedom or intentionality that makes us authentically free. We are freedom already. We only have to give up our unfreedom and let ourselves be the FREEDOM that we are already being BE-ED to BE.

And then we will learn that the way we worship God is by living fully, loving wastefully, and having the courage to be all that each of us can possibly be. That’s how you worship God. Our job is to allow people to be all that they are in the infinite variety of our humanity.

This is grand poetry. I like it. I like “loving wastefully.” I like the “infinite variety of our humanity.” But our job is not to “allow” people to be this. People are already allowed to be this, not by any of us, but by the Infinite Mystery, the God to which the Bible refers. We only need to point out this rescuing process: (1) seeing our falsifications, (2) returning home to a welcoming ACTUALITY, and (3) opting to be loyal to that return. Perhaps we make this witness best by simply being this GRAND unachieved BEING ourselves.

People of every tribe, race and national origin; men and women, gay and straight, transgender, bi-sexual, left-handed, right-handed, all of the infinite varieties of our humanity…it is nobody’s job to tell another person that they must be like we intend for them to be. But it is everyone’s job to create a world where we all have the courage to be all that we can be in the infinite variety of our humanity. That’s the God that I hear in the person of Jesus. And that’s why my favorite text in all of the Bible are words attributed to Jesus in the 10th chapter of John’s gospel…where Jesus defines his purpose. “I didn’t come to make you religious; I didn’t come to make you righteous, I didn’t come to make you ‘orthodox’ or to have the true faith or belief, but I did come that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

Yes, but what is this abundant life? Here Spong becomes fuzzy.

The only job of the Christian church is to build a world where everybody in that world has a better opportunity to live fully and thus to know the God of life, to love wastefully, and to have the courage to be all that they can be…and thus know the God that we call the Ground of all Being. “I have come that you might have LIFE, and that you might have it abundantly.” Those are the marching orders of the Christian church in the 21st Century.

Yes, Christians are called to build a world in which everybody is given a better opportunity. This calling is part of our LOVE, our witness, our marching orders as Christians. Such Love is a fundamental aspect of our essence. But better opportunities do not assist anyone to know the God of Love, to love wastefully, and have the courage to be the GREATNESS we already are. The Ground of our Being is already giving us all of that. No better opportunities are required. However prosperous or scroungy be our present circumstances (and they are always some degree of both), the True Ground of our Being is already giving us our essential being. KNOWING God is an opportunity that we cannot escape even though we have spent most of our lives trying. This trying to escape is our fall from which we need rescue. And trying to achieve authenticity is one of our escapes from authenticity.

Some reading this response to Spong’s admittedly good essay might be inclined to say that my comments are nitpicking, that progressive Christians who agree on so many things need to come together and stop battling with one another. But this is not my view. Progressive Christians need to talk with one another frankly and completely. Also, the second best is almost always the most severe enemy of the best. We need the very best Christian theology to prevail in the progressive Christian movement. The points I have insisted upon here are critical, I believe, to the embodiment of that best, the best of Paul Tillich, the best of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the best of Richard Niebuhr, the best of Rudolf Bultmann, the best of Martin Luther, the best of John Wesley, the best of Paul, the best of Jesus, the best of a mighty stream of Christian witnesses. Yes, and also the best of Buddhist witnesses and thousands of others. If we want to set a fresh Christian resurgence aflame again, we have to go with the best. Second best sets off a few sparks, but it also throws water on the fire.

So I want to thank Spong for seeing the importance of moving beyond the widespread and popular tribal religion of our times, but I also want us to probe beyond Spong’s misleading statements to a vision of that true fire that is not set by human effort. This true fire is set by the WAY IT IS in the hearts of those who dare a complete surrender to that Real, Inescapable Presence, to the God of the Bible stripped of all projections.