Bishop John Shelby Spong to Deliver Mendenhall Lecture April 1

March 25, 2003

March 25, 2003, Greencastle, Ind. - How is one to be a Christian without compromise while also being a citizen of the 21st century without compromise? John Shelby Spong, retired Anglican Bishop of Newark, New Jersey and author of 14 books, will examine that question when he presents the 2003 Mendenhall Lecture, "God Beyond Theism," Tuesday, April 1, 2003 in Gobin Memorial United Methodist Church on the campus of DePauw University. The speech begins at 7 p.m. and is free and open to all.

The most-published member of the House of bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Bishop Spong's books include Why Christianity Must Change or Die, A New Christianity for a New World and Here I Stand. His published articles now number in excess of 90. Since his retirement in 2000, Bishop Spong has taught at Harvard University, where he delivered the William Belden Noble lectures; and at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.

Admirers of John Shelby Spong worldwide acclaim his legacy as a teaching bishop who makes contemporary theology accessible to the ordinary lay person -— he's considered a champion of an inclusive faith by many both inside and outside the Christian church. But his challenges to the church have also made Bishop Spong the most vilified of modern clergyman. His books, which have challenged the way Christians view the Bible, and his long fight for equal rights within the Christian church for women and homosexuals have made the Bishop the target of hostility, fear, and even death threats.

The Bishop has said that he writes as a "Christian who loves the church, not a hostile critic. When I left fundamentalism I did not leave my love of the Bible." He explains that his books are "about hope, and returning the Bible to thinking Christians," and asks: "Read them with an open mind."

Born in 1931 in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Spong was educated in the public schools of Charlotte, was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1952 and received his Master of Divinity degree in 1955 from the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Virginia. That seminary and St. Paul's College have both conferred on him honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees. He served as rector of St. Joseph's Church in Durham, North Carolina from 1955 to 1957; rector of Calvary Parish, Tarboro, North Carolina from 1957 to 1965; rector of St. John's Church in Lynchburg, Virginia from 1965 to 1969; and rector of St. Paul's Church in Richmond, Virginia from 1969 to 1976. He was consecrated bishop on June 12, 1976.

Bishop Spong's recent writings, accessible online, include "Is This War Necessary?" (click here), "Terrorism and the Shallowness of Religious Talk" (click here), and "Is Christianity Going South?" (click here).

The Mendenhall Lectures, which were inaugurated in 1913, were endowed by the Reverend Doctor Marmaduke H. Mendenhall. His desire was to enable the University to bring to campus "persons of high and wide repute, of broad and varied scholarship" to address issues related to the academic dialogue concerning Christianity. Although Mendenhall was a pastor in the North Indiana Annual Conference of what was then called the Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the parents of the United Methodist Church, he explicity dictated that lectures be selected without regard to denominational divisions. Thanks to this endowment, DePauw has been able to bring theological and religious scholars of international repute to campus for nearly a century. Back