Biskop
John S. Spong
 Information
- may 2004
Bishop Spong honored by
a Jewish organisation.
On the 5th day of the month of Iyyar, 5764
(26 April 2004) at a national meeting of the Tikkun Community, Bishop
Spong was honored by this Jewish organization with the Title "Moreynu
Le Shalom, Our Teacher of Peace." The citation read as follows:
Bishop Spong, you have been our
brother and our friend in the work of healing and transforming the world.
For many decades you have been known
as one of the most courageous voices in the entire Christian world -- a
voice for social justice, for peace and for moral sanity. You have
championed the oppressed wherever you encounter oppression, speaking out
for the rights of minorities not only outside but also inside the
Episcopal Church, which you have served faithfully. At a time when many
Christians have been unwilling to stand up for the revolutionary truths
and insights taught by Jesus, you have insisted that the message of
healing must be taken seriously.
You have followed a path in the Christian
world very similar to the Jewish renewal that we are seeking to build in
the Jewish world. You have insisted that the God of the universe is real,
and hence have sought to understand and encounter God in ways that are
real and true to experience, thereby transcending theological conceptions
which no longer make sense to the contemporary mind. You have been God's
advocate when others sought to fit God into deadening belief systems from
the past.
You have insisted on understanding Jesus
in his Jewish context -- understanding the Gospels as fundamentally Jewish
documents and Jesus himself as part of the Jewish people. In so doing you
have made a major contribution to re-envisioning Jesus and his message and
have helped Christians and Jews to see ourselves as fundamentally aligned.
You have helped many Jews, still reeling from the impact of the Holocaust
and the 1900 years of Christian teaching of anti-Judaism, to overcome our
resistance to acknowledging Jesus as one of our prophetic figures, thereby
restoring to us this innovative and insightful Jewish teacher.
In recognition of a lifetime filled with
acts of goodness, generosity and moral clarity, TIKKUN MAGAZINE and the
TIKKUN COMMUNITY hereby bestow on you the title 'Moreynu Le Shalom, our
Teacher for Peace' - and offer our gratitude for your years of doing good.
On the 13th day of April, 2004 St.
Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina bestowed on
John Shelby Spong the 24th Annual Sam Ragan Award For Distinguished
Service to The Fine Arts by a North Carolinian.
(Källa: Veckobrev från Waterford Media)
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