Christianity had its Ghost Dance decades ago
Commentary by
William Edelen
It was the great Ghost Dance of 1890 that was the crashing climax to
the collapse of
American Indian culture. Dancing, they thought would bring salvation.
It never happened, and
their fantasy was in the final days.
For over 20 years now I have been saying in lectures and newspaper
columns that
Christianity was in its Ghost Dance. The signs are everywhere and
could be documented by 50
pages offacts and figures given out by the national offices of various
protestant denominations
as well as Roman Catholic.
When a Senior Bishop in the Episcopal church writes a book saying
exactly the same
thing, it gets attention and serves as a wake-up call.
The book is "Why Christianity Must Change or Die," published by
Harper-San Francisco.
The author is Bishop John Shelby Spong, who has been a bishop for 22
years and is one of their
leading scholars.
Clinging to archaic Christian superstitions in a universe made known
to us by Galileo,
Copernicus, Einstein and Bohr is an insult to any enlightened human
being.
Spong writes that: "Intelligent Christians at some point must grow up,
mature, and admit
that there is no big daddy up in the sky listening to prayers." He
says: "It is nonsensical to seek
to understand Jesus as the incarnation of a theistic deity."
Virgin birth, resurrection and ascension are universal mythological
themes found
everywhere. Spong continues: "The view of the cross as a 'sacrifice'
for the 'sins' of the world
is barbaric and based on primitive superstitions.
Of course, scholars in the history of religions and anthropology have
known this for
years.
Spong's answer: "History has come to a point where only one thing will
save the
Christian tradition and that is a new Reformation; a reformation that
will recognize that the
archaic concepts of a previous age will never again speak to the
post-modern world we now
inhabit."
Praise for the book has come from such scholars as Paul Davies, author
of "The Mind of
God" and Karen Armstrong, author of "A History of God."
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1 will never forget the day that I had Bishop Spong for a full hour on
my radio show. He
brought out, laughing, how comical it was for ministers to denounce
the gay/lesbian community
while the ministers were cross-dressing every Sunday morning.
They are cross-dressed in female attire, with robes, laces, stoles,
gowns, decorated with
embroidery, silks, and looking oh, so sweet and lovely.
Thomas Jefferson, with brilliant vision, saw this Ghost Dance coming
200 years ago:
"Creeds, doctrines and dogma, the clergy's own fatal inventions, will
someday be the ruin of the
Christian church, making Christendom a slaughterhouse, dividing it
into castes, with intolerable
hatred for one another."
— William Edelen, a former adjunct professor
of religious studies and anthropology,
is now host of the Sunday Symposium
at the Palm Springs Tennis Club
.
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