OPENING WORDS

HELEN VOLZ
An impression I have after attending this fellowship occasionally for 30 years and regularly for the last 7 years, as well as reading comments on the UUA website, is that Jesus and Christianity are difficult topics for many UUs.   Those of you who grew up as Christians may have unpleasant memories of creeds and rigid requirements.  Or perhaps as I did, you came here because you thought that Christianity did not have all the answers, or you felt that you had outgrown it.  Perhaps you grew up in another faith tradition and viewed Christianity as the Other, something you wanted no part of.

Most people who openly define themselves as UU Christians, have experienced at least the occasional raised eyebrow, rolled eyes or in some cases outright hostility.   In spite of that, I feel that I have learned more about Christianity here than I did in any Protestant church I attended.

Today popular culture is suddenly filled with Jesus. There are some movies and novels which may bother non Christians and liberal Christians and others
that may threaten conservative Christians.  Today we hope to help you explore some aspects of Christianity that you probably didn’t learn in Sunday School.  We’ll discuss contemporary liberal Christian scholarship as well as Christianity in the popular media.  And for those who are interested, there will be plenty of time to respond and discuss these ideas at the PQRST (or Pretty Quick Rehash of the Service Topic) which will start at the front of the sanctuary about noon.

LIGHTING THE CHALICE 

LOIS DURRAN

In her book Nickel and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich describes attending a tent revival meeting. She writes: “It would be nice if someone would read this sad-eyed crowd the Sermon on the Mount, accompanied by a rousing commentary on income inequality and the need for a hike in the minimum wage.  But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say.  Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.”

We light the chalice this morning in the spirit of truth, and with the acknowledgement that what is presented as truth isn’t always truth, and that truth can mean different things to different people.

CHARLOTTE  DELISSOVOY

First of all, I should like to express my gratitude for the opportunity to have studied, for the past seven years, with a group calling itself the UU Christians.  Our quest was to find the historic Jesus, inasmuch as such an end is possible, and we talked long and hard about many obscure and not so obscure interpretations of the life and effect of this man who was so spiritually in tune with the Divine and whose teachings have inspired human behavior for so long.  The intensity of the search has been typical of Unitarian Universalists and the acceptance of a UU Friend in their midst has also been typical.  I have learned so much and shared so much with others who are seekers.

THE EARLY PARADIGM

Marcus Borg, in his new book The Heart of Christianity, states quite firmly that we are in the midst of a new Christian reformation, especially in North America.  The divide, the schism, involves two quite different understandings of how the Christian tradition and Christian life are viewed as a whole.  Most Christians in Western culture for the past few centuries, and today the majority of Christians in North American Christianity, view the Bible as a unique revelation from God, with literal meaning; see God, the Bible, and Jesus as the way to heaven; and view Christianity as the only true religion.  Millions are committed to "traditional" Christianity as the only way to be a Christian.  But millions are embracing an emerging way and are dividing the contemporary church.

This early paradigm, Borg continues, has long been given public display in fundamental, conservative, evangelical Christian programs on TV and radio that summarize essential doctrines, and today is obvious in the right wing conservative Christians on the current political scene.  To be a true Christian you must believe certain statements, see Jesus as the son of God, born of a virgin, who died for our sins, was resurrected, and will come again.  Borg is quick to note that this earlier paradigm for centuries has nourished millions of Christians.  The Spirit of God has worked through it for centuries and has produced lives of love and compassion.  But today, for many, this vision is not compelling.

Over the past 100 years a major grass roots movement has occurred within the mainline denominations, affected by science, historical scholarship, religious pluralism, and cultural diversity, that has led to an awareness of the contribution of the earlier paradigm to racism, sexism, nationalism, and exclusivism.  Important to emerging thinking is the work of Elaine Pagels in The Gnostic Gospels (1979) and Beyond Belief (2004).  Her work with hidden manuscripts discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt has made accessible an understanding of alternative gospels and other writings denounced as heretical and banned, burned, or destroyed by an orthodox hierarchy in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th century.  Beyond Belief is an account of her comparison of the Gospel of St. John and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, both written at the end or turn of the first century. They reflect an intense debate about who Jesus was, with John opposing Thomas's teaching that God's light shines not only in Jesus, but potentially at least in everyone.  The Gospel of St. John provided a foundation for a unified church.  Thomas's gospel with its emphasis on each person's search for God did not. Christian history remained buried at Nag Hammadi for 1600 years.
The dynamics of this struggle affect the way we understand our
Christian history, what doctrines we must shed, the need to continue our search, to understand the danger of unquestioned acceptance of religious authority.

HELEN  VOLZ
POPULAR EXAMPLES OF THE EARLY PARADIGM.

First I’ll say a few words about Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”  How many of you have seen it?  I went to the movie because someone told a member of the Sunday Services Committee that we should have some comment on it in a service.  First, my emotional reactions:  There were parts near the beginning where I thought the cinematography was beautiful.  But for a great deal of the film I sat leaning back on my seat and looking at the screen through my eyelashes.  There were times when my stomach muscles were so knotted that I thought I might actually have to leave and be sick.  The continual scourging was extremely difficult for me to watch.

John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopalian Bishop of Newark, NJ, had a four part series on his web site about the Passion.  In it he addressed the two main issues: the accuracy of the film in following the Biblical texts and the historicity of the gospels themselves in describing the crucifixion.

On the first issue Spong cites many incidents that were not part of the gospels, but rather were part of Catholic traditions that had built up over the years. One example is the prominent part that Jesus’ mother played in the film.  In the Bible she actually had only a cameo appearance in one gospel—the gospel of John.   There are many other examples and I’ll be happy to give you references after the service.

On the issue of historicity, Spong posits that Jesus died alone, since the disciples had abandoned him, and that thus there were no eye witnesses.  The gospels, which were written no earlier than 40 years after the crucifixion, drew heavily on Jewish scriptures to make Jesus seem like the long awaited Messiah.

“The Passion” was all about Jesus’ death, not about the life that he lived.  I guess the message of the Passion is “Look how he suffered to save our souls,” and for some I expect that is a comforting message.  So Be it.  For me the message should be, “Look at how he lived his life that we might learn from him.”

Now, on to the novels.  How many of you are familiar with the “Left Behind” series?  These books are written by Dr. Tim LaHaye , an evangelical minister and writer who had the idea for the series, and Jerry B. Jenkins, formerly the vice president for publishing of the Moody Bible Institute and the author of biographies of Hank Aaron, Billy Graham and others.   Jenkins did the actual writing.
 
This series is based on The Rapture, that point in time described in the New Testament Book of Revelations when the true Christian believers will be suddenly taken up to heaven to join Christ while the rest of us remain here on earth.  I have read only the first book in the series.  While it somewhat held my interest, because it was a mystery and I love mysteries, I found the writing mediocre and the message very UNchristian.  For example when a Christian pilot was suddenly “taken up”, his plane crashed and all but a few others who believed just as he did, were killed as the plane dropped from the sky.  The book was filled with scenes of terrible traffic accidents, families split apart, and people looking frantically for their loved ones.   It isn’t good enough that some of those left behind believed they were Christians.  They weren’t the RIGHT KIND OF CHRISTIANS.

Here’s a bit of information that scares me.  In a New York Times Op-Ed piece last month, Nicholas Christoff said that these books are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States and have sold more that 60 million copies world wide. These are stories of a punishing God and a militant Jesus.  Christoff pointed out that if militant Islamics had a publishing success of this magnitude about their religion, most Americans would be horrified.  What does it say about the Americans who are gobbling up these books?
 
 

CHARLOTTE DELISSOVOY
THE EMERGING PARADIGM

In books like Bishop Spong's Why Christianity Must Change or Die (1998) or Jack Good's The Dishonest Church (2003) and those on the annotated bibliography from the UU Christian reading list, contemporary Christian theologians passionately respond to the rigid position of traditional Christianity. Returning to Borg, who has written so perceptively about what he calls the "emerging paradigm," let us consider some of his observations.  First of all, the Bible is seen as historical, a product of two ancient communities, Israel and the early Christians, written for THEM, not for us.  More than literal or factual, the Bible stresses meaning through metaphorical writing. What is the meaning, for example, of the birth and death stories about the life of Jesus?  The Bible is sacred, not in its origin, but as a means for the Spirit to live within us today.  Christian life is defined as a relationship with God or the "More" or Ultimate Reality that transforms life in the present.  God, the More, the sacred is known in all the enduring religious traditions. Metaphorically, the path seen in Jesus is the path of dying to an old identity and a way of being born into a new identity that lies at the heart of Christianity. Indeed, spiritual transformation is central to the world's enduring religions:  Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Zen Buddhism.  The purpose of spirituality is to help nourish the new life.  Christianity is one of the world's great enduring religions.  It is a response to God in our own cultural stream. Understanding religious pluralism negates Christian exclusivism.

The Center for Progressive Christianity is an association of congregations that are responding to this new way of thinking.  These are their eight principles:

By calling ourselves progressive, we mean that we are Christians who:

1.  Have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus.
2.  Recognize the faithfulness of other people who have other names for the way to God's realm, and acknowledge that their ways are true for them, as our ways are true for us;
3. Understand the sharing of bread and wine in Jesus' name to be a representation of an ancient vision of God's feast for all peoples.
4.  Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including but not limited to): believers and agnostics, conventional Christians and questioning skeptics, women and men, those of all sexual orientations and gender identities, those of all races and cultures, those of all classes and abilities, those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope;
5.  Know that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe;
6.  Find more grace in the search for understanding than we do in dogmatic certainty--more value in questioning than in absolutes.
7.  Form ourselves into communities dedicated to equipping one another for the work we feel called to so:  striving for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God's creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers; and
8.  Recognize that being followers of Jesus is costly and entails selfless love, conscientious resistance to evil, and renunciation of privilege.  (Quoted by Jack Good in The Dishonest Church, p. 148, from the Center for Progressive Christianity web site www.tcpc.org.)

LOIS DURRAN
EXAMPLES OF THE EMERGING PARADIGM

I think that as Unitarian Universalists, a lot of us are uncomfortable with Jesus talk because we have been hurt or alienated by the Christian Church.  I know that I am a Unitarian Universalist because I could no longer pretend to believe what the Christian Church was teaching.  If Marcus Borg is right, I am not alone.

Marcus Borg thinks that Christianity today, even Orthodox Christianity, is the product of 2000 years of evolution.  Conflict about what to believe is nothing new.  In this little book here, The Gnostic Gospels, Elaine Pagels, discusses the scrolls found in Nag Hammadi in 1945 and what these writings mean to us today.  According to Pagels, these books are evidence that there has been conflict about what to believe since the Christian Church began.

 The Gnostics believed that self-knowledge was knowledge of God.  They saw Jesus as a guide who opened access to spiritual understanding.

Basically, this book describes the conflicts in the early church.  The Nag Hammadi  writings include alternative stories to the ones found in the Bible.  There is a different Genesis story, told from the perspective of the serpent.  There are numerous retellings of the story of Jesus.  And the point of all of this is that the books that ended up in the Bible were chosen by the church because they presented the church’s agenda.

The Gnostic Gospels talks about the idea that the resurrection stories conferred authority in the early church.  It explains certain religious convictions in terms of purely political motivations.  It talks about the story of the Passion of Christ as a metaphor for the martyrdom the early Christians suffered.  And above all, it makes it clear that the Gnostics believed that the church does not have the right to define religious experience.

It seems to me that the Gnostics would have made good Unitarians.

At the end of her book, Elaine Pagels says that she believes that the Nag Hammadi scrolls waited to be found until the world was ready to find them.  Perhaps Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code is such a big hit because Marcus Borg is right and people are ready for a new idea of Jesus.

The Da Vinci Code is important to this service because it is a current best-seller that features the life of Jesus prominently.  It doesn’t matter if you believe the material it presents or not.  What matters is that it is being talked about at all.

The idea that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene wasn’t new to me.  I had read John Shelby Spong’s Born Of A Woman, in which he makes a very good case for this marriage, based entirely on what we find in the Bible.  But the fascinating thing about The Da Vinci Code for me was the link of this marriage to ancient Goddess worship.  I was hooked.  I wanted more.

So I picked up this book, The Woman With The Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird.  This made for some fascinating reading.  Margaret Starbird is a Catholic scholar, and after reading Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a 1982 book that introduced the idea that Mary Magdalene was the Holy Grail, Starbird set out to prove it couldn’t be true.  What she found was overwhelming evidence that it was true.

Her book goes into detail about the Hieros Gamos, or the “Sacred Marriage” of the Goddess religions of Old Europe and the Near East.  It discusses the Knights Templar and the “Sangraal” being the “Blood royal” and traces legends in France that support the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdelene had a child.  It talks about the Inquisition and its efforts to obliterate all evidence of this child, and it shows the symbols and signs by which the stories were kept alive.  It also discusses in detail the great works of art that contain these signs and symbols, works by artists like da Vinci who were members of the Priory of Sion.  And most important, it explains how the church purged itself of all contact with the Sacred Feminine and thus made half of the human race subservient to the other half.

I have a friend with whom I meet once a week to share our spiritual journeys.  We’ve been doing this for over ten years.  After I read The Woman With The Alabaster Jar, I had to tell her about everything in the book.  She listened to me go on for over an hour, and then when I was done, she said that she could see that I was really excited about what I had read, but she wondered what difference it all makes.  After thinking about it, I realized that it means so much to me because it means that the church hasn’t told us the whole story.  We will never know the extent to which the Christian Church changed history.

Marcus Borg does not believe that Jesus literally died for our sins.  But he does have faith in the cross as a trustworthy disclosure of the evil of domination systems, as a symbol of the “way” or “path” of transformation, as the revelation of the depth of God’s love for us, and as the proclamation of radical grace.  He says that whenever we emphasize the divinity of Jesus at the expense of his humanity we lose track of the utterly remarkable human being that he was.  What all of these books mean to me is that this man, Jesus, had a message that has survived for 2000 years, a message of compassion and love, and that I shouldn’t let my problems with the Christian Church keep me from understanding that message.

CLOSING WORDS
Religion gives us a path, a history, and a vision of life.  May we all strive to be more compassionate beings, regardless of the path we choose to walk.
 
 

Borg, Marcus J.  The Heart of Christianity, Rediscovering a Life of Faith, 2004
  Cover:  For the millions of people who have turned away from many traditional beliefs about God, Jesus, and the Bible, but still
  long for a relevant, nourishing faith, Borg shows why the Christian life can remain a transforming relationship with God.
Emphasizing the critical role of daily practice in living the  Christian life, he explores how prayer, worship, Sabbath, pilgrimage, and more can be experienced as authentically life-  giving practices.

Borg, Marcus J.  Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, 1994
  Reviews:  Publishers Weekly:  "In this small, but eloquent and learned book, Borg. . . directs his readers, especially
     those who have found no meaningful image of Jesus, away from confessed doctrines about Jesus (what the gospels and the
       churches say about Him) and toward a relationship with the Spirit of God."    Walter Wink, Auburn Theological Seminary:  "In   every generation there is a handful of writers of whom it can be said, 'Read everything they write.'  Marcus Borg is one of these today:
     a writer of rare lucidity, original scholarly insights, profound spirituality, and the unusual capacity to connect it   all to life in the present.  He might just change your mind--   or life."       Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, Bishop of Newark:  "Marcus Borg takes
       his readers on a demanding and exciting tour of the New Testament.   He breaks open the religious encrustations of the ages and
      invites us to look with fresh eyes at the Jesus that the church has distorted in the service of its doctrine and its creeds.  In
        the process, Jesus comes to life in a startling new resurrection."   Marcus Borg is Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and  Culture at Oregon State University.

Thomas Cahill  The Gifts of the Jews:  How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels, 1998
  Cahill:  "In this series, "The Hinges of History," I mean to retell the story of the Western world as the story of the great gift-givers, those who entrusted to our keeping one or another  of the singular treasures that make up the patrimony of the West.
       This is also the story of the evolution of Western sensibility,a narration of how we became the people that we are and why we
  think and feel the way we do.  And it is, finally, a recounting of those essential moments when everything was at stake, when
   the mighty stream that became Western history was in ultimate  danger and might have divided into a hundred useless tributaries
        or frozen in death or evaporated altogether.  But the great  gift-givers, arriving in the moment of crisis, provided for
     transition, for transformation, and even for transfiguration, leaving us a world more varied and complex, more awesome and
    delightful, more beautiful and strong than the one they had  found."

Cover:  "In the irresistible style that made How the Irish Saved Civilization such a delight, Cahill explores the origins of
     monotheism, bringing us to the realization that many of our most treasured values are, indeed, the gifts of the Jews."
       Thomas Cahill has studied with some of America's most distinguished  literary and biblical scholars at New York's
        Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University, Fordham University, and most recently the Jewish Theological Seminary
   of America, where he was a visiting scholar during 1996 and 1997.  The former director of religious publishing at Doubleday,
        he lives in New York City.

Cahill, Thomas.  Desire of the Everlasting Hills, The World   Before and After Jesus, 1999.

   Cover:  "With his bestselling classics How the Irish Saved Civilization and The Gifts of the Jews, Thomas Cahill proved
    himself a master interpreter of what he calls 'the hinges of history'--crucial turning points in the formation of Western
    culture.  Now, in his latest book about people and events that changed the world, he turns his attention to one pivotal
        individual:  Jesus of Nazareth. "How did an obscure rabbi and minor prophet from a backwater of the Roman Empire come to be considered the central figure in Western civilization?  Did his influence in fact change the  world?
  "...Cahill shows Jesus from his birth to his execution through the eyes of those who knew him and in the context of his time.
  Here is Jesus the loving friend, itinerant preacher, and quiet revolutionary, whose words and actions inspired his followers
   to journey throughout the Roman world and speak the truth he  instilled."

Chilton, Bruce.  Rabbi Jesus, An Intimate Biography, 2000
    Cover: Chilton draws on recent archaeological findings to paint a  vivid portrait of the social customs, political forces, and
        religious beliefs and practices of first-century Palestine.   Examining new translations and interpretations of ancient texts
        against this fresh, historically accurate background, he offers  a revolutionary look at Jesus' early life and the philosophical
and psychological foundations of the ideas he promulgated as a young man.  He shows that Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Galilee,
       not Nazareth or Bethlehem of Judea, and that the High Priest  Caiaphas, not Pontius Pilate, played the central role in Jesus'
execution.  It is his description of Jesus' role as rabbi, or "master," of Jewish oral traditions, a teacher of the Kabbalah,
and a practitioner of a Galilean form of Judaism that emphasized  direct communication with God, however, that casts an entirely new
      light on the origins of Christianity.  By placing Jesus within the  context of his times, Chilton uncovers truths lost to history and
       reveals a new Jesus for the new millennium. Bruce Chilton is Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College in
  Annandale-on-Hudson and priest at the Free Church of St. John the Evangelist in Barrytown, New York.  He is the author of many
    scholarly articles and books, including Jewish-Christian Debates and A Galilean Rabbi and His Bible.

The Communion Book, ed. Carl Seaburg, 1993
   Cover:  This book collects a wide variety of communion services   used in Unitarian Universalist congregations....  The first section
        features communion services that can be used for specific  occasions during the customary church year.  The second section
        collects communion services using unusual elements in their  observance.  The third section brings together many traditional
        and historical communion services.  The last section features a number of services for special occasions.  In all, there are
    66 communion services.  A short background section opens the  book:  a brief overview of the history of the communion rite
    in traditional Christian congregations; a survey of the practice  of communion within the Unitarian and Universalist denominations;
       and a look at current practices in the churches of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

     Carl Seaburg is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister.  He  has served parishes in New England and worked as an editor for
  Beacon Press.

Crossan, John Dominic.  Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography, 1994
     This book is Crossan's reconstruction of the historical Jesus derived from 25 years of scholarly research on what actually
    happened in Galilee and Jerusalem during the early first century of the common era.  Specific problems:  the divergences in the
  four "biographies," Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which reveal varied interpretations of Jesus' life and work; these four
      accounts do not represent all the early gospels available, but  are a calculated collection known as the canonical gospels.
     Crossan looks at the crossing of three independent vectors to  examine the historical Jesus:  cross-cultural anthropology,
     Greco-Roman and especially Jewish history, and literary or textual.
        N.Y.Times Review:  "Crossan paints his Jesus with great warmth and power. He achieves a portrait that both takes in the
        contemporary background yet accounts for Jesus' distinctiveness.... This Jesus is a Jewish peasant, with a direct sense of God's immediacy, who shatters all social restraints."
    John Dominic Crossan is professor of biblical studies at DePaul University in Chicago.

Fox, Matthew.  Original Blessing, 1983
        Cover:  "In this critically acclaimed bestseller, named 'the overall most influential psycho-spiritual book of the 1980;s,'
        maverick theologian Matthew Fox provides a daring view of  historical Christianity, and a theologically sound basis for the
        personal discovery of spiritual liberation.  Christianity once celebrated beauty, compassion, justice, and   provided a path of positive knowledge and ecstatic connection with all creation.  Is this Western mystical tradition still alive?  Why does modern Christianity place so much emphasis on  original sin?  Is there a basis in our own spirituality for  environmentalism, feminism, political activism, and social justice?
        Matthew Fox comments:  "Religion has failed people in the West as often as it has been silent about pleasure or about the cosmic
       creation, about the ongoing power of the flowing energy of the Creator, about original blessing. . . [The creation tradition]
  has been forgotten almost entirely--it has been kept alive by artists, poets, scientists, feminists, and political prophets,
  but not theologians."
   At publishing date Matthew Fox was Founding Director of the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names
    College in Oakland, California.

Elaine Pagels.  Beyond Belief, The Secret Gospel of Thomas, 2003
Reviews:  Karen Armstrong:  "This luminous and accessible history of early Christian thought offers profound and crucial
          insights on the nature of God, revelation, and what we  mean by religious truth. Those who are moved by religion
                but who find that they can no longer accept the official doctrines of their church will find this marvelous book a
               source of inspiration and hope."
                        Karen King:  "Beyond Belief is a marvelous book,  honest and engaging, discussing the core issues of
              contemporary spirituality with such simplicity and  profundity.  Elaine Pagels guides readers to enter afresh
               into the ancient debates over whether Christianity is better understood as a system of doctrines or a spiritual
               inquiry into the divine.  It's a book many readers will treasure for its healing, its good sense, and its permission
            to think, imagine, and yet believe."
    Cover:  "Elaine Pagels, one of the world's most important writers and thinkers on religion and history, and winner of the
        National Book Award for her groundbreaking work The Gnostic  Gospels, now reflects on what matters most about spiritual
                and religious exploration in the twenty-first century.  This bold new book explores how Christianity began by tracing its
            earliest texts, including the secret Gospel of Thomas, rediscovered in Egypt in 1945."
        Elaine Pagels is currently the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University.

Elaine Pagels.  The Gnostic Gospels, 1979
        The significant discovery in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, of a hidden library of 52 manuscripts reveals a wide range of thinking about Christianity on the part of the first Christians.  In this  book Elaine Pagels examines the different ways in which both
    Gnostics and the orthodox constructed God, Christ, and the Church.      Was there only one God, and could He be both Father and Mother?  Whose version of Christianity came down to us and why did it prevail?  The Gnostic Gospels is an accessible reconsideration
  of the origins of the Christian faith.

Spong, John Shelby.  Liberating the Gospels:  Reading the Bible   with Jewish Eyes, 1997
  Cover:  In his boldest book since Rescuing the Bible from  Fundamentalism, Bishop John Shelby Spong offers a compelling view
       of the Gospels as thoroughly Jewish texts.  Spong powerfully argues that many of the key Gospel accounts of events in the
    life of Jesus--from the stories of his birth to his physical resurrection--are not literally true.  He offers convincing
     evidence that the Gospels are a collection of Jewish midrashic stories written to convey the significance of Jesus.  This
        remarkable discovery brings us closer to how Jesus was really understood in his day and should be in ours.
    At publishing date John Shelby Spong was Episcopal Bishop of Newark, New Jersey.

Additional suggestions:
 

Spong, John Shelby.  Why Christianity Must Change or Die, 1999
    Cover:  An important and respected voice for liberal American Christianity for the past twenty years, Bishop John Shelby Spong integrates his often controversial stands on the Bible, Jesus, theism, and morality into an intelligible creed that speaks to today's thinking Christian.  In this compelling and heartfelt book, he sounds a rousing call for a Christianity based on critical thought rather than blind faith, on love rather than judgment, and that focuses on life more than
religion.

Good, Jack.  The Dishonest Church, 2003
    Cover:  Two distinct styles of faith characterize the mainline Protestant churches in the U.S.  One is the faith of the academy, theologically informed but arid and intellectual.  The other is popular Christianity, an energetic mixture of tradition and superstition that provides fellowship and comfort but cannot answer the challenges posed by historical and scientific knowledge.  Mainline pastors tend to hold an academic faith, but, lest they scandalize the laity, they preach a popular one.  Meanwhile, those who seek a faith adequate to the modern world are silently disappearing from the pews.
    The Dishonest Church is an unblinking look at the reasons behind the decline of the mainline churches, and a prescription for a long overdue remedy:  honesty!  It is also a celebration of a faith tradition that continues to evolve as it confronts the Ultimate Mystery.  The book insists that the only way to preserve this tradition is to allow it to do what it has always done:  adjust to new realities.  Readers of this book will be affirmed in their desire to stand at the intersection of a dynamic tradition and an open future.