The Anglican Church is Dying: An Exchange

From Datechguy:

I got an e-mail from Smitty today that linked to this post at Samizdata. The meat of the story:

Bishop Spong is the “Save the bible from fundamentalism” person (a favourite of certain liberal people I know in York) – and by “fundamentalist” he really means this word in its original sense, i.e. the “fundamentals” of Christianity such as the empty tomb (although, of course, he would be happy if innocent minded people just thought he meant stupid-southern-redneck-preacher by “fundamentalist”, which is the impression the media love to give). In any case Bishop Spong assumes that, being a social gospel person like himself, Rowen Williams also does not believe in the basic doctrines of Christianity (i.e. that, like Bishop Spong himself, he is using religion as a cover for the service of the collectivist cause).

So Bishop Spong was rather taken aback by Rowen Williams teaching the doctrine of the empty tomb, so shocked that he stated that of course Williams can not really believe in such doctrines (he must just be pretending in order to get along with the ignorant scum who make up most church goers) – but it is Rowen Williams’ reply that interests me.

Archbishop Williams replies that he is not pretending to believe in things in order to get along with ordinary people – he actually does believe in these doctrines, “I do not know how to convince him [Spong] that I do, but I do”.

Read further at Datechguy...