Why Christianity must change or die - John Shelby Spong

The best-selling author of Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (over130,000 copies sold) launches an attack on the Church's outdated Creed. This is Bishop Spong's manifesto - he powerfully integrates his controversial stands on the Bible, Jesus and sin into a contemporary liberal Creed that today's thinking Christians can embrace.

Spong presents himself in this book as the champion of believers in exile: 'We are the silent majority of people who find it increasingly difficult to remain members of the Church and still be thinking people.'

The book challenges each point of the traditional Creed, and seeks to come to a contemporary understanding of God. His main arguments centre round a wish to re-interpret traditional Christianity as we know it:
God is the source of life and love, not a super-person running the universe
Jesus is not God, but a model for each of us on how to be open to God
The Church should not be a hierarchical institution, but a communikty of faith and service
Heaven and Hell do not exist but symbolize the fact that our deeds have eternal consequences