Presiding bishop of the United Methodist Church in northern Illinois, Joe Sprague is a very controversial figure. He is a widely read author, but he is also the bane of conservative theologians - particularly conservative evangelical Methodists who are hoping to take over the Methodist Church and remake it in the same way they managed to achieve with the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Bishop C. Joseph Sprague is "the most vocally prominent active liberal bishop in Protestantism today," said Mark Tooley, director of the United Methodist committee of the Institute for Religion and Democracy, a conservative watchdog group in Washington, D.C. ... Thank you for the compliment," Sprague said of the "most liberal bishop" title. "I really make no apology for that. I don't consider myself a liberal. I consider myself a radical."

But it's not Sprague's stand on issues of sexuality, politics or social justice that have caused his critics to single him out. It's his theology. In September 2002, Sprague delivered a speech at Iliff School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary in Denver, in which he said the biblical story of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was "a myth" and that he did not believe in Jesus' physical resurrection. ... As Christendom traditionally teaches, Sprague believes Jesus Christ was both fully human and fully divine. But he doesn't believe Jesus was born divine. Other human beings have the potential to attain the same kind of transcendence that Jesus did, though none has, Sprague said.

Sprague's understanding of the Bible is radical in comparison to how conservative evangelicals read it - but he is certainly not the first Christian in history to read things in the way he does. His detractors would like to see him removed and they have tried to charge him with heresy several times - always unsuccessfully. Sprague's ideas are a threat, it seems, because by undermining traditional readings of Biblical stories he also ends up undermining traditional social, political, and familial orders that are based upon those readings.

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