Spong led the seven-county Diocese of Newark for 24 stormy years before retiring in 2000. He still lives in North Jersey, in a secluded Morris County neighborhood near the grounds of Greystone Hospital.

But he is everywhere these days, making roughly 250 public appearances a year. He has lectured from Alabama to Australia, sparred with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News and published tomes like "The Sins of Scripture - Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love."

Last week, Spong joined other liberal religious figures, including Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners movement, and Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mohandas Gandhi, for a conference in Berkeley, Calif., aimed at reclaiming the mantle of religion from conservatives.

"There is an enormous hunger for something besides fundamentalism," he said. "My job, as I |see it, is to help people find this God."

But he may find his work cut out for him - especially in a post-Sept. 11 nation where evangelical Christianity has evolved into a political and cultural force.

In his most recent books, Spong rejects the notion that Jesus was born of a virgin. He suggests the Apostle Paul was a repressed homosexual. And he describes the core Christian belief that people are saved because God allowed his son to be crucified as "barbaric," "grotesque" and a "divine act of child abuse."

Critics recoil at the very mention of his name.

"Heretic!" said David Virtue, who runs a Web site for conservatives in the worldwide Anglican Communion, which includes the Episcopal Church. "John Shelby Spong has done more damage to the Episcopal Church in 35 years than any other single bishop."

Others question whether there's a substantial audience for Spong's brand of Christianity.

"He is the Howard Dean of the theological world," said Chad Brand, a professor at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. "He's the guy who people will pay attention to in order to learn what that side of the spectrum is saying. But I would imagine he has the support of less than 10 percent of the Christian community."

Meanwhile, evangelical churches, with their focus on the Bible as the infallible word of God and their strict emphasis on personal sin, have been growing for decades despite Spong's prediction that they would fade.

"The numbers show that [conservative] ... Christianity and new revivalist movements aren't going away," said Joel A. Carpenter, provost and professor of history at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich. "In fact, the world tide has swung in their direction."

None of this seems to faze Spong. Confident and courtly, he delved into history, science and theology during the interview to make his point.

"If you look back at American history, you'll discover that there has been a right-wing religious revival every time there is a great national anxiety," he said. "I think 9/11 gave this a burst of new life, but the nation is so strong and so healthy that we will push it back where it belongs."

He is already doing his share of pushing.

His latest book - "The Sins of Scripture" - seeks to disarm religious conservatives by deconstructing the biblical verses they cite to support their position on gay rights and other political hot buttons.

"I think we have to recognize the Bible as a book written by people walking through history and shaped by their understanding of the world," he said. "To me, that journey to understand the call of God is never over. I think we are still journeying."

For all his iconoclasm, Spong said he wants to save Christianity, not destroy it. He said Jesus stands at the center of his life. He prayed fervently, he said, for one of his stepdaughters who was serving in the armed forces in Iraq.

"Do I think my prayer is going to stop a bullet from hitting her?" he asked. "No, I don't think that."

But, he added: "When I pray for someone, it's almost saying |the limits of my humanity can't reach them, so I've got to go through whatever channels I've got."

Spong said he seeks to call Christians to a new understanding of God - a God who is the all-powerful source of life but doesn't intervene to win wars, punish evildoers or bestow riches on the blessed.

"If God is an interventionist God, then it gets to be very scary when you ask, 'Whose prayers are going to change God's mind?'Ÿ" he said.

"Then you would have to say God is immoral because he didn't intervene to stop the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust."

Spong, who lives with his second wife, Christine, grew up in Charlotte, N.C., not far from the home of Billy Graham. His father was an alcoholic who died when he was 12. His mother supported the family by working in a department store.

He gravitated to religion early on, but eventually rebelled against the strict, segregated Episcopal church in which he was raised.

By the time he was elected bishop of Newark in 1976, his reputation as a liberal churchman was widespread. He would step across lines that few others before him dared to cross, ordaining dozens of openly gay priests.

He remains proud of his record in Newark, and unconcerned whether the Anglican Communion or other mainline denominations survive.

"I don't think the Anglican Communion is of the essence of God," he said.

"But I think Christianity will survive."

E-mail: chadwick@northjersey.com