Mostly what Rev Spong is doing is asking us to read the Bible while considering that people back then had very different views of (homo)sexuality, mental illness, (super)natural phenomena, etc, and not to take these too damn literally.

He still maintains that the Scriptures were divinely inspired, but written by people in a concrete historical, social and political setting, one that is often entirely different from our own.

But this sort of argument is wasted on fundamentalist literalist ideologues, especially repressed, self-loathing ones.