[Dialogue] Spong and O'Reilly plus an interesting Q&A

[kroegerd@aol.com]

May 11, 2005
Seven Minutes With Bill O'Reilly 

I began my Harper-Collins book tour to introduce The Sins of Scripture on Fox News' with Bill O'Reilly. It was my seventh appearance on the program and, I find that though we share little in common, I like the man. Behind his bluster and constant interruptions, I believe there is a person who cares more deeply than we might suspect from watching his program. Harper-Collins sent him my book seeking his endorsement and to my surprise it appears on the back cover. That endorsement brought a cancellation notice from one of my readers. I did suggest to O'Reilly that his endorsement would probably damage both his reputation and mine. 
In a previous column, I took O'Reilly to task when he demanded that Al Sharpton answer "yes" or "no" to his question as to whether African-Americans, are better off today than they would have been if their ancestors had not been forcibly removed from Africa. It was, I believe, an attempt to suggest that in the final analysis slavery has been good for African-Americans. That question constituted, I suggested blatant but unadmitted racism. O'Reilly invited me to his program to defend himself against that charge. He countered that I did not know enough about him to make that judgment and appeared to be genuinely offended. He was right. I don't. Yet he needed to know that what he intended to communicate and what he communicated were two different things. In public life we are held accountable for what people hear us saying. After I said to him on another appearance, "Bill, you are nothing but Rush Limbaugh with perfume," almost a year went by before I heard from him again. So both his endorsement of the book and his invitation to me to launch the book nationally on Fox's "O'Reilly Factor" surprised me. It also pleased me for this was a good place to begin the 15 city, 23 day book tour. 
Bill O'Reilly is at least 6 feet five inches tall. His television audience hardly ever sees him standing so they are surprised to meet him in person. He was raised a Roman Catholic and still practices his faith though, he says not to the satisfaction of those who are zealous. Like many who define themselves as conservatives, O'Reilly tends to see the world in stark contrast between good and evil. Inevitably he sees himself as on the side of the angels. There is, however, a revealing harshness about his rhetoric that projects anything but certainty. He speaks of both willingness and a desire to kill anyone who threatens his worldview, whether it is terrorists or burglars. He refers to Muslim fundamentalists as "villainous Islamic fascists," a designation that surely resonates with his listeners. He appears, however, to have little understanding of what motivates people to seek the annihilation of their enemies. There is little room in his world for examining the causes of hatred or attempting to understand the subjective relativity of his perspective. For example, in the Galilean War fought between 66 and 73 CE, Jewish guerilla warriors carried out hit and run attacks against Roman soldiers. The Romans called them "terrorists" but to the Jews they were "Freedom Fighters." The Crusaders of the 11th and 12th centuries were to the Muslims of the Middle East "invading terrorists," but to the Vatican who sponsored them, they were the bearers of the truth of the Gospel. If the British had defeated the American revolutionaries in the late 18th century, George Washington would have been hanged as a traitor and Benedict Arnold would have been appointed Governor General of the defeated colonies. Right wing ideologues think they see things objectively, without the relativising aspect of their self-oriented perspective. They don't. Theirs is not a 'no spin zone.' 
Religion is a popular theme on the O'Reilly Factor. His theological understanding, however, seems frozen at about the sixth grade, parochial school level. 'Orthodoxy' is what he has been taught. He would be surprised to know that the story of the passion of Jesus was probably composed not from eyewitness accounts but from Hebrew sources, written long before the time of Jesus, primarily in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53, and was actually written for use in early Christian liturgies not to describe what really happened in history. He probably is not aware that the story of the Virgin Birth of Jesus was not original to the Christian story but made its appearance no earlier that the 9th decade of the Christian era. He seems not to embrace the fact that the intellectual revolution begun by Copernicus and continued in the work of such giants as Galileo, Einstein and Stephen Hawking have rendered inoperative the idea of a God perched above the sky, ready to intervene miraculously to accomplish the divine will or to answer the prayers of the faithful. He suggested on this program that the prayers of John Paul II were responsible for bringing down communism in Eastern Europe and that the Pope really believed that prayer worked. If prayer to such a deity doesn't work, O'Reilly said, then why bother. His definition of prayer working is that his prayers are answered just as he requested. 
Since his reading of my book suggested to him that I did not believe in a God understood as a supernatural being above the sky ready to intervene, he inquired as to whether I really believe in God or if I pray. "Of course I pray," I responded to his query. I have a member of my family in the armed forces, who has just returned from a second tour of duty in the Iraqi war. I pray for this person daily, I said, because I love this person deeply. If what you are really asking, I continued, is do I believe that my prayers will stop bullets or defuse car bombs so that my loved one's life is miraculously saved, then I must say no I do not believe that. I tried to explain that this would mean that those who have died in this dreadful war were either so evil that they deserved to die or that their loved ones did not pray sufficiently for them. Both ideas present me with a God so capricious that I would never be drawn to worship such a Being. I learned that a seven-minute television segment is not the best format for developing theological understanding. 
Somehow the worship of the God of Life, Love and Being that I experience at the heart of the Christian story lifts me out of a radical self-centeredness and allows me to view the world from a very different perspective. God is not in my employ, eager to do my will. God does not reward goodness and punish evil. God does not abandon the laws by which the universe operates to serve my agenda. I do not believe for one minute that God stopped the sun in the sky at the time of Joshua, creating the first instance of daylight-saving time, for the immoral purpose of allowing Joshua more time to kill more of his enemies. Indeed, what a strange view of God that would be if accurate. Yet that is the image that many people have of God while still in their theological immaturity. Bill O'Reilly is the television poster child for this mentality. 
O'Reilly called me "an outspoken liberal theologian,' and said that The Sins of Scripture will "make a lot of believers very angry." Yet he called it "thought-provoking." He went on, probably to restore his credibility with his own audience to say, "It's against all Christian orthodoxy, almost all of it." 
Then, because we did this show after the death of John Paul II and before the election of his successor, he went immediately to the Pope. Four times in four different ways, he enquired if I respected the Pope and if I thought he was a good man. He seemed not to be willing to accept my answer since in his mind someone as liberal as he perceived me to be could not really respect one "as conservative as the Pope." After his 4th inquiry I responded, " Bill, I respect you but I don't always agree with your point of view." In a previous column, I give John Paul credit for his contributions to freedom in Eastern Europe and for his unflinching opposition to the war in Iraq. I do not applaud his attitude toward women, birth control, homosexuality or scholarship. His claim that there is only one true faith, Christianity, and only one true expression of that faith, Roman Catholicism, is religious arrogance at its worst. This program was, however, neither the time nor the place to do a critical assessment of John Paul's career. People were still grieving over his death. The time would come for that soon enough, so I tried to express my respect for John Paul II without endorsing his policies. Once he was sure that I respected the Pope, he moved to his conclusion that the Pope believed in a God of intervention and he perceived that I did not. I responded that no one knows and thus should not presume to say how God acts. Why did God not stop the Tsunami, I inquired, or such things as the Holocaust or AIDS in Africa? 
"Everybody knows," Bill O'Reilly interrupted, "that God works in mysterious ways." It was the oldest and most familiar "copout" that religious voices have always used when simple answers cannot make sense out of harsh reality. 
We were now down to the last three minutes of the program and he wanted me to discuss how we understand both God and prayer. A few moments later he shifted the subject to the end of the world. I tried to do damage control, so that I would not be perceived as allowing O'Reilly to define the limits of the theological debate. I tried to explain that horses could not describe what it means to be human and human beings likewise cannot possibly understand what it means to be God. It was no use. O'Reilly interrupted and the point was left hanging. Fortunately, time was up. We shook hands and he thanked me for coming on his show. 
I have met many people like Bill O'Reilly, though most have not been as smart or articulate. They are not evil people, but righteousness hardly ever translates into being loving. I like this man and would love to spend an hour with him one on one in an in-depth discussion with no one playing to an audience. That is unlikely so I must be content with an occasional appearance that affords me the opportunity to speak maybe one line that one listener might find life-giving. 

-- John Shelby Spong
Note from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at bookstores everywhere and by clicking here! 
Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong
Paula Zurcher, via the Internet, writes: 
I am wondering how you reacted to the dramatic presentation on TV of the woman who convinced Brian Nichols to turn himself in by reading paragraphs of "The Purpose Driven Life" to him. Was it simply coincidence that made him choose her? Not to try to rape or kill her? Is there any chance for his leading a changed life in prison if he's not executed? 
I was given a copy of this book by a friend who happens to believe that the Bible is the "inerrant word of God." We meet for lunch now and then and have great discussions, friendly even though on opposite sides. Needless to say, I believe that the Bible contains human beings' search for meaning. There are too many discrepancies in it to believe otherwise. (I have taught Bible study for 35 years.) 
Dear Paula: 
The media loves miracle stories whether they be death bed conversions of well known killers or visions of the Virgin that seem to appear in strange places like under a bridge in Chicago. Miracle stories help us to overcome our deepest fears that we might actually be alone in this vast world. 
First, I am glad that the woman of whom you speak did not get harmed and I am pleased that whatever she did worked. The book, "The Purpose Driven Life" has clearly meant a lot to her and you use anything that might help when you are struggling to survive. When one argues, however, that God sent this man Brian Nichols to this woman in order to effect his conversion, I wonder why God did not do it sooner before he claimed his other victims. I wonder why the police force never looked on the other floors of the garage and so never found his car. When people state that God directed this affair, you cannot help wondering why it took God so long to apprehend the killer. 
People who want to assert that God is responsible for their understanding of miracles never stop to ask the hard questions. If God intervened to save this woman, why did not God not intervene to send back Hurricane Andrew, to stop the Holocaust, to control the AIDS epidemic in Africa, to protect the people on the fatal planes or in the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, or to stop the Tsunami wave before it killed over 350,000 people. 
I know neither person in this drama so all I can do is speculate. Had the "demon" driving this man, Brian Nichols, to kill been satisfied so that he was ready to surrender? Did something in this woman connect with a long hidden or repressed memory in him? Would you trust his conversion sufficiently to find him innocent by virtue of "temporary insanity" and free him to return to society certain that the power that "led him to God" was sufficient so that people no longer needed to fear him living in freedom? 
Millions of people have found meaning in "The Purpose Driven Life." I am not one of them. But I am glad that this book was helpful in saving woman's life. 
--John Shelby Spong 


 New Book From Bishop Spong Available Now! 
THE SINS OF SCRIPTURE
Exposing the Bible's Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love 
"The Sins of Scripture challenges Christians to look beyond the myths of their faith into the heart of the matter."
–Bill O'Reilly, anchor, Fox News Channel
Order your copy today! 



 
Dick Kroeger