[Dialogue] Easter with Spong

[KroegerD@aol.com]

March 22, 2006 
CrossWalkAmerica: Are  You Ready to March for a New Christianity?

On Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006, a group of people will begin in Phoenix  a 
2500 mile, 141 day, 5,000,000-step walk across America. Their destination is  
Washington, D.C., where a public celebration will be held on September 3, 
2006.  Their purpose is to arouse public consciousness to the misuse of 
Christianity in  American life today. They are Christians who want to reclaim their 
faith from  what they believe are the distortions of the ‘Religious Right,’ that 
so often  appears to interpret Christianity in narrow, prejudiced and even 
hate-filled  ways.  
The organizers of this march are grieved that fundamentalism has become the  
dominant, sometimes the sole religious voice in the media. They seek to raise  
awareness to the fact that fundamentalists, in both Catholic and Protestant  
forms, do not by themselves define American Christianity. They are embarrassed 
 by the present alliance of political conservatives with fundamentalist  
Christians, who seek to impose a sectarian and moralistic religious mentality  
upon our population. They are offended that negativity to homosexual persons and  
opposition to the century long quest by women for equality and the right to  
define their own life choices, are now in the public mind, the defining 
essence  of their faith. This enterprise, known as CrossWalkAmerica, is the vehicle  
through which they seek to educate America.  
The organizers of this march began by adopting something called “The Phoenix  
Affirmations,” in which they state their claim to a different Christian  
mentality. The preamble of that declaration states: “The public face of  
Christianity in America today bears little connection to the historic faith of  our 
ancestors. It represents even less our own faith as Christians, who continue  to 
celebrate the gifts of our Creator, revealed and embodied in the life, death  
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Heartened by the transforming presence of  
Christ’s Holy Spirit in our world, we find ourselves in a time and place where  
we will be silent no longer. We hereby mark an end to our silence by making 
the  following affirmations: As people who are joyfully and unapologetically  
Christian, we pledge ourselves completely to the way of love. We work to 
express  our love as Jesus teaches us by loving God, neighbor and self.” They then 
go on  to spell out in very specific ways what each of these kinds of love is 
all  about.  
Loving God, they say, means that people do not treat the legitimacy of their  
own spiritual path as a sign that every other spiritual path is somehow  
illegitimate. They call for a mutuality of respect for other religions that they  
define as paths that God has provided for humanity. Loving God also means  
treasuring the sacred scriptures as a source of truth but never using that  
conviction to close one’s mind to the activity of God that leads to new truth in  
every generation. They say loving God means caring for God’s world, including  
our ecosystem. It means loving things sacred and secular, Christian and  
non-Christian, human and non-human.  
Loving your neighbor, they say, means treating all people as holy, as having  
been made in God’s image. They do not exclude the current victims of our  
prejudiced humanity, believing we are to love regardless of race, gender, sexual  
orientation, age, disability, nationality, ethnicity or economic class. They 
say  loving your neighbor means standing as Jesus did at the side of the 
outcast and  oppressed of our world and working for peace with or without the 
support of  others. It means preserving religious freedom as well as the Church’s 
ability to  speak prophetically to government without co-mingling Church and 
State. It also  means facing our own shortcomings and working for what is best 
for all people,  including those who consider us their enemies.  
Loving ourselves, this document says, means basing our lives on the faith  
that in Christ all things are made new and all people are loved by God.  
Christianity therefore, cannot justify prejudice based on ignorance or fear, nor  
does it ever allow us to call those who oppose us ‘the enemies of God.’ We love  
ourselves, they proclaim, when we treat both our heads and our hearts as 
sacred,  acknowledging that science and doubt are not the enemies of faith and 
belief,  since each is a means through which the truth of God is pursued. It also 
means  caring for the health of our own bodies and acting on the assumption 
that we  were made with meaning and purpose, which they define as strengthening 
and  extending God’s realm of love throughout the world.  
The Charter of ‘CrossWalkAmerica’ constitutes a stirring call to the  
Christians of this nation, who are open to the present and the future, to stand  up 
and reclaim a place in America for a loving, progressive, courageous  
understanding of what it means to be disciples of Jesus. It finally lights a  candle 
in this dark age of religious close-mindedness. It expresses the hope  that the 
religious imperialism of our time, based on fear and cultivated by our  
politicians as a pathway to power, must be publicly challenged until it recedes  
from its place of domination in our national life. I welcome this new religious  
initiative and pledge my support to their efforts.  
The powers behind both ‘The Phoenix Affirmations and the walk across America  
are the Rev. Dr. Eric Elnes, the Senior Pastor at the Scottsdale 
Congregational  United Church of Christ in Arizona, and a lay member of that church, 
Rebecca  Glenn. These two, who serve as co-Presidents are joined by a band of 
visionaries  who have worked tirelessly to bring the walk into being. Dr. Elnes, a 
noted  biblical scholar who holds a Ph.D. from The Princeton Theological 
Seminary as  well as his co-workers believe that a small group, totally dedicated, 
can dream  dreams and do things that will change the world. They are convinced 
that the  pain caused by fundamentalists has reached new levels that require 
the  priorities of our nation to be reevaluated. They believe that the 
nationalism,  materialism and intolerance that are encouraged or, at least, not 
challenged by  the Religious Right have led to injustices too alarming to be 
ignored. They  believe that the Christian Church has allowed its Lord, its language 
and even  the word ‘Christian’ to be co-opted by the Religious Right, which 
means that  these words have for many become so negative that they are thought 
of as evil  and eminently rejectable. To counter this, Dr. Elnes says, we need 
a way to hold  before the nation a vision of a vibrant and renewed 
Christianity that can call  America back to tolerance, to inclusiveness and to that 
power of love that is  the essence of this faith system. That is what CrossWalk 
America is designed to  do.  
In ‘CrossWalkAmerica,’ Dr. Elnes and his partners seek to call progressive  
Christians out of both their isolation and their bunker mentality to reclaim  
their places as a force for good inside this diverse and pluralistic nation.  
They hope this walk and its concluding rally will stop the present direction 
of  this country that seems to be moving inexorably toward a religiously 
supported  totalitarianism. ‘CrossWalkAmerica’ invites all religious people and 
those with  no religious affiliation to join in this consciousness-raising 
effort.  
The path of this walk will weave its way from Arizona through New Mexico,  
Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio Pennsylvania,  
Baltimore and finally to our nation’s capital. People in each of these areas are  
invited to join the march for as many miles as they can. Public rallies will 
be  held along the course of the route so that people in all areas can 
participate.  It is the hope of the organizers that thousands will join them in 
walking some  part of that journey and that tens of thousands will be part of the 
public rally  in Washington.  
Would you like to be involved? Would your congregation like to become one of  
this Walk’s sponsors? If you do, the organizers provide some practical  
suggestions. First, speak to your priest, minister or pastor about designating  one 
of the Sundays before Easter to present ‘CrossWalkAmerica’ to your  
congregation. Material to assist in this presentation can be found on its  Website: 
www.CrossWalkAmerica.org. Ask your minister to preach that Sunday on  the ‘Three 
Great Loves,’ God, neighbor and self as the way to raise this  challenge. 
Churches across this land are ready for this challenge. You will be  surprised at 
the response you will receive.  
Second, join the walk yourself, all or part of it. Ask individuals in your  
church to support your participation or that of other walkers by pledging from  
one cent to $1.00 per mile. For more details about what this means and what 
you  might do to help, again please visit that Website. The organizers, eager 
to  expand the impact of their cause, suggest that all funds raised in this way 
by a  local church may be divided equally between the Walk and a designated 
ministry  of that church working on the same themes. All walkers, sponsored or 
not, are  welcome.  
Third, individual congregations are invited to join this effort by becoming  
official sponsors of the Walk, promoting it in local communities across 
America.  ‘Pace-Setter’ and ‘Companion’ Congregations will be listed on their 
Website,  allowing them to begin to embrace the idea that they are not alone in a  
fundamentalist sea that seems ready to engulf this nation.  
If thousands of congregations answer this call, by joining this effort with  
both people and financial support, the results will be heard in every corner 
of  this land. It will create the birth of hope as the people of this nation 
open  their eyes to see and hear a new Christian voice, silent for far too long, 
 speaking with new power, new vision and a new dedication.  
Dr. James Forbes, Senior Pastor of the Riverside Church in New York City has  
called this march “The next great awakening” of the spirit. I join him in  
endorsing this initiative. Whenever the world seems to be lost in its own  
darkness, a light always appears in a new place. Some Phoenix Christians have  now 
lit a candle in our darkness. If the Christians of this nation are drawn to  
this light in sufficient numbers, that candle will turn into a mighty flame.  
Then a new America will arise dedicated to a way of life in which openness,  
respect, love and an unfettered search for truth will come to be the new marks  
of an aroused and purified Christianity.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Liz Respess from San Diego, California, writes:  
Are there any historical facts that prove the killing of the first-born  
Egyptian sons at the time of the Exodus?  
Dear Liz,  
I am quite sure there are not since I am quite sure that this story itself is 
 not history. My reasons for that unqualified assertion are:  
1. Moses and therefore the Exodus are generally dated about 1250 B.C.E. The  
written account is almost 300 years later. That means that the story of the  
Exodus lived in oral transmission for almost 300 years or 12-14 generations  
before being written down. The Exodus was the story of a national beginning, a  
kind of Fourth of July for the Jewish people. I see no way that it would not 
be  subjected to a heightening miraculous process in that life-to-life, mouth 
to  mouth oral process over 300 years. After all, we Americans attribute all 
sorts  of virtues to our founders.  
2. The details of that story are filled with fanciful details. First, the  
idea that God would kill the first-born male in every Egyptian household,  
including the first born among Egyptian flocks, would be strange behavior for an  
evil human being. How much more evil would that be for God to do it?  
The other details of this story are also fanciful. The blood of the Paschal  
Lamb on the doorposts of Jewish homes that has the ability to banish death 
from  those houses is cult magic language. The series of plagues portray God 
invading  the world in supernatural ways by controlling the weather and sending 
disease.  In our postmodern world, both areas are understood quite differently. 
Neither  the weather nor disease is thought of today as sent for the divine 
purpose of  rewarding or punishing.  
Finally, the Crossing of the Red Sea story would not only have been  
impossible physically but the Red Sea was also not even on the route the  Israelites 
took. If they crossed anything, it would have been a shallow marshy  area, no 
more than 20 miles wide called Yam Suph or the Sea of Reeds that is  near the 
present day Suez Canal.  
There is one item that has come to us out of archeological discoveries that  
may have been a factor in the development of this story but it is not  
conclusive. There was a Pharaoh about the time of the Exodus whose son and heir  
apparent died suddenly and thus could not succeed to the throne. A second son  
did. We know no other details. Perhaps if this note is literally true  
historically, then this was the seed out of which the later legend grew that  suggested 
that the first born of all Egyptian families had perished. Losing the  first 
born of the King’s family in that day of deep tribal thinking could have  been 
experienced as if the first born of every Egyptian’s family had perished.  We 
can never be sure of the facts shrouded in our legends but normally legends  
are born in a germ of reality.  
Thank you for asking. My best to your husband Tom.  
John Shelby Spong  
 
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