[Dialogue] Spong on the Episcopal US General Convention

[KroegerD at aol.com]

Katharine Jefferts Schori - New Primate of the Episcopal Church 

English newspapers made it a front page story. English ecclesiastical  
figures from the Archbishop of Canterbury down to a bigoted pressure group  called 
Forward in Faith, spoke ominously and critically of the problem this  event 
would create and the insensitivity of the American Church in not taking  their 
concerns and prejudices into consideration. What were they talking about?  The 
American branch of the Anglican Communion had chosen a woman, of all things,  
to be its primate and Presiding Bishop. This office, the American equivalent of 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, catapults the first woman in history into the  
world's highest echelons of international ecclesiastical life. It was a  
stunning, breath-taking achievement. 

On the day that this historic choice was made, my wife and I were in  
Brighton on the south coast of England. We were guests in the home of Nick  Firrell 
and Robin Dowsett, members of the Dorset Gardens Methodist Church, where  later 
that evening I would give a lecture. They happened to be a gay couple who  
had just recently taken advantage of England's new civil partnership law and  
received the legal recognition of the state after an unrecognized mutual  
commitment of 31 years. My wife had gone down for breakfast. I was in the study  
working when a scream that would have awakened the dead reverberated through the  
rooms of this beautiful Victorian house. "Jack, the church has elected 
Katharine  Presiding Bishop!" I could not believe the news. My church and the entire 
 Anglican Communion have been mired in a sea of negativity over the full  
inclusion of gay and lesbian people, as if an "exclusive church" was not an  
oxymoron! Pockets of negative people, unable to win any vote for their  prejudiced 
perspective, had mounted a loud and negative campaign of threat and  
blackmail against a new emerging consciousness. Enlisting the support of Third  World 
bishops, who still operate on the theory that homosexuality is the  conscious 
choice of morally depraved people, and encouraged by the established  
ecclesiastical voices of yesterday like Bishop Michael Nazir Ali of Rochester,  U.K., 
and Bishop N.T. (Tom) Wright of Durham, U.K., they uttered the typical  
threats that have marked church debate at every critical turning point of  history. 
"My way is God's way! Depart from my point of view and you depart from  God! 
We would rather see the church dead than have it move to where I am not  
willing to go." Generously punctuating their comments with quotations from Holy  
Scripture and given cover by the perpetually weak Archbishop of Canterbury,  
Rowan Williams, who has installed "unity," not truth, as the ultimate idol  before 
which his arch-episcopacy worships, they acted as if the future had no  
promise and the past must be perpetuated. Yet in the face of this debilitating  and 
draining negativity the American bishops had in one consciousness-raising  
vote struck down another of the church's historic prejudices. 

Women on this day achieved absolute equality, at least in this branch of  the 
Christian church. There is no higher office that the Episcopal Church has to  
offer any of its people. It had the emotional impact that the College of  
Cardinals would have if they had elected a woman to the papacy! If a woman can  
be the Presiding Bishop, then there is nothing from which a woman can be  
excluded. I was at that moment, in the words of the 20th century lay theologian  
C.S. Lewis, "surprised by joy." A wave of excitement flowed over me as I thought 
 "it is all worth it!" It is worth the pain, the struggle, the anger, the  
frustration, and the negativity that change agents inevitably endure, if those  
efforts have proved helpful in moving the church to this point. 

Katharine Jefferts Schori is a gifted woman whom I first met in the Diocese  
of Oregon about six years ago. She is a second vocation priest whose training  
had been in the Marine Sciences, earning her Ph.D. from Stanford University, 
one  of America's most academically rigorous universities. She was elected 
bishop of  Nevada just four years ago, a diocese that under previous bishops 
Wesley  Frensdorff and Stuart Zabriskie had begun moving to the forefront of the  
creative enclaves inside the Episcopal Church. Engaging the culture of  
casino-laden Las Vegas and marriage-mill Reno, the Episcopal Church in Nevada  has 
become a bastion of hope and future promise. In a sparsely populated and  large 
state, the fact that their new bishop was a skillful licensed pilot who  
preserved her time by flying to meetings and churches across the state was a  
source of both intrigue and wonder. In the macho world of the Western United  
States they did not know quite what to make of the image of a woman bishop  
climbing out of a cockpit in full helmet and goggles and striding across the  runway 
to the hangar. They adjusted quickly, however, and began to write another  
exciting chapter in the storied history of that diocese. 

Two years ago Bishop Jefferts Schori invited me to lead a conference for  the 
clergy of her diocese. My time there made me aware that it was well endowed  
with creative clergy and that this lady was a substantial person who had the  
ability to be one of the great bishops of the church. Despite that positive  
impression I was still unprepared for the fact that my church would move so  
boldly to elect this woman to be its Primate. 

As I processed this wonderful news, my mind roamed over my own lifetime. I  
grew up in a sexist region undergirded by a sexist church. I recall well my  
early life in the Church of the Holy Comforter and later in St. Peter's Church,  
both in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was very clear to me that the church 
was a  male organization, worshipping a male God called Father. The women of my 
church  were called "the Auxiliary." It was a telling, overtly marginalizing 
word. In  that day no woman could sit on any decision-making body in that 
church. No woman  could assist in any liturgical act in that church. No girl could 
be an acolyte.  Comfortable in my own male status, I simply assumed, as did 
most others in that  time, that this was the way God had created the world to 
be. I spent many years  in my life singing in a boy's choir and in the process 
achieved a pretty good  musical education. My sister had no such opportunity. I 
went to the state  supported University of North Carolina. My sister went to 
secretarial school.  Women had not been originally allowed in this University 
at all, but a  post-world War II compromise gave them entrance only as third 
year students.  This meant that they generally went to all female junior 
colleges for the first  two years. During my university days I did not have a single 
female professor.  My theological education was achieved in an all male 
student body and an all  male faculty with one exception. Marian Kelleran, a clergy 
widow, who had been a  Sunday school leader, taught us one class in our 
senior year. It was a "how to"  class on running Sunday schools and Auxiliary 
programs. Women were thought to be  qualified to do those two things. 

It was not until the early 1970's with all of my daughters entering their  
teen age years that I began to engage this issue emotionally. Daughters are a  
great source of education. The Roman Catholic Church will never get its 
thinking  right on the issue of equality for women until its priests have daughters! 
I  began my campaign for sexual equality by seeking to get a woman elected to 
the  vestry of my church in Richmond, Virginia. I lost this battle for three 
straight  years until I finally talked a member of one of the wealthiest, 
socially  dominant families in our city, Rossie Scott Reed, into being a candidate. 
The  congregation was not likely to turn down one whose annual pledge made 
this  church's financial well-being possible. They did not, and the barrier was  
broken. I trained my first female acolyte secretly and scheduled her to serve 
at  the 8:00 a.m. service at which only the "Gnostic few" are in attendance. 
It was  a coup. My campaign was set back, however, when this young, teenage 
girl fainted  in the middle of the service, proving in the minds of my critics 
that "women  were not fit" for such roles. 

I chose my first female lay reader who would both read the lessons in  Sunday 
worship services and administer the chalice at communion. Her name was  Celia 
Luxmore, an active lay person who was originally from London and who read  
the lessons with that unique English accent that Episcopalians, most of whom are 
 anglophiles, admire. It did not work for when the time came for the people 
to  come forward to receive communion, they boycotted Celia's side. 

At the General Convention of 1976, just four months after I had become a  
bishop, after a long battle that involved threats of schism and an illegal  
ordination of eleven women priests in Philadelphia in 1974, my church finally  
authorized the ordination of women to the priesthood. The effective date was  
January 1, 1977. On January 3 I presided over a service of recognition conveying  
to a member of the "Philadelphia Eleven" the full acceptance of the church.  
Before January was over I had also ordained my first woman priest. When I  
retired 24 years later 40 % of the clergy of my diocese were female, two of our  
five largest congregations had women rectors, 65% of our students studying for  
the priesthood were women. Our diocese had also appointed the first female  
archdeacon in the entire Anglican Communion and had made one of the  
"Philadelphia Eleven" a canon of our Cathedral. The revolution was moving  rapidly. 

In 1989 Massachusetts elected the first woman bishop. With great joy I  
attended Barbara Harris' consecration in Boston and laid my hands on her head. I  
learned later that the hostility toward her election was so intense that she  
walked down the aisle wearing underneath her ecclesiastical vestments a bullet  
proof vest. My how these Christians love each other. Yet the church moved on 
and  when I retired my church had 15 women bishops and two of them, Kate 
Waynick of  Indianapolis and Catherine Roskam of New York, had become the first 
women to  address the Lambeth Conference of the world's Anglican bishops. One 
more  all-male preserve had been broken. Now 30 years after the first women 
priests  were ordained in my church and 17 years after the first woman bishop was  
elected, my church has chosen to be its primate a woman. 

Katharine Jefferts Schori is a symbol that the world does change.  Prejudices 
and stereotypes do die. The drive toward sexual equality and full  humanity 
for all people does succeed. It is exhilarating to recognize that the  pain 
that must always be endured in order to break down prejudices is worth it.  The 
Christian world now welcomes Katharine Jefferts Schori to the stage of  
ecclesiastical leadership. Nothing will ever be the same. Thanks be to God.  

John Shelby Spong 

Editorial Note: 
Two mistakes have been pointed out in the column by my  faithful readers that 
i would like to correct: 
1. There is no evidence that  any of the 9/11 terrorists entered the United 
States by way of Canada.
2. The  six million Jews killed by the Nazis in the 1930's and 1940's were 
from all over  Europe and not just from Germany. 
Neither statement affects the content of  the article, but in the interest of 
accuracy, I want to notify my readers of  these corrections and to thank them 
for pointing them out. The Canadian  Government was eager to have this 
impression corrected. This column was written  in Europe while I was on a lecture 
tour and my fact checkers were not available.  You can access the corrected 
version of this column at _www.bishopspong.com_ (http://www.bishopspong.com)  by 
clicking on the "My  Essay Library" link. 
 
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: /pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20060706/fd5b573a/attachment.html