[Dialogue] Spong on the Anglican Struggle

[KroegerD at aol.com]

June 7, 2006 
The Columbus, Ohio,  Episcopal Battlefield 

I hope my readers will pardon me for spending a second week dealing with  
issues within my own Episcopal Church. I do not do so out of some presumed  
hubris that makes me think that this small denomination of less than 2,000,000  
members in the United States is deserving of special attention. I do it because  
this Church, historically connected with the landed gentry who first settled  
this nation, has always produced a disproportionate share of our national  
leaders, beginning with the ‘founding fathers.’ To this day the National  
Cathedral in Washington is an Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church and the  
Anglican Communion, of which it is a part, also symbolically stand with one foot  in 
the Catholic tradition and the other in the Protestant reformation, therefore 
 making it representative for all faith communities. These two accidents of  
history tend to create in this Church a place where the cultural fights that  
affect Christianity as a whole take place. The battles to recognize divorce 
and  to allow divorced people to remarry, to affirm family planning and birth 
control  as moral options, and to bring equality to women by making them both 
pastors and  bishops, were first fought out in this Church. The current cultural 
debate aimed  at opening both church and society to the full inclusion of gay 
and lesbian  members is now also focused in this Church. In this present 
battle where,  despite the fact that decisions have already been made affirming 
the full  acceptance of gay and lesbian people at every level in the life of 
this Church,  the unchangeable diehards continue their negative campaign. They 
will never be  the majority, but they clearly hope to destroy the Church in 
which they are a  minority. So this week my focus is on this Episcopal war.  
Church wars are bitter and hardly ever rational. In this struggle the  
homophobic minority has enlisted the support of Third World Anglicans, who are  on 
this issue about as backward as this nation was in the 19th century. Yet to  
criticize this uninformed prejudice is said to be a form of racism, as if  
prejudice were something people of color do not ever possess. The strategy of  
those in the minority is to break up the Episcopal Church so that they can be  
aligned with the Anglican Communion in the Third World where they think their  
prejudices will continue to be ecclesiastically affirmed. They actually desire  
the very schism they use as the threat to gain their way. This battle is thus 
a  last ditch stand to turn the Episcopal Church away from tomorrow and back 
into  yesterday. The field of battle is destined to be the Episcopal Church’s 
General  Convention, held every three years, which will meet this June in 
Columbus, Ohio.   
At this Convention will be gathered all of the Episcopal bishops, including  
retired ones who still retain seat, voice and vote in the House of Bishops.  
Many, including this writer, choose not to attend, believing that retired  
bishops should not vote on issues they have no ability to implement. Right wing  
church organizations, however, regularly raise money to underwrite the expenses 
 of the most conservative of the retired bishops, enabling this group to  
constitute a significant percentage of the bishops’ vote. Because this church  
does not vest authority in bishops alone, however, four clergy deputies and four 
 lay deputies, representing each diocese in the Episcopal Church, are elected 
to  the General Convention. Each of these “three orders of ministry,” the 
bishops,  the clergy and the lay people, have veto power over any Convention 
legislation.  That is, nothing becomes the law of the church, or even the 
position of the  church, unless a resolution carries a majority of the bishops, the 
clergy, and  the lay deputies voting separately. A majority vote in this body 
is thus far  more than a simple majority.  
For example, the clergy and lay deputations vote as a unit and their votes  
are counted as positive only if a minimum of three of the four deputies in each 
 order from each diocese is favorable. A deputation tied at 2-2 is counted as 
a  no vote. I go into this voting process because it is important for readers 
to  understand that the confirmation of V. Gene Robinson, an openly gay man 
living  in a publicly acknowledged partnership, to be New Hampshire’s bishop in 
2003 was  not accomplished by a narrow vote, as some loud critics continue to 
claim.  Robinson received about 60% of the votes of the bishops despite the 
vote of that  block of “bought” bishops. The clergy deputies and the lay 
deputies both gave  Gene Robinson an even larger majority of approval. It was a 
popular and  celebrated vote coming after twenty-five years of debate and a 
gradual pushing  back of the frontiers of this homophobic prejudice within this 
Church.  
People, including the press, actually said that Gene Robinson was the “first  
gay bishop,” which was patently absurd. Gene Robinson was the first  honest 
gay bishop. We have had numerous closeted gay bishops throughout  our history. 
We have them now. They have served in metropolitan areas, in the  South, and 
in under-populated areas of the rural Midwest. Some have served well  and have 
been elected by their fellow bishops to high positions of leadership.  Other 
closeted gay bishops have, however, actually led the charge in purging gay  
people from the church, hating in others what they so clearly hated in  
themselves.  
The defeated minority in 2003 set out to destroy this church that had  
challenged its prejudices, and they were well funded by right wing American  
foundations. Their claim was that this vote had violated biblical morality and  the 
long sacred tradition of the Church. They quoted a literal Bible as the  source 
of the “unchanging word of God,” seemingly oblivious to the revolution in  
biblical scholarship of the last 200 years and were obviously unaware that  ‘
sacred tradition’ included a long history of gay persecution. They vowed to  
split the church into the faithful remnant, banishing the “faithless” majority,  
and to turn the Anglican Communion into a Third World church where  
fundamentalism is fueling church growth. They called on those who had responded  to the 
overwhelming consensus of medical and scientific thought which indicates  
that sexual orientation is not a choice but a given, to repent of their evil and  
of the offense and pain that they have caused in anyone who disagreed with 
them.  They insisted that people can choose their sexual orientation, and thus 
can  choose not to be homosexual. They must, therefore, be held to be morally  
responsible for this “evil presence” in their lives. They urged homosexuals 
to  submit to counseling to enable them to free themselves from this “
affliction,”  ignoring the fact that there is no medical evidence anywhere that this 
tactic  has ever worked. Medical science universally regards it as fraudulent.  
Operating from these strange premises, this minority group has installed the  
“Unity of the Church” as the new icon that must trump both truth and 
reality.  “Unity” seems to mean, “If you do not agree with me, you are splitting the 
 Church.” We once called that blackmail! In a previous era that same argument 
 would have led the church to say we must not stand against the evil of 
slavery  for we want to preserve our unity with those who are slave holders!  
Unfortunately, this negative reaction frightened the Archbishop of  
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the titular head of this communion, into actions  that have 
been disastrously lacking in integrity. This scholarly man, who is  quite 
open to gay people personally, but who has a backbone consistency of  well-boiled 
spaghetti, displayed an incompetence that was painful to watch.  Instead of 
addressing the issue head on and calling people to dialogue on the  basis of 
knowledge, Archbishop Williams, accepting ‘unity’ as the only goal,  appointed 
a task force to study how it could be preserved. He appointed the  Archbishop 
of Ireland, Robin Ames, the quintessential ecclesiastical politician  who has 
always put institutional well-being ahead of faithful witness, to be its  
chair. The report of this task force, now called the ‘Windsor Report,’ suggested  
that the Episcopal Church in the United States and the Anglican Church of 
Canada  had offended the sensibilities of Third World Anglicans and their 
conservative  First World allies, and therefore should apologize. It was a strange 
argument.  The fact is that polygamy and female genital mutilation in the Third 
World  offend the sensibilities of Western Christians, as does the rampant 
homophobia  engulfing the Christian world from the Vatican to American 
televangelists. Why  do we not request an apology from them? The Episcopal Church in the 
United  States and the Anglican Church of Canada were called on to repent 
with the  threat of expulsion from the Anglican Communion if they did not do so. 
It was  ecclesiastical guerrilla warfare at its worst.  
Middle-of-the-roaders in the Episcopal Church, who never venture far out of  
their turtle-like protective shells, began to waffle under the pressure. The  
Bishop of Virginia, Peter Lee, who had finally found the courage with the 
strong  support of his wife to vote for the consecration of Gene Robinson, 
announced  publicly that he would never do so again. It was a breathtaking abdication 
of  leadership. The excuses I began to hear from some anxious liberal 
bishops, as  they sought to perfume their cowardice with sweet piety, were 
disillusioning.  Only the Bishop of Washington, John Chane, seemed to discern the issues 
clearly  and to speak with clarity. Ordained people are, I fear, the ultimate 
pulse  feelers, a stance they justify under the rubric of “being pastoral.”  
Because California did not elect one of its gay nominees to be its bishop,  
the issue over which this war will be fought at this convention will be in the  
choice of a new Presiding Bishop, who is elected by the bishops, but 
confirmed  by the lay and clergy deputies. Four official nominees have been presented. 
 Three of them supported the ordination of Gene Robinson, one opposed it. 
Other  negative nominations have come from the floor. If this church elects and  
confirms as its presiding bishop a person not capable of supporting Bishop  
Robinson, it will indicate that support for this justice cause is deteriorating. 
 To the bishops, clergy and lay leadership of my beloved Episcopal Church, I 
want  to say only this: You have done an audacious thing. Do not now tremble 
at your  own audacity.  
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 
Francis Salmeri, via the Internet, writes:  
If we accept the fact that Jesus was a man with a beautiful and powerful  
teaching and not a Savior, Messiah or the Christ, is it not time to make the  
shift away from calling ourselves Christian? Perhaps Jesuian or Jesuist,  
something more affirming of Jesus the man and not as Christ and away from the  
Almighty Father God toward what you describe as a non-theist ground of being? As  I 
move enthusiastically and rapidly to this new and wonderful horizon that you  
and a growing number of others point toward, I find I can not call myself  
Christian or even a liberal one any longer. Isn’t it time to differentiate this  
new religious sense with a new name that affirms the new direction and the new 
 way of being in the world?  
Dear Francis,  
I treasure the word Christian and refuse to abandon it to the Falwells, the  
Robertsons and the Ratzingers of the world. The word Christ translates the  
Hebrew word ‘maschiach,’ which means literally ‘the anointed one. Originally it 
 was the Jewish title for their king, but when there was no Jewish King (from 
586  BCE on) it began to stand for the coming messiah who would restore the 
throne of  King David. Eventually it came to mean a life in whom the voice of 
God is heard  or the will of God is lived out. That is exactly how I view Jesus 
of Nazareth.  God’s voice of love is the voice I hear in Jesus. God’s being 
is the being I see  lived out in Jesus. I see him calling us beyond tribe, 
prejudice, gender  differences and even religion into a new humanity. I see him 
acting out the  divine purpose to enhance the life of this world. I see God as 
the source of  life revealed when we live fully. I see God as the source of 
love revealed when  we love wastefully. I see God as the Ground of Being 
revealed when we have the  courage to be all that we can be. When I look at the 
portrait of Jesus as he was  remembered in the scriptures and in the Christian 
tradition, I see the fully  alive one, the totally loving one and the one who 
lives out all that he was  destined to be, even as his life was betrayed, 
forsaken, denied, tortured and  killed. That is why I have no problem joining St. Paul 
and saying, "Yes! Yes!  God was in that life," or joining St. John and 
saying, "if you have seen Jesus  you have seen God."  
Later theology turned this experience into stultifying creeds, irrelevant  
doctrines and controlling dogmas. I can sacrifice those. The God experience I  
find in Jesus I cannot sacrifice. So he is Christ for me and I claim the title  
Christian and work to transform its meaning into what I think it was 
originally  designed to communicate.  
Hope you find this helpful. John Shelby Spong 
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