[Dialogue] Spong on Jesus and the elections

[KroegerD at aol.com]

November 15, 2006 
Miracles IV - Interpreting the  Healing Miracles 
I voted on Tuesday, November 7, and then, political enthusiast that I am,  I 
listened to the election results that night until it was clear that the  
Democrats had won control of the House of Representatives. They had also  preserved 
their threatened Senate seats in New Jersey and Maryland, had wrested  senate 
seats from Republicans in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Ohio, but had  
failed to win the Republican seat in Tennessee. That, my simple mathematical  
calculation revealed, gave the Democrats 48 Senate seats (counting the two  
independents, Sanders of Vermont and Lieberman of Connecticut) to 49 seats for  the 
Republicans. Three Senate seats, Montana, Missouri and Virginia, each with a  
favored Republican incumbent, were still too close to call. So the Senate was  
left in doubt, but with the high probability that it would remain in 
Republican  hands. It was, nonetheless, I thought, a good but not spectacular night for 
 Democrats, generally within the range of mid-term losses for the party in 
power.  I left the country the next day for a lecture tour of Norway, Sweden, 
Germany  and France. It would not be until Thursday in Oslo that I heard the BBC 
break  the news that Democrats had upset the odds and won all of the 
contested seats  and would, therefore, control the Senate. In that brief twenty-four 
hour period,  a modest and normal increase in the numbers of the opposition 
party had been  transformed into an election that dramatically reshaped the 
balance of power in  this nation and offered the possibility of altering the 
present direction of our  government. This was a mid-term blowout. The fallout was 
immediate. Secretary of  Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, the public face of the Iraq 
War, offered his  resignation. His replacement was to be Robert Gates, the CIA 
head under George  H. W. Bush. It would be Gates' job to implement a new Iraq 
policy coming from a  recently appointed commission chaired by James Baker, 
the Secretary of State in  the first Bush administration. Bush I was obviously 
coming to the rescue of Bush  II. The hard right Republicans were no longer in 
power. Other changes followed,  as they always do in a time of political 
defeat. Speaker of the House, Dennis  Hastert, announced his intention to step 
down from any leadership in the new  House of Representatives. The new majority 
Democrats announced that they would  not confirm President Bush's recess 
appointment of John Bolton to be UN  Ambassador, so he too would be out. The power 
shift was in full swing.  
Due to the luck of my travel schedule, I would view all of this upheaval  
through the eyes of the media in Europe. I would read about our election in the  
newspapers of Norway, Sweden, Germany and France. Initially the only English  
language journal that I saw was the Financial Times of London; my televised 
news  came from the English voice of BBC World Service. A piece of me would miss 
the  analysis of the pundits of America's national and cable networks. This 
was,  however, an opportunity to escape the myopia of the American press that 
cannot  serve its constituency without seeing this nation as the center of the 
world. To  be forced to see your nation through the eyes of non-American 
journalists does  not always offer a comfortable perspective. I had been in Sweden 
when Hurricane  Katrina struck New Orleans and I had to view that disaster 
through the Swedish  media. It is frequently an embarrassing and disillusioning 
experience, as  Scottish poet Robert Burns once observed: "to see ourselves as 
others see us." I  did not have to wait long to gain that view.  
When the vote count was complete the BBC led off its news section with these  
words: "Undisguised jubilation broke out among the peoples of the world today 
as  the results of the American national election drifted across the globe." 
The  Financial Times of London carried a story, read in Norway three days 
after the  election, which stated: "It is hard to find anyone in the Middle East 
who  laments the fate of Donald Rumsfeld, the outgoing US Defense Secretary, or 
who  regretted the defeat of the Republicans in elections to the US Congress 
this  week." A professor of public policy at Dubai University was quoted as 
saying:  "There is no check on America today except from inside America. The 
outside  world is helpless whether it's Europe, Russia or China. It was about 
time the  American people stepped in and took control of their own fate. For a 
while there  was a hijacking of American will by the neo-cons. They were very 
dangerous  people. I hope this will bring back some sanity." Similar sentiments 
were  reported from every corner of the world. I heard no great sense that the 
world's  people necessarily expected the Democrats to be much better; there 
was just a  common consensus that they could not be worse. It was an amazing 
portrait of  where America stands in world opinion.  
I don't believe the American public has ever grasped the depth of hostility  
that is expressed across the world toward the present administration. Since 
Mr.  Bush's disputed election in 2000 I have traveled outside the United States 
on  seventeen different occasions. The hostility toward the American 
government is  palpable. It began almost immediately after the swearing in ceremony, 
when among  the first executive orders issued by the new president was the 
withdrawal of the  United States from the Kyoto Accords on the environment. With 
great difficulty  the nations of the world had fashioned this environmental 
approach and now with  no consultation and apparently little concern, the 
president of the greatest  polluting nation on the face of the earth indicated that 
the bottom line of  American business was more important than the world's common 
environment.  Americans have never understood just how deep environmental 
concerns are to  other nations, since those concerns have only barely appeared on 
the political  radar screen of American politicians. The people of the world, 
however, are  unable to protect themselves from environmental degradation as 
well as Americans  seem to be able to do. Nations in the Southern Hemisphere, 
from New Zealand and  Australia to Chile and Argentina, already have had their 
lives dramatically  impacted by the dangerous thinning of the ozone layer 
over Antarctica. Because  of the way atmospheric pressures work, Antarctica's 
ozone thinning is, strangely  enough, the direct result of Northern Hemisphere 
pollution. School children are  by law not allowed to go out to the playground 
in Southern Australia without  wide brimmed hats to protect them from the rays 
of the sun. In parts of  Argentina and Chile laws making it illegal for anyone 
to be outside during the  midday hours have been passed in their efforts to 
stop the explosion of skin  cancer. This is not an academic issue to them and 
they were filled with  resentment at the attitude of this administration. Anger 
began to rise.  
Next Mr. Bush ended support for family planning clinics around the world when 
 they also engaged in abortion counseling. He chose to serve his narrow 
religious  constituency at the cost of exacerbating the population explosions in 
countries  where infant mortality rates are climbing to alarming proportions. 
Once again  this administration communicated that it cared little for the 
concerns of anyone  who stood in the way of its political agenda.  
There was a momentary reprieve in these growing negative opinions following  
the attack on September 11, 2001, when the sympathy and affection of the 
people  of the world poured out in America's direction. Mr. Bush was given a rare 
second  opportunity to assume a role of leadership and to mobilize world 
opinion against  terrorism. The response of this administration, however, was 
destined to  dissipate that good will rapidly with its continued unilateral approach 
to the  world. It began with the dubious attempt to justify a planned 
preemptive attack  on Iraq, a nation that had not been involved in 9-11 and that was, 
and could  have been, contained with no threat to our national security. That 
fatal mistake  was followed by a belligerent attempt to divide the world into 
"those who  support us or those who support the terrorists," as if our 
aggressive approach  to terrorism, attacking the effects while ignoring the causes, 
was the only  possible alternative. Obviously bending truth to their already 
in place plan to  go to war against Iraq, they gave "slam dunk" assurances that 
Saddam Hussein was  hiding weapons of biological, chemical and even atomic 
mass destruction. The  tension grew as the world watched American treatment of 
the UN in general, and  UN leaders like Hans Blix of Sweden in particular, who 
told the world that those  charges were not so.  
Next came the inept attempt to build, not a real international coalition to  
move against Iraq, but what came to be called "a coalition of the willing,"  
haughtily stepping over the objections of France, Germany, Russia, China, 
Turkey  and even Canada to launch the Iraqi adventure with no significant partner 
other  than Tony Blair and the United Kingdom. Finally, there was the inhumane  
treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, which fatally soured the 
 world's attitude toward this administration. Things have become so bad that 
a  recent poll in Europe revealed that Europeans regarded the United States as 
the  nation that posed the greatest danger to world peace, surpassing both 
North  Korea and Iran. The intensity of those feelings became personal for me 
when I  watched young people in Thailand rushing to a booth in the city market 
of  Bangkok to purchase the hottest item available: a shirt on the front of 
which  were pictures of George Bush and Osama Bin Laden side by side under the 
words  "twin terrors."  
In a time when world cooperation is essential to fight both the unseen enemy  
of terrorism, and the common enemy of environmental degradation, the 
government  of the United States has succeeded in alienating both friend and foe alike 
and  so America stands today embarrassingly alone. Perhaps the most 
discouraging  thing of all was that this administration took these disastrous 
initiatives  while being cheered on by a brand of right wing Christianity. That too is  
finally being challenged. When an old line conservative Republican like 
former  majority leader Richard Armey of Texas can refer to James Dobson and his  
Colorado-based fundamentalist organization "Focus on the Family" as a "group of 
 religious thugs" one gets the sense that the base of this party has 
fractured,  and that the correction has come from the votes of an aroused electorate. 
That  is why "undisguised jubilation" greeted the results of America's 
mid-term  elections. The world's people finally had a sense of dawn breaking after 
this  dark night of human history. Now we must see if the Democrats are capable 
of  offering a responsible alternative. For the sake of the world, I hope they 
prove  worthy of the trust now vested in them.  
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 
Richard, via the Internet, writes:  
Is there any material proof of any sort whatsoever that the man Jesus ever  
lived at all? So many things are attributed to him that sometimes I think he is 
 a fantasy figure people make up in their minds, endowing him with more  
capabilities that the fiction hero Superman had that prompts me to wonder if  
that's all he was, a make-believe figure, like the action hero, Zorro, who was  
inspired by the life of a real 19th century person.  
Dear Richard,  
This question is asked regularly but since it keeps coming up I will try once 
 more to speak to it. The problem is not that there is no evidence to support 
the  historicity of Jesus, because there is. The difficulty arises because so 
much  mythology has been laid on the historic figure of Jesus that he has 
become  unbelievable to many.  
First, the data about his historicity. Paul writing to the Galatians around  
the year 51 C.E. chronicles his activities, including his consultations with  
Peter and others who were called by Paul "the pillars" of the Christian  
movement. This means that Paul knew Peter and others who were the disciples of  the 
Jesus of history. Paul says that this meeting took place three years after  
his conversion (see Galatians 1:18-24). The best evidence that has been amassed 
 to date the conversion of Paul was done by a 19th century church historian 
named  Adolf Harnack, who places it no earlier than one year and no more than 
six years  after the crucifixion. So Paul was in touch with disciples of Jesus 
within 4 to  10 years after the crucifixion. These disciples did not think of 
Jesus as a  fantasy or a mythical person. Indeed myths take far longer than 4 
to 10 years to  develop. There is thus ample data to support the historicity 
of the man Jesus.  Paul would hardly have given his life to a myth.  
There are other things that are so counter-intuitive about the way the Jesus  
story has been told that to me they constitute compelling additional evidence 
 for his historicity. One is that Jesus is said to have come out of Nazareth, 
a  dirty, petty and insignificant town that had a dreadful reputation. It was 
said  even in the New Testament that people asked "can anything good come out 
of  Nazareth" (see John 1:46)? His Nazareth and Galilean origins were an  
embarrassment to the Jesus movement. No one creates a myth that will embarrass  
them. It was undoubtedly this embarrassment that helped to create the myth of  
his birth in Bethlehem. One does not try to escape a lowly place of origin  
unless that place is so deeply a part of the person's identity that it cannot be 
 suppressed. Jesus of Nazareth was a person of history.  
Another counter-intuitive piece of data is that Jesus began his public life  
as a disciple of John the Baptist. John was originally the teacher that Jesus  
followed. That is why the gospels seem compelled to have John say constantly  
things like: "He must increase, I must decrease." "After me comes one whose  
shoelaces I am not worthy to tie." Luke goes so far as to have the fetus of 
John  the Baptist leap to salute the fetus of Jesus before either was born. When 
 people try to alter history it is not because there is no history, it is 
because  the reality of history has caused embarrassment. The early Christians 
worked  hard to prove that though John was older, he was quite secondary, the 
one who  "prepared the way."  
The third fact in the life of Jesus, to which we can point as history, is  
that Jesus was crucified. The Christian movement had to find a way to understand 
 and even to celebrate his death, which ran counter to everything they 
believed  about a messiah. If they could not transform his crucifixion, there would 
have  been no resurrection. Indeed the resurrection was the story of that  
transformation. That took hard work. They did not do that by making up the story  
of the crucifixion. His death was real. The interpretation of his death as 
the  gateway to life made the Christian faith possible.  
Mythology was surely added to the Jesus of history even in the writings of  
the gospels, but those myths were placed on the back of a real person. Mark,  
writing in the 8th decade, said that at his baptism the heavens opened and the  
Holy Spirit poured out on him. Then Mark said that after his crucifixion that 
 the grave could not contain him.  
In the ninth decade, Matthew added such details to the growing mythology as  
the miraculous birth, the heavenly star, the wise men, and the physiological  
appearances of the raised Jesus. Some five to ten years after Matthew, Luke  
added to the developing story such parts of our tradition as the shepherds, the 
 swaddling cloths and the appearances of the angels. Later he intensified the 
 physical character of the resurrection until it became resuscitation back 
into  the life of this world, which in turn necessitated his eventual escape 
from this  earth in the story of the cosmic ascension. Still later John 
identified him with  the Word of God spoken in creation. As these mythological layers 
were laid on  top of him, his humanity began to fade. That is where the faith 
crisis of today  emerges. We have begun to strip away the mythology, and as we 
do we begin to  fear that there is nothing under it. So we hesitate and even 
pretend to believe  what, when pressed, we would say we no longer believe. Many 
of the  fundamentalist churches are made up of pretenders who reveal their 
vulnerability  by getting angry whenever they are forced to face the game that 
they are  playing. There is, I believe, another way. I am now convinced that 
only by  recovering the full humanity of Jesus is there any possibility of 
seeing the  meaning of his divinity. That is the dominant theme of my next book 
JESUS FOR  THE NON-RELIGIOUS, which will be out in March of 2007. I see it as a 
radical  restatement of the earliest Christian proclamation that in the human 
Jesus, the  holy God has been encountered. I look forward to the debate and the 
dialogue  that I hope this book will engender.  
John Shelby Spong 
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