[Dialogue] Spong on Crosswalk and healthcare

[KroegerD at aol.com]

September 13, 2006 
Crosswalk America Arrives in  Washington, DC  
It began on April 16, 2006, following a sunrise service in Phoenix,  Arizona. 
It ended on September 3, 2006, at a celebration in the Foundry United  
Methodist Church in Washington, DC. Between those two dates, more than five  million 
steps were taken, at least three pairs of shoes per person were worn  out, 
over 2,500 miles were registered and 12 states were crossed. These  fascinating 
facts constituted just a few of the dimensions of the journey  undertaken and 
completed by a group of people, who called themselves "Crosswalk  America." 
The purpose of their walk was to lift up another face of Christianity  that is 
quite different from the Christianity seen in the media today. They  walked to 
publicize something they called the 'Phoenix Affirmations' that  involve these 
principles:  
    *   Christians must have an openness to other faiths  
    *   Christians must care for the earth and its ecosystem  
    *   Christians must value artistic expression in all its forms  
    *   Christians must welcome and include all persons  
    *   Christians must oppose the co-mingling of Church and State  
    *   Christians must seek peace and end systemic poverty  
    *   Christian must promote the values of rest and recreation, prayer and  
reflection  
    *   Christians must embrace both faith and science
It was the hope of  this group, who certainly put their bodies where their 
mouths were, to raise in  the national awareness the presence of the progressive 
Christian movement  throughout America. They were tired of having the 
Christian faith, to which each  walker was deeply committed, constantly identified 
with the negativity of the  anti-abortion movement and the anger of the 
anti-homosexual stance employed by  so many who use the name Christian. They wanted to 
demonstrate that those who  are committed to Christ would not set the 
citizens of this land against each  other over differing religious beliefs and 
practices. Their desire was to turn  the present course of Christianity in America 
away from its divisive pro-war,  anti-female, anti-gay public face, where those 
who disagree are relegated to an  emotional status somewhere between being 
excommunicated and burned at the stake,  to a religion identified with the words 
'love' and 'inclusion.' In every  community entered across this nation, these 
walkers went to the local churches,  identified themselves and shared their 
message. They worshiped in all kinds of  settings, deliberately including the 
most fundamentalist. One was called 'The  Jesus Baptist Church' in 
Springerville, Texas, that stated publicly their belief  in the inerrancy of the Bible and 
the sinfulness of homosexuality, but they also  worshiped in a Metropolitan 
Community Church in New Mexico, that was organized  just for homosexual people 
who had been forced out of their churches by  religious and biblical 
prejudice. One town that was not eager to entertain the  walkers had only very 
conservative churches, yet they found a welcome in that  town from a group of people 
who, tired of the religious atmosphere in their own  community, had formed a 
"House Church" that met every Sunday. In the Texas town  of Bovina, less than 30 
miles from the town of Hereford, the names of which  indicate the dominance 
of the cattle industry in Texas, they discovered that  their stance on 
inclusiveness was not nearly so offensive to the locals as the  fact that three of the 
walkers were vegetarians!  
They received the apology from the mayor of Clovis, New Mexico, a town that  
advertises itself as the "most welcoming community in America," because the 
head  of the ministerial alliance refused even to meet with the walkers much 
less to  provide them with any hospitality. The mayor challenged the clergy there 
and  insisted that the welcome of Clovis did extend to progressive 
Christians.  
They were picketed at two services in St. Louis, Missouri, where they had  
been invited to share their story with two congregations. One was the Episcopal  
Cathedral in the heart of the city; the other was the Metropolitan Community  
Church in the suburbs. Interestingly enough, while the picketers carried a  
number of religious placards, the majority of their signs were  
anti-abortion/pro-life. Since the MCC congregation is made up entirely of  homosexual p
ersons, it represented the first time in the history of that  denomination that they 
had been the target of anti-abortion picketers. Abortion  is not frequently 
part of the life experience of gay people!  
They were interviewed by the local press and appeared on local radio all  
along their route. One memorable interview occurred in Farwell, Texas, on a  
station known as "Jesus Radio." They went expecting to be attacked for not being  
fundamentalists but they found themselves embraced by the owner. "So what if 
we  don't agree on every issue," he said, "You're out walking for Jesus and 
loving  people!" This man could separate the wheat from the chaff. He admitted he 
would  probably get a lot of criticism from his listeners for having this 
group on the  show but, he said, "I will tell them that they are to run their 
churches and I  will run this radio station!"  
The Crosswalk America idea was born in the mind of Eric Elnes, a United  
Church of Christ/Congregationalist minister in Scottsdale, Arizona and an  
emerging national leader. A learned man with a PhD in Biblical Studies from  
Princeton, he had long chafed at the rising tide of fundamentalism in America.  While 
on a retreat in Oregon, he wondered how people might respond if he planned  a 
walk across America in the name of a progressive, scholarly and inclusive  
Christianity. When he returned to Arizona, he shared his idea with a few friends  
and found it excited all who heard about it. One person in particular who  
resonated with this dream was Rebecca Glenn, who had once been the moderator of  
Dr. Elnes' church. She was a very successful, high-ranking vice president in 
the  information industry. Her husband was the head of an insurance company. 
She said  that all her life she had been looking for some way to act out what 
she believed  about Christianity and this possibility captured her imagination. 
She resigned  her job to be part of it. Dr. Elnes and Rebecca Glenn became 
co-presidents of  what they named Crosswalk America and the dream began to move 
toward reality.  Rebecca Glenn's daughter Katrina also joined the walk and 
Rebecca's mother and  father, Ray and Donna Gentry, drove the van that 
accompanied the walkers,  carrying luggage and supplies and being available to transport 
any walker to  safety should sickness or accident strike. Others on the march 
had equally  exciting backgrounds. One man named Mark walked from Oregon to 
Phoenix just to  hook up with the walkers before completing the Phoenix to 
Washington DC journey.  Another named Merrill heard about it in nearby Phoenix and 
immediately joined  the effort. "I've never been good at talking," he said, 
"but I am good at  walking, so I'll let my feet talk for me."  
Last April, I wrote a column about this walk before it began. That column can 
 be found _here_ (http://secure.agoramedia.com/spong/week184story1_prev.asp) 
. I  followed their progress across America on the Internet with great 
interest and  was delighted to accept their invitation to be the keynote speaker at 
their  final celebration in Washington, DC.  
Quite characteristically, the Foundry United Methodist Church, one of the  
District of Columbia's outstanding congregations, that has claimed among its  
members both Bill and Hilary Clinton, as well as Robert and Elizabeth Dole, and  
whose former pastor, Philip Wogaman was a well known and highly respected  
national religious leader, invited this group to hold the celebratory service in 
 their sanctuary. To get a feel for the spirit of the event, my wife 
Christine  and I joined the walkers on the last two days of their pilgrimage from 
Maryland  into Washington. The walk on Saturday, September 2, was a bit less than 
10  miles, but tropical storm Ernesto had passed through that area the 
previous  night so we walked in a steady, misty drizzle and stepped over branches and 
 leaves that had been ripped off trees by the wind. We worshiped the next 
Sunday  morning at the Silver Spring Congregational Church and then, with perhaps 
200  people, many from the Washington area, we walked from Meridian Park the 
final  mile to 16th and P where we held a news conference on the steps of 
Foundry  Church. The celebratory service began at 4:00 p.m. and ended at 6:30 p.m. 
It was  as if something precious was being held tightly and no one wanted to 
let it go.  
I listened as we walked those final two days to the life-changing stories of  
the walkers. A cameraman named Chris, who joined them to produce a 
documentary,  told me of his distaste for Christians as he had experienced them in the 
past,  but what it had meant for him to be embraced by this group as a 
non-believer.  Another walker, named Meighan, who had left her job with the Seattle 
Symphony to  join the walk said she had found her voice on this walk and now 
could talk about  what Jesus meant to her without sounding like those religious 
people whose  "Jesus talk" repelled her. She also found a new vocation into 
which she is now  quickly moving.  
Eric Elnes is completing a book on this experience that will be out from  
Jossey-Bass Publishing Company in about six months. Another religious voice,  
this one of tolerance and compassion, is now in the American religious  
conversation. Will the image of Christianity in America be changed by this wild  
imaginative act? Only time will tell. However, if nothing else happens except  that 
a group of people found in Christianity in the year 2006 the power to  
motivate them to walk across America, to bear witness to what Christianity can  be, 
it will be enough for me. For that means that this venerable faith  tradition, 
to which I am so deeply committed, still has within its ranks those  who can 
reform it and renew it to live in another century. I rejoice in that.  
John Shelby Spong  
Note: Those who want more information on Crosswalk America may find it at  
www.crosswalkamerica.org. You may also correspond with its leadership by writing 
 Eric Elnes or Rebecca Glenn at: Crosswalk America, 4425 N. Granite Reef 
Road,  Scottsdale, Arizona, 85251. A congratulatory card or letter from you would 
mean  a great deal to 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 
Dwight Oxley, via the Internet, writes:  
Dr. Cato in his excellent essay several months ago, suggested that Christians 
 should take a position on the morally appropriate allocation of medical  
resources in the event of a flu pandemic. I believe that the likely allocation  
pattern can be easily deduced from current public policy on health care: most  
resources will go to the elderly through the Medicare program and the children 
 will be left out. This is misguided and immoral: children and the parents 
who  provided for them should receive the highest priority. Medicare recipients 
like  myself (age 69) are grateful for the Medicare benefit, but the future of 
our  society does not depend much on 69 year-olds. It depends very much on 
those who  are now children. Even in the "best of times" (i.e. no flu pandemic) 
millions of  children go without routine immunizations because their parents 
are poor, but  too "rich" for Medicaid. I propose that the children, rich and 
poor alike, have  what Dr. Cato calls ".the most value to (society)." I am a 
member of a small  Episcopal parish in Kansas and I have already written my 
Congressional  delegation about my views. You seem to suggest that we should do 
more to  influence (i.e. change) public policy. But how?  
Dear Dwight,  
I hope your letter in this column helps. Thank you for your response. We do  
spend as a nation more than 90 cents out of every healthcare dollar on the 
last  year of a person's life. Most of this is spent on the elderly, but children 
who  are born with defects and cannot be saved despite numerous procedures 
are also  in that number as well as accident victims but who die in a year from  
complications. In our free society, we must decide how to allocate the money  
raised through taxes to allow for the greatest good. If we choose to do so, I 
 suspect that we, as a nation, have enough resources to provide health care 
for  all people unless we face a cataclysmic disaster. There is a political 
question  as to whether we will or not. If the world's population continues to 
expand at  the present rates, all social systems will be overrun and a disaster 
is  guaranteed. 
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