[Dialogue] {Disarmed} Song for real

[KroegerD at aol.com]

August 29, 2007 
Why Should People Pay Any  Attention to the Christian Church on Sexual 
Matters?  

In recent decades the primary battles that have been fought in the Christian  
Church have not been about theology, but about issues of human sexuality. 
Huge  debates polarize the Church on whether priesthood will be limited to males; 
the  morality of birth control and abortion; who has the right to decide on 
what  birth control will be legally available; whether celibacy for priests 
should be  required, and the role and place of gay and lesbian people in the 
Church.  
These debates have received front page treatment in newspapers across the  
world as the media, and presumably their audiences, continue to regard them as  
newsworthy. Those parts of the Christian Church that move ahead by ordaining  
women or qualified homosexual candidates into their ministry are portrayed as  
doing very controversial and extraordinary things. The attempt to 
excommunicate  the ones who are initiating the change or to threaten the church's fabric 
with  schism is also regarded as newsworthy. The presumption behind this media 
 coverage is that the Church is actually qualified to speak with competence 
on  matters of sexuality. I challenge the correctness of that presumption.  
>From where does this presumption come? Why do people think that the Church  
has sufficient expertise in matters of sexuality to warrant any attention? Is  
this not the same institution that has taught us that sex is both evil and  
dirty, and that 'sexlessness' is the higher calling into holiness? The Christian 
 Church has actually defined marriage as a compromise with sin. Is a sexless  
world imaginable or even desirable? This institution has so deeply attached  
guilt to sex that it has produced in Christian countries either a repression 
of  healthy sexuality among the faithful or an irresponsible free love among 
the  dismissive. Is either a healthy alternative?  
Throughout its history the Church has also systematically filled women with  
deep feelings of inadequacy by declaring that menstruation produces a state of 
 uncleanness. No one today believes that attitude to be based on anything 
other  than ignorance and prejudice. One unspoken, but always present, argument 
used to  prevent women from being ordained in several churches is that 
menstruation makes  women a potentially polluting presence in holy places. That is 
also why the  choirs in the great European Cathedrals consisted only of men and 
boys.  
This institution has even informed the world that the ideal woman is a  
"virgin mother." Since it is impossible for anyone to be both a virgin and a  
mother, no woman could ever live up to the ideal. Thus in one stroke all women  
were made to feel morally compromised. With the ideal not possible, this Church  
then proceeded to offer women a consolation prize. They could be virgins who  
joined the nunneries (as the brides of Christ and clearly the higher calling) 
or  they could be mothers. If they chose marriage and motherhood they were 
still  taught that the only redeeming purpose for sex was procreation, so any 
birth  control practice that inhibited or minimized the possibility of pregnancy 
was a  mortal sin. That is where the prohibition against birth control had its 
origin.  In an overpopulated world is not the absence of effective family 
planning itself  immoral?  
It was out of the Roman Church's visceral negativity to birth control that it 
 recently instructed its adherents in Africa that condoms were not even 
morally  acceptable for use even inside marriage to protect a wife from becoming 
infected  by her HIV positive husband. Is it not a sign of distorted values to 
place a  religious rule ahead of a woman's life?  
There is no end to this litany of ecclesiastical malpractice, that reveals  
both contradictory and incompetent behavior. This institution first limited its 
 priesthood to unmarried men, and then refused to acknowledge the fact that 
vast  numbers of homosexual males found in this celibate priesthood a place in 
which  to hide. Attempts to deny the fact that "mandatory celibacy" created 
the largest  closet in which gay men have found sanctuary in Western history are 
laughably  naive. When a gay man, however, dares to be honest about his 
priestly identity,  the Church reacts with ecclesiastical uproar. Does anyone 
really believe that  Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire is the 
first gay bishop in  the Anglican Church? He is not even the only gay bishop 
currently serving in  that Church! His distinction is that he is the first honest 
gay bishop. Indeed  to illustrate the total duplicity present in church 
hierarchies, some of the  fiercest critics of homosexuality in the Church today are 
closeted homosexual  bishops! I can name them on both sides of the Atlantic 
Ocean. They have occupied  the highest positions of ecclesiastical power. 
Repressed and dishonest  homosexuality is never healthy, but that has been what the 
Church has practiced  for centuries and yet people, for reasons that defy 
rationality, continue to  listen to church leaders for guidance on sexual issues. 
 
The sexual values of the church are so deeply confused that travesties occur  
frequently. When the rampant abuse of children by priests was revealed, the  
church responded by covering up the evidence, transferring the violators and  
promoting their protectors like Cardinal Law. In England recently a man who 
was  the trainer of clergy for one of that nation's largest Anglican dioceses 
was  forced to resign his appointment as a bishop because he was honest about 
his  sexual orientation. No one seemed upset about that, however, when he was 
the  trainer of clergy. Is this not a mixed message totally lacking in 
credibility?  
In the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI began his pontificate  
promising to remove homosexuals from the priesthood of his Church. When the fine  
print was read, however, he only wanted to prevent "activist" gay males from  
"entering" the priesthood. If he went beyond that, the shortage of priests in  
that church would become unbearable. Estimates are that fully half of their  
ordained clergy throughout history, including bishops, archbishops, cardinals  
and popes have been closeted gay men. I would not bet against the truth of that 
 estimate.  
To bolster these irrational stances on sexual behavior, Church leaders  
regularly use the Bible as their final authority. In doing so, they reveal an  
amazing ability to be quite selective, while appearing oblivious to centuries of  
biblical scholarship. They seem not to notice that the Bible has been quoted  
through the ages on the wrong side of every social change, including ending 
the  "divine right of kings" while clothing sexism inside high sounding phrases 
like  "sacred tradition." The Bible has also been used to promote immoral wars 
like  the Crusades and to undergird the tyranny of right wing dictatorships 
in the  third world. The Bible has even been quoted to justify the corporal 
punishment  of children, producing in the process scandalous examples of abuse in 
both  church and church related schools. In the light of these things why 
there any  surprise that the Bible's credibility has become minimal?  
With a record like that, why does anyone still listen to the public  
proclamations about sex emanating from the Christian Church? Why would any woman  be 
willing to heed the "moral opinion" of an all-male ecclesiastical group that  
pontificates in the name of a God called "Father," about what is moral for a  
woman to do with her own body? Women, who are precluded from the decision 
making  ecclesiastical processes, are quite rightly refusing to be subjected to 
such  uninformed ignorance.  
With these sexual battles draining its energy in hopeless conflicts they are  
destined to lose, no one seems to notice how little attention the Church 
leaders  pay to the Christ figure, who identified himself with the marginalized of 
his  society, the lepers, the Samaritans and even the woman taken in the act 
of  adultery. He broke the bands of religious prejudice against women by 
engaging  the woman by the well in conversation, by encouraging Mary, the sister of 
 Martha, to choose the role of a pupil for herself and by having female 
disciples  who "followed him all the way from Galilee." How was it then possible 
for  Christianity, formed by the followers of this Jesus, to diminish throughout 
its  long history and always in the name of God, the lives and the humanity 
of so  many? I think of the Church's traditional victims: the Jews, the 
"heretics," the  scientists who introduced us to a new understanding of the world and 
finally  people of color, women and homosexual persons everywhere, and wonder 
what these  ecclesiastical victims think when they hear church leaders say: 
"the Bible is  the inerrant word of God." The gospel of John quotes Jesus, I 
think correctly,  as saying "I came that they might have life, abundantly." One 
cannot give life  and diminish people's humanity at the same time. Yet in 
spite of that record  many people still seem to think that institutional 
Christianity must be listened  to in the debate about changing sexual patterns among 
human beings. In the light  of this record, I wonder why.  
I am a bishop in the Church. I am deeply devoted to the Christ who stands at  
the heart of the Christian story. I treasure the sacred scriptures of my 
faith  tradition and study them daily. Nonetheless, I am repelled by so much that 
I see  emanating from within institutional Christianity today. Everywhere I go 
I  confront a spiritually hungry population, but one that is increasingly 
unwilling  to listen to the religious claims of those who have done such evil to 
so many  while claiming that they are speaking for Christ. Most people I meet 
think that  their only options are to continue to be part of this kind of 
abusive tradition  or to rid themselves of all religion. That is why atheism has 
become such a  popular subject for books today. I think a better alternative is 
to call the  Christian Church into a new reformation that will transform it 
from being a  power-seeking institution designed to create religious 
conformists to one whose  goal is to enhance our common humanity. That would be for the 
Church to walk in  a vastly different direction.  
John Shelby Spong  
_Note  from the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores  everywhere and by clicking here!_ 
(http://astore.amazon.com/bishopspong-20/detail/0060762071/104-6221748-5882304)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Chris, from central Texas, writes:  
I attended your recent lectures in Austin and realize I forgot to ask you a  
question that has been increasingly on my mind: How does the concept of  
"worship" figure into your vision of a new Christianity? For a long time I have  
felt that God doesn't need my worship or praise, and to think that God does need 
 my worship and adoration seems silly. (I think that "worship" and 
"adoration"  are different from feeling a sense of gratitude and connection to God.)  
My church has been having some serious discussions regarding worship changes  
and I've heard some folks say that worship shouldn't be about us — it's 
simply  about praising God. Well, I think that worship is very much about me and 
about  the other worshipers as well — it's about drawing us closer to God, about 
the  community called the church, about inspiring us to care for others, etc. 
Creeds  that I can't say, prayers of confession that beat people up, hymns 
focused on  atonement messages, and an emphasis on liturgy and ritual over 
spirituality only  impede my relationship to God. Am I just spoiled and 
self-centered to want a  more meaningful and more relevant worship experience?  
Dear Chris,  
Yours is a perennial question. I cannot imagine a God who "needs" worship, or 
 a God who has some innate need to be flattered by the human praise that is 
so  often the content of worship. Listen to the words of such hymns as "How 
Great  Thou Art" and "Almighty, Invisible God Only Wise."  
Worship is always a human activity that meets a human need. Whenever one  
engages in worship, it is not for the purpose of working on God but on the human  
being who is worshiping. Worship is designed to enhance our humanity: to  
increase our capacity to live, our ability to love and our courage to be all  
that God created us to be. If worship makes us "religious" or "righteous" or  
turns us into being intolerant "true believers," then it has become nothing more  
than an act of idolatry.  
Worship in most of our churches today is a mixed blessing. It is frequently  
the result not of careful study and critical planning, but of rote and  
tradition. Much of it is designed to keep us childlike and immature and to make  a 
virtue out of chronic dependency. One of the reasons churches exhort its  
people to be "born again" is that this will postpone forever the necessity of  
their growing up.  
Worship at its heart is the practice of becoming aware of the presence of God 
 so that we become more deeply and fully human. I judge every worship 
experience  in which I participate by that definition.  
John Shelby Spong 



************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at 
http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://wedgeblade.net/pipermail/dialogue_wedgeblade.net/attachments/20070830/80a19f78/attachment-0001.html