[Dialogue] {Spam?} spong on Tutu and Wliz Edwards

[KroegerD at aol.com]

May 9, 2007 
Special Question and Answers  from Bishop Spong  
Dear Friends,  
This week I will break momentarily my series on the rise of fundamentalism in 
 America to cover a few pressing issues that I experience and that you, my  
readers, keep bringing to my attention. Today I will take you inside your  
television screen and show you what goes into even four minute segments. It also  
lets us all know what an uphill battle it is to get elementary biblical  
scholarship into the public arena. Next week in place of the column I want to  
share my answers to two readers that required more space than the question and  
answer format allows. Both answers involve people known across the world,  
Desmond Tutu and Elizabeth Edwards. In the case of Mrs. Edwards we are reminded  of 
the humanity of all people even our headline worthy politicians. The  
following week I will share with you things that I saw recently while lecturing  in 
Minneapolis which, I believe, indicate that dramatic changes are occurring  
underneath the public debate on homosexuality and that this all too weary debate  
may soon be over. I will then resume the Fundamentalism series, but will take 
 other breaks from that topic when events and issues (like the tragedy at  
Virginia Tech) arise that seem to me to call for analysis and comment. Before  
the fundamentalism series is complete we will have examined and exposed all of  
the "Five Fundamentals." So stay tuned.  
I thank you for all of your cards, letters and e-mails. They are the  
lifeblood of this column. I particularly enjoy having subscribers identify  
themselves to me when I am on the lecture circuit. I am constantly amazed at the  scope 
and penetration of this column. Its readers are now quite literally all  over 
this world.  
Shalom.  
John Shelby Spong  
Georgia Riggs from Grove, Oklahoma, writes:  
When you spoke of forgiveness while lecturing recently in Oklahoma, my mind  
jumped to Desmond Tutu. I was honored to hear him speak in Tulsa. Since you 
have  known him for so long, could you give us an insight into his spiritual 
journey?  
Dear Georgia,  
I met Desmond Tutu in the summer of 1976 about six weeks after I had been  
ordained as a bishop. I was in The Republic of South Africa, landing there just  
after the dreadful riots in Soweto, an apartheid community adjacent to white  
Johannesburg. Desmond, who was at that time serving as the Dean of St. Mary's 
 Cathedral in Johannesburg, had became the voice of the people following 
those  riots in which between 200-300 black teenagers had been killed by South 
African  police in the dark days of apartheid. The police sent a flat bed truck 
into  Soweto and hurled these deceased bodies unceremoniously onto that truck 
to haul  them to the morgue. The picture of grieving parents at that morgue 
trying to  find their own child in that pile of bodies haunts me to this day. 
Things were  incredibly tense, with fear and hatred the dominant emotions that 
were finding  expression.  
The trigger that launched these riots was a requirement recently enacted by  
the white legislative body of the South African government that all public  
schools in the nation had to teach in the Afrikaans language, as well as in  
English and whatever was the local tribal dialect. Afrikaans was the language of  
those citizens of this land who were the descendents of the original Dutch  
settlers. They had formed the political majority, which had implemented the  
policy of apartheid. Afrikaans represented, thereby, the language of the  
oppressors of black Africans. This new law was thus seen as a final blow in the  
systemic grinding away of the humanity of the black students. Desmond Tutu who,  
when he became dean of the Anglican Cathedral in Johannesburg had refused to  
live in the Deanery in white Johannesburg moving rather into black Soweto,  
suddenly emerged as the "Voice of Soweto." The media of the world dispatched  
their print, radio and television reporters to cover these riots and Desmond  
became the one who was destined to interpret for people everywhere the anger of  
the students and the depth of their anguish and complaints. It is correct to 
say  that this requirement to add Afrikaans to the languages of public 
instruction  was not the real cause of black anger, but it was the straw that broke 
the  camel's back, ending the ability of these young South Africans to keep the 
pain  of their oppression under control any longer. Riots always simmer 
within a  people long before they break out into public acts. That is why it is 
never  smart to treat the symptoms of people's despair, while ignoring the causes 
of  that despair.  
While in South Africa on this particular trip Desmond also took me, along  
with others, to meet various people and to see various places in Johannesburg.  
We talked a lot about Nelson Mandela, who was still in jail at that time. He  
introduced me to Winnie Mandela, who was then under house arrest. I attended a 
 memorial service in the Anglican Cathedral for the murdered teenagers over 
which  Desmond presided. I talked with grieving parents who had lost a child in 
this  act of police brutality. I saw the irrationality of apartheid quite 
poignantly  when Desmond and I went together to the post office one day to buy 
stamps and we  had to stand in separate lines to make our purchase. My line said 
"whites only."  His line said "blacks and coloreds only."  
Later, I had the privilege of serving as Desmond's co-consecrator when he was 
 made Bishop of Lesotho (pronounced Le-su-tu.) Later, in a public 
presentation I  told him he would now be known as "Tutu of Le-su-tu, and that the only 
way I  could possibly compete with that was to became "Spong of Hong Kong." That 
story  has now been repeated hundreds of times.  
While I was the bishop Desmond visited my diocese in northern New Jersey on a 
 number of occasions before he became so deeply embroiled in the struggle to 
end  apartheid that he had no time left for himself. We offered him a periodic 
 respite of "R and R." Whenever possible his wife Leah would come with him. 
He  assisted me by sharing in the confirmations in the Diocese of Newark. Today 
 there are many Episcopalians in the Diocese of Newark who can say with great 
 pride, "I was confirmed by Bishop Tutu." Finally in an effort to minimize 
his  impact abroad, the South African government stripped him of his passport. I 
 responded by going immediately in person to the South African Embassy in  
Washington to deliver in person my protest to their ambassador and my  
condemnation of this inhumane action.  
Desmond's leadership and influence grew when he left his position as the  
Bishop of the Diocese of LeSotho to assume a national office by becoming the  
General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. After serving with  
great distinction there, he moved more and more to the stage of the world by  
becoming the Bishop of Johannesburg, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and  
finally the Archbishop of Capetown and the Primate of the Anglican Church in  
South Africa. He lived through and was a part of such historic events as the  
release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the fall of apartheid, Nelson Mandela's  
election as president in the first ballot in which Black Africans could  
participate and finally his own appointment by President Mandela to head the  
"Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of South Africa." That  
Commission did more than people will ever fully understand to bring this hurting  
country together again.  
He is and always will be a hero to me. I regard him as one of the two or  
three greatest human being I have ever known. A picture of the two of us  
together is to this day hanging on the wall above my desk. I look at him and  give 
thanks for him every day.  
In addition to his wife Leah, I have also met two of their children, his son  
Trevor and his daughter Mpho. Just last month, at the consecration of Mark  
Beckwith as the new Episcopal Bishop of the Diocese of Newark, Mpho, now a  
priest of our church herself, came over to give me a much appreciated "Tutu hug  
and kiss."  
Desmond is a profound person in his simplicity. He understands God as love  
and finds it quite compelling to live that out. He has loved his enemies into a 
 new wholeness. Christianity is not so complicated when one goes to its core, 
as  Desmond always seems to do. Christians are called to love others with the 
love  with which God has loved each of us. We are to be the bearers of life, 
the  enhancers of love, those who give others the courage to be all that they 
can be.  How else do we serve the Christ or the God that this Jesus 
represented and  revealed, whose purpose was stated quite accurately, I believe, by the 
author of  the Fourth Gospel, when he has Jesus say: "I have come that they 
might have life  and have it abundantly."  
Across this world I have met many people who have no idea what it means to be 
 an Anglican or an Episcopalian, but when I tell them: "I am a member of 
Bishop  Desmond Tutu's church," they understand what that means.  
Desmond's voice is not silent in the current disputes that rage in the  
Anglican Communion about the election of a female primate and the full and equal  
inclusion of homosexual people in the life of both church and society. He 
knows,  like few people do, that the diminishment of one human being is the 
diminishment  of all human beings. So he has been a steady and competent champion of 
the  equality of women and issues a constant, courageous and graceful call for 
 justice in regard to the full acceptance of gay and lesbian people into the 
life  of the Church. He is a quite consistent Christian. I wish we had 
thousands like  him.  
I will return to South Africa this fall to do a series of lectures across  
that country. It will be my first trip there since the end of apartheid. My  
correspondence with South African friends has, however, filled me with great  
anticipation of the opportunity that I will have to see first hand, in that once  
oppressive country, the incredible transformation that has taken place since  
apartheid's collapse. I consider it a human miracle and I believe that 
Desmond  played a major role in making that miracle possible.  
I am privileged to know Desmond Tutu and to call him my friend. Thank you for 
 asking your question, which has given me the opportunity to say these things 
 publicly.  
John Shelby Spong  
Carol via the Internet writes:  
Elizabeth Edwards said in an interview with ABC News that she could not ask  
an intervening God to cure her cancer. I agree. How can we pray for her? How 
can  she pray for herself?  
Dear Carol:  
First let me say that I rejoice that finally we have in Elizabeth Edwards a  
public figure who does not pander to meaningless "god talk." That is a  
remarkable step forward. I believe that I understand and appreciate exactly what  
Elizabeth Edwards means. Let me tell you why.  
My first wife, her name was Joan, died of a similar cancer in 1988. Because  
we were public figures in New Jersey, as the Edwards are all over this nation, 
 we faced a similar situation. When Joan received her dreadful diagnosis in  
December of 1981, people across New Jersey wrote to tell us of their concern 
and  to assure us of their prayers. We appreciated those communications greatly 
 because they were expressions of love and caring and helped us both to 
overcome  at least the sense of loneliness that is always a part of a threatening  
diagnosis. Joan and I were, therefore, prayed for by prayer groups in many  
churches and even by ecumenical prayer groups throughout the state. We both  
knew, however, that we were the recipients of this outpouring of caring because  
my wife and I were public figures. We also were well aware that there are  
thousands of relatively unknown people who die from cancer without much public  
notice each year. They do not receive the massive outpouring of prayer that a  
person like Elizabeth Edwards will inevitably receive. For anyone, however, to 
 attribute curative power to an intervening deity begs the question of how 
this  deity would decide who to cure and who to let die. If God were to be 
understood  as letting social rank, privileged lives, and the concern of countless 
numbers  of people for an important public figure be the determining factor in 
divine  cures then that God would have to be dismissed as demonic. Prayer is 
so much  more than adult letters to Santa Claus. Elizabeth Edwards obviously 
understands  that. I admire both her faith and her courage.  
I can assure you that letters sent to the Edwards expressing your love,  
sympathy and concern will be helpful, whether they are ever acknowledged or not.  
I also believe that any time any one of us prays for another, it places into 
the  universe positive power that no one can quantify, nor should they try to 
do so.  Prayer, however, has value beyond that since it also helps each of us 
to escape  our own web of self-oriented concerns, making us more whole and more 
human. We  need to stop presuming that we can understand how prayer works or 
even how that  which we call God might use our prayer offerings and simply be 
about the task of  living, loving and being as a way of practicing the 
presence of God and then  leaving the results to God. I commend this pathway to you.  
John Shelby Spong 



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