[Dialogue] Spong 09/05/07 Telling it like it is!!!

[KroegerD at aol.com]

September 5, 2007 
A Public Letter to the  Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend Rowan 
Williams  

Dear Rowan,  
I am delighted that you have agreed to meet with the House of Bishops of the  
American Episcopal Church in September, even if you appear to be unwilling to 
 come alone. It has seemed strange that you, who have had so much to say 
about  the American Church, have not been willing to do so before now. Your office 
is  still honored by Episcopalians in this country, so our bishops will 
welcome you  warmly and politely. We have some amazingly competent men and women in 
that  body, many of whom have not yet met you.  
There is clearly an estrangement between that body and you in your role as  
the Archbishop of Canterbury. I want to share with you my understanding of the  
sources of that estrangement. First, I believe that most of our senior 
bishops,  including me, were elated, at your appointment by Queen Elizabeth II and 
Prime  Minister Tony Blair. Most Americans are not aware that yours is an 
appointed,  not an elected position. Those of us who knew you were keenly aware of 
your  intellectual gifts, your openness on all of the great social debates of 
our  generation and indeed of your personal warmth. We also believed that the 
Lambeth  Conference of 1998, presided over by your predecessor, George Carey, 
had been a  disaster that would haunt the Communion for at least a quarter of 
a century. An  assembly of bishops hissing at and treating fellow bishops with 
whom they  disagreed quite rudely, was anything but an example of Christian 
community. The  unwillingness of that hostile majority to listen to the voices 
of invited gay  Christians, their use of the Bible in debate as a weapon to 
justify prejudice,  the almost totalitarian attempt made to manage the press and 
to prevent access  to the wider audience and the dishonest denial of the 
obvious and blatant  homophobia among the bishops made that Lambeth Conference the 
most  disillusioning ecclesiastical gathering I have ever attended. The 
Church  desperately needed new leadership and so many of us greeted your 
appointment  with hope. Your detractors in the evangelical camp both in England and in 
the  third world actively lobbied against your appointment. The hopes of those 
of us  who welcomed your appointment were, however, short lived because in one 
decision  after another you seemed incapable of functioning as the leader the 
Church  wanted and needed.  
It began at the moment of your appointment when you wrote a public letter to  
the other primates assuring them that you would not continue in your 
enlightened  and open engagement with the moral issue of defining and welcoming those  
Christians who are gay and lesbian. We all knew where you stood. Your 
ministry  had not been secret. We knew you had been one of the voices that sought to  
temper the homophobia of your predecessor's rhetoric. We knew of your 
personal  friendship with gay clergy and that you had even knowingly ordained a gay 
man to  the priesthood. You, however, seemed to leap immediately to the 
conclusion that  unity was more important than truth. Perhaps you did not realize 
that your  appointment as the archbishop was because you had different values 
from those of  your predecessor and that your values were exactly what the Church 
wanted and  needed in its new archbishop.  
In that letter, in a way that was to me a breathtaking display of ineptitude  
and moral weakness, you effectively abdicated your leadership role. The 
message  you communicated was that in the service of unity you would surrender to 
whoever  had the loudest public voice. A leader gets only one chance to make a 
good first  impression and you totally failed that chance. Unity is surely a 
virtue, but it  must be weighed against truth, the Church's primary virtue.  
Next came the bizarre episode of the appointment of the Rev. Dr. Jeffrey  
John, a known gay priest, to be the area bishop for Reading in the Diocese of  
Oxford. He was proposed by the Bishop of Oxford, Richard Harries. The nomination 
 was approved by all of the necessary authorities, including you, the Prime  
Minister and the Queen. The fundamentalists and the evangelicals were  
predictably severe and anything but charitable or Christian. They and their  allies 
in the press assassinated Jeffrey John's character and made his life  
miserable. Once again you collapsed in the face of this pressure and, in a  four-hour 
conversation, you forced your friend and mine, Jeffery John, who is  not only a 
brilliant New Testament scholar, but also one who gave you his word  that he 
was living a celibate life, to resign his appointment to that Episcopal  
office. The message went out for all to hear that if people are angry enough,  the 
Archbishop will always back down. Your leadership, as well as our trust in  
your integrity, all but disappeared.  
Shortly thereafter, you concurred in a "guilt" appointment by naming Jeffrey  
Dean of St. Alban's Cathedral. It is a strange church and a strange hierarchy 
 that proclaims that a gay man cannot be a bishop but can be a dean. Your  
credibility suffered once again.  
When Gene Robinson in the United States was elected the Bishop of New  
Hampshire and, more particularly, when his election was confirmed by a  concurrent 
majority of the bishops, priests and lay deputies at the General  Convention 
(read General Synod), you appeared to panic. You called an urgent  meeting of 
the primates of the entire Anglican Communion and allowed them to  express 
enormous hostility. No one seemed to challenge either their use of  scripture, 
which revealed an amazing ignorance of the last 250 years of biblical  
scholarship, or their understanding of homosexuality. By acting as if  homosexuality is a 
choice made by evil people they violated everything that  medical science has 
discovered about sexual orientation in the last century.  Just as the Church 
was historically wrong in its treatment of women, so now as a  result of your 
leadership, we are espousing a position about homosexuality that  is dated, 
uninformed, inhumane and frankly embarrassing. No learned person  stands there 
today.  
Then you appointed the group, under Robin Eames' chairmanship, that produced  
the Windsor Report. That report confirmed every mistake you had already made. 
It  asked the American Church to apologize to other parts of the Anglican 
Communion  for its "insensitivity." Can one apologize for trying to end prejudice 
and  oppression? If the issue were slavery, would you ask for an apology to 
the slave  holders? That report got the response it deserved. Our leaders were 
indeed sorry  that others felt hurt, but they were not prepared to apologize 
for taking a  giant step in removing one more killing prejudice from both the 
Church and the  world. Those angry elements of the church were not satisfied by 
the Windsor  report, inept as it was. They never will be until they have bent 
you and this  communion into a pre-modern, hate filled, Bible quoting group 
of people  incapable of embracing the world in which we live.  
Next came threats issued by the primates of the excommunication of the  
American Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion, as if they actually had  
that power. Ultimatums and deadlines for us to conform to their homophobia were  
treated by you as if that were appropriate behavior. When the American Church  
elected Katharine Jefferts-Schori to be its Presiding Bishop and thus the  
Primate of our Province, your response to that major achievement was pathetic.  
You did not rejoice that equality had finally been achieved in our struggle  
against sexism; your concern was about how much more difficult her election  
would make the life of the Anglican Communion. Once again, institutional peace  
was made primary to the rising consciousness that challenges what the Church 
has  done to women for so long. When Katharine took her place among the other  
primates, she underwent with dignity, the refusal of some of those bishops to  
receive comnunion with her. Is that the mentality required to build unity?  
Later you issued a statement saying that if homosexuals want to be received  
in the life of the Church, they will have to change their behavior. I found 
that  statement incredible. If you mean they have to change from being 
homosexual then  you are obviously not informed about homosexuality. It is not a choice 
or a sin,  anymore than being left handed, or male or female, or black or 
even transgender  is a choice or a sin. All of us simply awaken to these aspects 
of our identity.  That truth is so elementary and so well documented that only 
prejudiced eyes can  fail to recognize it. No one in intellectual circles 
today still gives that  point of view credibility..  
Next you declined to invite Gene Robinson to the Lambeth Conference of 2008.  
All of the closeted homosexual bishops are invited, the honest one is not  
invited. I can name the gay bishops who have, during my active career. served in 
 both the Episcopal Church and in the Church of England? I bet you can too. 
Are  you suggesting that dishonesty is a virtue?  
You continue to act as if quoting the Bible to undergird a dying prejudice is 
 a legitimate tactic. It is in fact the last resort that religious people 
always  use to validate "tradition" over change. The Bible was quoted to support 
the  Divine Right of Kings in 1215, to oppose Galileo in the 17th century, to 
oppose  Darwin in the 19th century, to support slavery and apartheid in the 
19th and  20th centuries, to keep women from being educated, voting and being 
ordained in  the 20th and 21st century. Today it is quoted to continue the 
oppression and  rejection of homosexual people. The Bible has lost each of those 
battles. It  will lose the present battle and you, my friend, will end up on the 
wrong side  of history, the wrong side of morality and the wrong side of 
truth. It is a  genuine tragedy that you, the most intellectually-gifted 
Archbishop of  Canterbury in almost a century, have become so miserable a failure in so 
short a  period of time.  
You were appointed to lead, Rowan, not to capitulate to the hysterical anger  
of those who are locked in the past. For the sake of God and this Church, the 
 time has come for you to do so. I hope you still have that capability.  
John Shelby Spong, 8th Bishop of Newark, Retired  
_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 
John Martin from Adelaide, South Australia, writes:  
This week, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) television program  
Compass, hosted by Geraldine Doogue, ran a production on Interfaith  Ministry. 
It was based on a book written by Peter Kirkwood and published by ABC  Books 
in Sydney, Australia. Now I am reading the book — The Quiet  Revolution — and 
it is an inspiring story indeed. I had never heard of the  Parliament of the 
World's Religions, so I am moving into a set of stories  completely new to me. 
 
Despite the glamorous report presented through the television lens, the  
movement may have much goodwill building to do. Given that I live in a far-flung  
part of the world, I feel the need not to invest too much hope in it yet. On 
the  other hand, this is no time in the life of the planet to be timid and 
doubtful.  Perhaps you might comment on the movement and provide some guidance to 
those of  us unfamiliar with, but not averse to, this approach?  
Dear John,  
The Parliament of the World's Religions is a reputable organization,  
developed by competent people, one of whom is The Rt. Rev. William Swing,  retired 
Episcopal (Anglican) Bishop of California. Whether it is now or will be  an 
effective organization is still a question. Only time will tell. The  direction in 
which it seeks to move is quite obviously the correct one.  
Transcending a cultural faith tradition in the name of a vision of a world  
religion is not easy. It demands that all religious systems sacrifice their  
claims to possess exclusive truth or to be the sole pathway to God. It invites  
people to live in the insecurity of uncertainty and to embrace the fact that 
we  are creatures bound by time and space, talking about a God who is not. True 
 religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is 
rather  an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. 
Idolatry  is religion pretending that it has all the answers.  
Will the Parliament succeed? All I know is that every new movement begins  
with a new idea and a single step. This organization seeks to bring about a  
conversation where none has previously existed. Unless we find a way to  
transcend tribal limits and the religious systems (including our own) that have  their 
origins in tribal thinking, I do not believe that there will be a  realistic 
hope for the future of humanity. Far too many human beings have  already been 
killed by others in the name of their God.  
So I support this initiative and I hope others will also.  
John Shelby Spong 



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