[Dialogue] {Spam?} Spong 9/26

[KroegerD at aol.com]

September 26, 2007 
Pitt Street Uniting Church,  Sydney, Australia The Face of Tomorrow's 
Congregation  

Some twenty years or so ago the leaders of Australia's Uniting Church, a body 
 that came into being in 1979 as a merger of Methodists, Presbyterians and  
Congregationalists, with samplings of some other smaller Protestant bodies,  
decided that the Pitt Street Uniting Church of Sydney was doomed and probably  
should be closed. Its empty pews were becoming too much of a drain on the  
denomination's resources. Closing this church, however, which had been the  
flagship congregation in Sydney, would effectively bring to an end the presence  of 
the Uniting Church in the heart of Australia's major city. In those  
deliberations, someone raised the new possibility that this church's apparent  demise 
might not be that Christianity itself had lost its appeal, but that the  way 
this Church was projecting itself and its message simply no longer had  
sufficient appeal to draw people into the heart of the city. The people who  lived in 
the city tended to be regarded more as problems than as potential  members. It 
was a tug of war in ecclesiastical decision making, which has been  
replicated in almost all Christian traditions during the last century. Finally a  
compromise was adopted that offered a new possibility. The judicatory leaders  and 
the remaining members of the congregation would support a new pastor for  Pitt 
Street Church, but they would consciously free that pastor from the  
expectations of running a traditional church. The new pastor would be encouraged  to 
experiment, to take bold initiatives, to walk in new directions, in fact to  
reinvent what it means to be church in the heart of a great urban area. I do not 
 know if those who forged this new approach had any expectations of great  
success, but this decision served as a guilt assuager. If this last chance  
proved to be a failure then they could all move to close this old, historic  
church with a clear conscience. With this new mandate, the congregation then  
called a remarkable pastor named Dorothy McRae-McMahon to its newly defined  
leadership post and as we say, "the rest is history."  
Dorothy McMahon came out of the heart of the Christian social gospel. She  
found that street people lived in her church's neighborhood and began to address 
 their needs. She became aware of a vital gay and lesbian population in the 
heart  of Sydney and began to make this church a place of welcome to them. She 
became  such a persistent advocate for the poor, the marginalized and the 
dispossessed,  that slowly but surely both she and the congregation emerged as one 
of the  recognized change agents in all of the Uniting Church. Of course, she 
was called  "controversial," all change agents are, and the traditional 
Christian voices,  who are always fearful of new things began to rail against her 
liberal  innovations. She was accused of being a Communist. That was a popular 
charge in  the cold war era. Protestors frequently picketed her church. These 
deeply  threatened "Christians" went so far as to spread human and animal 
faeces on both  the church and on Dorothy McMahon's home. Pitt Street Church, 
however, began to  come alive. People who had long ago given up on the church 
began to dip their  toes back into Christianity at this place, tentatively at 
first, lest they  experience rejection anew.  
Dorothy McMahon also began to challenge publicly the traditional ways in  
which Christianity was proclaimed. She forced people to look with new eyes at a  
literal Bible that has so often been used to justify prejudices, to blame the  
poor for their poverty and to condemn gay and lesbian people for being who 
they  are. That understanding had to go. Going beyond even that, Dorothy began 
to  separate her theology from that familiar theology that wallowed in sin and  
helplessness, and that culminated in a divine rescue operation that was said 
to  have led to Jesus' crucifixion. Such a theological understanding of the 
church  did nothing, she rightly discerned, to lift the despair from the street 
people.  The mantra, "Jesus died for my sins," was quickly replaced by a 
message of love  and caring that started with an act of self-affirmation and grew 
into giving  people the courage to be all that they were created to be. The 
infinite variety  in the human family was not just tolerated in this church, it 
was fully  celebrated. People of all races and ethnic backgrounds, male and 
female, gay,  lesbian, transgender and bi-sexual people, even people of a variety 
of religious  backgrounds or of no religious backgrounds at all found 
themselves welcomed in  this congregation.  
A surge of life started to flow through Pitt Street Uniting Church, which  
began to look like an outpost of what surely the Kingdom of God is all about.  
Traditionalist Christians, threatened by her approach, began to castigate  
Dorothy with familiar clichés. She was "gutting the Christian Faith," they said,  
destroying 2000 years of "sacred tradition." Dorothy continued, however, to  
light candles in the darkness of an antiquated religious world view. She  
remained in this post for about a decade until this church's future seemed  secure 
and her energies were all but exhausted. Few people recognize the toll  that 
effective leadership, that is largely unsupported, takes on the designated  
leader. Dorothy resigned and accepted an executive post in the hierarchy of her  
church. In that position she finally came to be honest about her own sexual  
orientation, announcing to the world that she was a lesbian.  
Her previous critics from the evangelical wing of the church were now newly  
energized by their homophobia. It confirmed their darkest suspicions. They  
began, as literal Christians are prone to do, a campaign of personal persecution 
 and a drumbeat for her removal from her post. It hardly seemed to matter 
that  she had revitalized a major church, since she was now designated by them as 
 "depraved," maybe even the devil incarnate. She would, however, persevere.  
Meanwhile Pitt Street began to live into the anxiety and danger that all  
institutions face when a charismatic leader has to be replaced by the next  
generation of leadership. There were some fits and starts with a first choice of  a 
new pastor being one that was clearly a mistake. It was followed by a long  
term interim pastor whose task was to help the congregation solidify its 
mission  and to call one who could lead them into that future. Finally, the choice 
was  made and an invitation was extended to a Uniting pastor who had begun his  
pilgrimage in the evangelical wing of this church. On first sight, this man  
whose name was Ian Pearson, seemed far removed from the image of his 
successful  predecessor. He was a straight, white male about whom people's first 
impression  was that he was a sweet and kind man, but not a particularly strong 
leader. His  wife, Helen, was charming and lively, but with a teaching career that 
did not  seem to put her in a position to be a major player in the life of 
the  congregation. Ian appeared to be unprepossessing and not particularly 
aggressive  in his leadership style. Appearances can be deceiving, however, as this 
man had  a vision, a keen mind and underneath his kind demeanor, a backbone 
of steel.  Perhaps they should have noticed that a dynamic woman like Helen 
Pearson would  not have been drawn to a passive man! Ian had long ago moved out 
of his  evangelical heritage and shared the vision Dorothy had about what a 
church can  be, indeed in his mind, what a church must be. He moved boldly to 
identify this  church with his vision. He invited the Sydney Gay and Lesbian 
Chorus to sing at  services in this church. It was a very effective public 
announcement of openness  that rang loudly throughout the city. He instituted 
experimental worship  services, including a late Sunday afternoon Eucharist called 
"PittatSix," which  was completely non-traditional with no theological boxes in 
which the liturgy  had to dance. He invited an interfaith church community to 
share the facilities  at Pitt Street Church, bringing with that community a 
new identification with  those who are religiously disenfranchised. People were 
welcomed there who could  not say the Christian creeds with integrity, and 
those who wanted the freedom to  roam outside religion itself or into religious 
traditions other than their own.  He introduced Bible readings in his church by 
asserting that "in this church we  do not read or understand the scriptures 
in a literal way."  
The congregation began to reclaim its mission of offering a genuine welcome  
to all. People from the suburbs began to come to Pitt Street Church because 
they  too found meaning there as well an escape from religious boredom. Ian 
Pearson  has now been the pastor of this church for almost five years and it is 
once  again a vital congregation. He is known, loved and admired by the street 
people  who sit on Pitt Street's front steps by day and feel that this church 
is their  spiritual home. He is trusted by the homosexual community who now 
know that they  are not only welcome guests, but that their leadership is 
recognized as they  claim this church as their own. He knows by name the 
transvestites and  cross-dressers, who are normally found in every urban area, and when 
one of them  did not get the message of a change in a schedule of Sunday worship 
and so came  to a service that had been cancelled, Ian apologized so sweetly 
and so often  that the offended person felt a love flowing toward him in this 
place that was  so different from what that person normally expected from 
religious folk, that  he was obviously touched by it. So was I when I watched it 
happen.  
I have spoken in the Pitt Street Uniting Church in Sydney on four occasions  
over the years: twice when Dorothy McMahon was pastor and twice since Ian has  
been pastor. It is a veritable oasis in the wasteland of Sydney's oppressive  
brand of Christianity. When the conference of Progressive Christians decided 
to  hold their assembly called "Common Dreams" in the heart of Sydney, it was  
obvious that the place to house this conference was Pitt Street Church. So 
this  venerable old church once more took its place on the front lines of 
Australia's  religious life as the place from where a new call for a reformed and 
revitalized  Christianity would go forth to all of Australia and New Zealand and 
ultimately  throughout the world. A new Christian order is being born. It can 
be seen in the  Pitt Street Church in Sydney, Australia.  
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 
Renee, via the Internet, writes:  
I was a Christian once - for about 18 years, or most of my adult life. But  
then I read the Bible honestly and realized it was mostly evil. I am now  
Pagan/Hindu and will never be a Christian again. I know you agree that there is  
much evil in the Bible. You even reject basic Christian doctrines like being  
born in sin, the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus' blood for those who believe and  
heaven and hell. How then are you still a Christian? The depiction of Satan in 
 the Bible is far better that the depiction of God. If the Bible reflects God 
in  any way truly, then he is a monster and Satan is a hero for rebelling. 
Don't you  agree? So, why are you still a Christian?  
Dear Renee,  
No, I do not agree. Of course, there are parts of the Bible that reflect  
tribal hatred and portray God as a vindictive ogre. I point them out constantly  
in this column and in my books. However, that fact does not render the core  
message of the Bible to be either wrong or irrelevant. The Bible defines God as 
 love in the book of Hosea. The Bible defines God as justice in the book of 
Amos.  The Bible asserts that proper liturgy is not God's desire but proper 
lives that  "do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God" are. That is the 
message of  Micah. The Bible stretches the tribal deity of its own limited past 
into a  universal presence in the book of Malachi. The Bible enjoins us to 
rise to ever  new levels of humanity in Jesus' exhortations to love your enemies 
and to bless  those who persecute you. So I study the Bible daily and treasure 
it as a  resource.  
In three quick sets of statements, I cherish the Bible because  
    1.  It affirms that my life is holy and that all of us were created in 
God's  image.  
    2.  It proclaims that I am loved no matter what I do or who I am.  
    3.  It calls me to be all that I can be. 
Please note the Trinitarian formula, for that is what I mean when I  
acknowledge God as Father (creator), Son (fully loving life), and Holy Spirit  (life 
giver).  
I do not worship the Bible. I do not regard it as the inerrant word of God. I 
 know its content far too well for that to be a possibility. I accept the 
Bible  for what it is, the chronicle of a faith story that grows as people 
journey  through time, seeking to understand their God experience.  
The things you call basic Christian doctrines like "being born in sin" or the 
 "vicarious sacrifice of Jesus' blood for those who believe" and "heaven and  
hell" are not basic Christian doctrines to me at all. They are various 
theories  developed by a behavior-controlling religious institution designated to 
frighten  people or to make them pliable. There is no sense of hell in Paul, for 
example,  and the vicarious sacrifice as the interpretation of the cross 
appears not to be  something that Jesus taught but the message of the Jewish Day 
of Atonement being  literalized and applied to Jesus by a later generation of 
Christians. Only then  did Jesus become the new sacrificed Lamb of God. I have 
no desire to worship a  God who requires the death of Jesus as the means of 
achieving salvation. Sadism  is hardly a Godlike attribute, neither is the 
victim's masochistic pleasure in  being crucified. That idea of salvation is simply 
not consistent with the  message of the Fourth Gospel that the purpose of 
Jesus was to give life  abundantly.  
So I suggest that the Christianity you reject is not Christianity at all, but 
 a terrible distortion that we all need to reject. Christianity, as I 
understand  it, is far more than that. I hope you will find someday a church that 
does not  distort Christianity, as your present experience seems to indicate.  
John Shelby Spong 



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