[Dialogue] Spong answers our colleague's question, sort of

[John Cock]

Did you catch whose question Spong answered at the bottom? What do you
think, grandma? Maybe he missed the point in your case, or would have
answered it differently if he'd known to whom he was speaking. You can write
a book on it, cause I'm sure you had a profound answer already. Just
checking him out, right? Best to ye, L_____. ~John
 
  _____  

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net
[mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of KroegerD at aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 5:58 PM
To: Dickemail at aol.com
Cc: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net; nspmn at googlegroups.com
Subject: [Dialogue] spong 4/16 Pennsylvania



April 16, 2008


Who Are the People in Pennsylvania Who Will Choose the Democratic Nominee? 


The somewhat blurred eyes of the nation's political stargazers are focused
at least until April 22 on the State of Pennsylvania. That is the date on
which its citizens will play a determinative role in choosing the potential
President of the United States. If Senator Clinton wins, she is still a
viable candidate. On the other hand, and depending on the other states that
hold primaries between now and June 1, Senator Obama could lose in
Pennsylvania and still be the ultimate winner. So the stakes are high,
especially for Senator Clinton. In the meantime, we are being treated to
scenes in which Senator Obama displays his not very effective style in
bowling alleys and sips beer with potential voters in local pubs and Senator
Clinton likens herself to Rocky Balboa in her refusal to stop her quest at
the two-thirds mark. One wonders what these things have to do with being
president, but that is the nature of American politics. 


Pennsylvania is a magnificent and diverse state and will be a good testing
ground in this election. It is anchored on both ends by great American
cities. Philadelphia in the east was this nation's first capital and remains
today a city of significant history. It is a major port, the home of an Ivy
League university and the world famous Wharton School, whose MBA degree is
widely regarded as America's most respected. It is also the site of the
Liberty Bell and such athletic teams as the Phillies, the Eagles and the
76ers, all of whom have historically been bridesmaids more often than
brides. On its western frontier stands Pittsburgh, once identified with the
steel industry as the home of U.S. Steel Corp. It was also the business
center for America's coal mining industry and was once best known for the
coal dust that settled on the exteriors of its buildings. That was
Pittsburgh's past. Today it is a sparkling city recently voted one of the
best cities in America in which to live with its cultural life financed by
the Mellon and Heinz family fortunes. Pittsburgh's athletic teams have had
episodic success. There was the 1973 Super Bowl champion Steelers with Terry
Bradshaw and Mean Joe Greene anchoring the defensive line known as the
"Steel Curtain," or the more recent title in 2006 led by rookie quarterback
Ben Roethlisberger. In baseball the Pirates have had a fairly long walk in
the wilderness, but there are glowing memories of the great Roberto Clemente
and Bill Mazeroski's "walk off" home run to defeat the Yankees in the 7th
game of the World Series in 1960. 


Between these two booming metropolitan centers are beautiful mountains,
small towns, the gracious capital city of Harrisburg and a string of
superior small colleges and universities like Franklin & Marshall, Lehigh,
Lafayette, Muhlenberg and Bucknell. Pennsylvania also has strong Quaker
roots, German roots, Amish roots and Pennsylvania Dutch settlements. 


In Pennsylvania elections, the urban majorities have to be large enough to
offset the interior votes if the Democrats are to win and the opposite is
the key to Republicans success. 


This pattern tends to drive the state toward political moderation. The
formula for a successful Republican victory has been to nominate a moderate
Republican who is not so liberal as to lose the heartland, yet liberal
enough to cut into the urban vote. One thinks of Republican William
Scranton, who became governor in 1962 and was the moderate Republican
favorite for the Presidency in 1964 against Barry Goldwater, or of
Republican Senator John Heinz, elected in 1976 and later tragically killed
in an airplane crash. The strategy for a Democratic victory is to nominate a
moderate Democrat, capable of carrying the liberal urban vote yet
competitive in the heartland. The two sitting senators in Pennsylvania today
fit that model exactly. They are moderate Republican Arlen Specter and
moderate Democrat Robert Casey. There has been an occasional ideological and
polarizing politician who has been successful, the right wing Senator Rick
Santorum (1994-2006) for instance, but this type of candidate does not
normally have a long shelf life in Pennsylvanian politics. 


It was that indomitable and sometimes irascible Democratic strategist James
Carville who once described the State of Pennsylvania this way: "Between
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is Alabama without blacks." What
Carville was attempting to say by this was that the heartland of this state
is religiously and politically very conservative. I understand the word
conservative when it is used about politics. It means dedicated to
individualism, small government, low taxes and balanced budgets. I do not,
however, understand this word when used in a religious context. There it
tends to mean pro-life and anti-abortion, but that seems to me to be asking
the government not to be small, but to be both large and invasive, hardly
conservative principles. Sometimes it means to be condemning of
homosexuality, but that prejudice is based on a definition of homosexuality
that is no longer operative in medical and scientific circles, so rather
than being conservative, it looks uninformed. Sometimes it means being
opposed to evolution and supporting a literal understanding of the
scriptures. When the conservative United States Supreme Court, on which
seven of the nine sitting judges are Republican appointees, has declared
that the teaching of creation science or intelligent design in the science
classrooms of the nation's public schools violates the constitution's
guarantee of the separation of Church and State, I have trouble knowing what
"conservative" means when used to describe religion. This is especially true
when I go into Central Pennsylvania as a religious spokesperson, for what I
have experienced in that "conservative region" is openness, receptiveness, a
willingness to listen to and interact with new ideas and above all wonderful
and welcoming people. 


In the last several years, I have lectured in that midsection of
Pennsylvania between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh on many occasions. I have
been several times to Harrisburg, twice to Lancaster and Annville and once
each to Bethlehem, Allentown, Lewisburg and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. I have
been invited to speak on the campuses of Muhlenberg College, Lehigh
University, Lebanon Valley College, Bucknell University and at the
Theological Seminary of the United Church of Christ. I have spoken in
churches, synagogues and lecture halls. I have led clergy conferences and
have gotten to know university chaplains in a variety of settings. I have
never felt anything other than the warmest of welcomes. Two of
Pennsylvania's schools, Lehigh and Muhlenberg, have conferred on me the
honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree in recent years. I have not
encountered the atmosphere that James Carville described. 


I have addressed, in both public and private gatherings, the leaders of a
group called HARP (Harrisburg Area Religious Progressives), an
interdenominational gathering of those who want to explore theological
frontiers beyond that which their local churches are willing to travel. This
movement was born under the leadership of Michael Long, a gifted former
pastor of the Harris Street United Methodist Church in Harrisburg, who had
the courage to recognize that he needed to provide for the intellectual
needs of those who have no desire to leave their respective churches, but
who know that there is something more. Mike Long has left the active
pastorate for the life of an academic, teaching at Elizabethtown College,
and has since completed at least two award winning books, one on the impact
of Billy Graham on the American religious scene and the other on the Civil
Rights activity of a former UCLA football star, Jackie Robinson, who made
his name integrating major league baseball in 1947 with the pennant winning
Brooklyn Dodgers. When Mike Long accepted his teaching post, active lay
people in his church and beyond, like Sharon and Robert Herr and Rodger
Clark, have continued to nurture the movement. They represent Central
Pennsylvania at its finest. 


I also thought it was significant when the largely white Episcopal Diocese
of Central Pennsylvania, centered in Harrisburg, elected as its bishop a
gifted African-American priest, Nathan Baxter, the former Dean of the
National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and that America's leading church of
the Moravian tradition in Bethlehem is being served by two spectacular
pastors, one male and one female. Those are not the marks of classic
conservatism. 


Finally last summer, I attended a seminar held in Mt. Gretna, Pennsylvania,
where one of America's original "Chautauquas" is located. This seminar was
on issues that face Christian churches today in the area of sexual ethics
and sexual practices. There were perhaps 75 people at this morning session,
most of them residents of Central Pennsylvania. The seminar was led by the
Rev. Darrell Woomer, a Central Pennsylvania United Methodist Minister and
former chaplain at Lebanon Valley College. He was magnificent, sensitive and
engaging and he called the latent homophobia that resides in the church what
it is. The people responded in an open and accepting manner. I saw no
evidence of what others have characterized as right wing sexual bigotry.
This is the Central Pennsylvania that I know. 


To my delight, I have recently been invited to be a lecturer at the Mt.
Gretna Chautauqua this summer. I am confident that I will meet the same
response. The people who gather in this Chautauqua setting seem to me to be
eager to explore issues openly in the light of the best knowledge available.
That is the mark of maturity and grace, not closed-minded religious fear. 


My love for Pennsylvania is such that I almost envy Senator Clinton and
Senator Obama, who will criss-cross this state many times between now and
April 22. They will, I am sure, get to meet the kind of people I have known
in Pennsylvania, and they will entrust their candidacies to the will of
those people. Fate and the peculiar American political process have placed
Pennsylvania in this unique place. I am quite willing to have the State of
Pennsylvania choose the nominee of the Democratic party and potentially the
next President of the United States. I invite James Carville to visit the
State of Pennsylvania once again to get an update. 


John Shelby Spong 



Question and Answer
With John Shelby Spong

Louise Singleton from Denver, Colorado, writes: 


I have two Jewish daughters-in-law and four grandchildren being raised in
the Jewish tradition. In the delicate position of a grandparent, how can I
help integrate our Christian and Jewish traditions - especially with the
children? 


Dear Louise, 


You cannot. Let me say that as firmly, forcefully and kindly as possible.
While you had the responsibility of being their mother, you raised your sons
and gave them your values. They are now grown men, married to the women of
their choice, and they have made a family decision on how to raise their
children. You have no responsibility in that arena, nor is it your place to
"help integrate" these two traditions. 


Your job is to love these children and not to interfere with the way your
sons are raising them. The best thing you can do is to support your sons'
decisions. Nothing else would be loving. 


I hope you do not experience this as harsh. The desire to have our
grandchildren reflect our values is deep in all of us. However, the idea
that having part of your family raised in a different religion from your own
is a problem only for those who believe that their religion is the only true
religion and that there is some inherent duty to "save" family members by
making sure they are also introduced to the "true faith." That attitude,
abandoned by most thinking people (still, however, in the rhetoric of both
the Vatican and the Protestant Evangelicals) is the source of great family
tension and frequent fractures. 


If you love and accept your sons' decision, your daughters-in-law's
commitment to their belief and your grandchildren's religious path, you will
in fact be doing the Christlike thing. You are loving them unconditionally
just as they are. You are enhancing their lives, affirming their being and
telling them that nothing can separate them from you or from God's love.
That is the pathway for grandparents to walk. I hope for your sake and for
the sake of family peace and your grandchildren's future that you can do
just that. They will honor you for it. 


John Shelby Spong 




  _____  

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