[Dialogue] 6/11/09, Spong: On Losing a Friend of 57 Years

Thu Jun 11 10:37:22 EDT 2009

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— Deepak Chopra, author of The Third Jesus 

Thursday June 11, 2009 

On Losing a Friend of 57 Years

About a year ago a former classmate and friend for many years asked me if I would be willing to speak at his funeral service. This friend, Allan Zacher, was always one who planned well in advance, leaving no details to chance or, as we said, "to the Holy Spirit." I told him that I would be honored to do so if it were possible, subject to my travel and lecture schedule. I should have known Allan would see to it that so minor an impediment could be worked out. In early March of 2009 he called again to set the date. We did so fitting his funeral literally into the one free weekend I had, which fell between a lecture tour of the United Kingdom, Sweden and Israel=2
0and scheduled trips to Charlotte and Seattle. Thus it was that I agreed to be in St. Louis for his funeral during the first weekend in May, even though it felt strange to plan for an event two months ahead with the person to be buried still alive on the other end of the phone. Allan died on April 2. When the agreed on funeral date arrived I flew out to bury his cremated remains in the floor of the Chapel of Christ Cathedral in St. Louis on Friday and to speak to a large congregation gathered in St. Peter's Church in Ladue, Missouri, at his memorial service the following Saturday. Things worked out exactly as Allan had planned. 
I first met Allan Zacher in September of 1952 when we both entered the first-year class at the theological seminary in Alexandria, Virginia. We were quite different students. I was all of 21 years old, fresh out of the University of North Carolina and probably one of the least worldly wise and immature students ever to matriculate to that theological center. Allan, on the other hand, had followed his high school graduation by serving, as then required by draft, in the army just after World War II had ended. Upon being discharged he entered Washington University in Missouri, from which he received his BS degree in 1949 and his law degree in 1952. He then passed the Missouri Bar, but quickly decided that the law was not for him. As a people person he turned his attention toward theology and very late in the summer of 1952 he sought admission to Virginia Th
eological Seminary, literally talking his way in after the September term had already begun. Allan was a large, lumbering person with an easily identifiable laugh. He was impatient with theological jargon that made no sense. This is a rarity among seminary students, who often tend to confuse obfuscation with profundity. Two events lifted him quickly into seminary notice. One was that he had problems spelling critical theological words. Once he misspelled the word "miracle" on a paper three different ways in one sentence, an accomplishment so rare in theological circles that it was publicly noted by the professor when the papers were returned. On another occasion, he stopped the Professor of Apologetics, Jesse Trotter, on the way to lunch. "Jesse, do you have a minute?" he asked. "Yes, Allan, what's on your mind?" Well, I thought you might explain the Trinity to me." Jesse may have responded as St. Augustine was said to have done to a person who asked him what God was doing before God created the world. "Creating Hell for people that ask questions like that," the great theologian was purported to have said. With such episodes, Allan became a famil iar campus figure. 

Our friendship grew slowly. We shared a keen academic interest and neither of us was content with simplistic religious answers. We were both more interested in life than religion, in humanity than in creeds. The thing that really brought us together, however, was the seminary's requirement that we complete a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education followi
ng our first academic year. This unit was taken under the supervision of a psychologically-trained chaplain at a mental institution, penitentiary or general hospital. Allan enrolled in the program at St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital in Washington, while I chose the program at the District of Columbia Federal Penitentiary in Lorton, Virginia. Six students were in each program. We studied case histories on the patients or inmates, made visits when requested and did some supervised counseling. The most distinctive part of the program, however, was that the six students met with our supervisor every day for two hours of group therapy for 13 consecutive weeks, a total of 65 sessions. Most people could not stand that intense a program of introspection. The seminary believed it was essential for us to develop deep levels of self knowledge before we could ever become effective pastors to others. It was an incredible growth experience for us all. When the summer was over, two students from the Lorton program joined with three from the St. Elizabeth's program to find a way to continue this learning experience. Acting together we convinced the Lorton chaplain supervisor to meet with us and our wives one evening a week for two hours in an expanded group therapy session. We continued that gathering for the final two years of our seminary careers. To be in therapy for two years as a group of five classmates, our wives and our supervisor is a process designed to make us bonded friends or screaming enemies. Fortunately, it was t
he former that prevailed. The career paths of each of us were shaped by that experience, but took very different directions. One, Ken Taylo r, decided to leave the Episcopal Church upon graduation and was ordained in the United Church of Christ, becoming in time a senior national executive in that denomination. A second, Loren Mead, served small churches in South Carolina and North Carolina before leaving parochial ministry to form the Alban Institute set up to study and enhance congregational life. The third, Bill Moll, found congregational life less than fulfilling and returned to being a duck farmer in Virginia. I was the only one of the five to spend my whole career inside the boundaries of our particular church structures, serving congregations in North Carolina and Virginia before being elected bishop of Newark in 1976. Allan, the fifth, served a curacy in Fairfax, Virginia, until 1959, when he responded to the invitation of Ned Cole, then the Dean of Christ Cathedral in St. Louis, to return to St. Louis to start a city-wide Pastoral Counseling Institute. By 1964 that well established institute was incorporated as an "interfaith and ecumenical not for profit organization" with Allan as its director. To equip himself professionally for this task, he returned to Washington University until he had earned his PhD in psychology. For over 40 years he directed that institute, working with Rabbi Joseph Rosenbloom and other medical and religious leaders. He also found time to be elected to the St. Louis School Board, whe
re he pushed for integration of their still segregated schools. He next helped to organize nationally the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and locally the St. Louis Psychological Association, serving as its first president. His was a remarkable career. 

Through the years, our friendship deepened. Though his work took him outside church structures while I worked within them, he and I still had similar goals. We both saw Christianity as being about enhancing human life, not increasing piety. Any institution, whether it be church or state, that served to diminish any human being on the basis of race, creed, gender or sexual orientation violated everything we both held sacred. The two of us also had other things in common. We were to become the first widowers in our class. Both of our wives, Estelle Zacher and Joan Spong, also good friends, died of cancer. Both of us in time also remarried and, to our great joy, Debbie Zacher and Christine Spong also became close friends. Both of us found avocations in radio. Allan was a reporter prior to seminary and I was a play-by-play sports announcer over a four year period of time while a priest. Both of us dealt with controversy and learned to bear it. Over the years we met in places around the world and shared time together. 

Allan had an undeniable zest for life that enabled him to overcome enormous obstacles. On the second day of his honeymoon trip in Austria with his second wife he was in an automobile accident that left him paralyzed and he
 had to learn to walk all over again. It took years but he did it, although a cane would be his companion for the rest of his days. After that he suffered a stroke and quite literally had to learn to talk again, which he did, although once more it took years. He developed artistic gifts as a painter, a sculptor and a creator of collages. He became a gourmet cook and an aficionado and supporter of the St. Louis Opera. In his last four years he battled colon cancer and had several surgical procedures before deciding quite overtly that the time had come to depart this life. After planning and carrying out a final trip to the Rocky Mountains with Debbie alone just weeks before his death he returned home, gathered his three sons and their families to say goodbye, then yielded himself to the care of his wife while inviting death by refusing to eat or even to drink water. Everything in Allan's life was planned down to the minutest detail. He even insisted that there be a church reception following the Memorial Service so that "people can pause for a cup of punch and talk about me." 

This man had a capacity to invite the past into the future. He never ceased to be a lawyer, a priest, a psychologist or an artist. He kept molding these aspects of his life together into new configurations. Allan believed that the only way to worship the God of Life was by living fully, the only way to worship the God of Love was by loving wastefully, and the only way to worship God as the Gr
ound of All Being was to have the courage to be all that he could be. The only valid mission that he understood for the Christian Church was that it must seek to transform the world so that everyone could share more deeply in that God of love, life and being. This was the God he met in Jesus of Nazareth. His theology could not be contained in creeds. His religion would never be relegated to the shelves of a museum. 

In a letter written to my wife Christine just two days after his death, Debbie described this unique man's final hours in this way: "He read voraciously and continued to discuss politics, the economy, theology, law and psychology. He retained his intellect, his curiosity, his courage and his love through his last breath. I miss him." So do I, Debbie, for he taught me so much about what life means and about who God is. Thanks, Allan, and rest in peace.

–John Shelby Spong

Question and Answer 
With John Shelby Spong

Donna Broda Kuliczkowski, via the Internet, writes: 
I am indebted to you for your brilliant scholarship and the light you have shined on my personal path of faith.
In your recent article, Israel: A Secular State Erected on a Religious Base, you stated that Poland was guilty of "active involvement in the Holocaust." That statement, with no further explanation or comment, is untrue and inflammatory. Unlike France, Norway, Greece, Hungary, Croatia, Belgium and many other countries, there was no official collaboration with the Naz
is in Poland; the number of Poles who cooperated with the Nazis is estimated at several thousand in a population of 35 million. Poland has been referred to as a "Land without a Quisling." How can you refer to that as "active involvement?" France, on the other hand, was actively involved in the arrests, murders and deportation of Jews — why not highlight the French at the top of your list? 

The brutal Nazi occupation of Poland, along with the equally brutal Soviet onslaught, subjected the Poles — both Christians and Jews — to unimaginable horrors, the likes of which were not seen in the occupations of, for example, France, Norway and Denmark. Three million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust; nearly as many Polish Christians were murdered as well. Hans Frank, the German Governor-General of Poland during the war, once observed a sign in Prague commemorating there the murder of seven Czechs. Frank observed that if signs were posted in Poland at every spot where seven Poles had been murdered, there would not be enough trees in Poland to produce the necessary paper.

No one denies the existence of anti-Semitism in pre- or post-war Poland. Jews were betrayed to the Nazis by some Poles; Christian Poles also lost their lives to fellow Christians who betrayed them. But thousands of Polish Christians, some of whom were undoubtedly anti-Semitic, risked their lives and the lives of their families to save Jews from the Nazis. The Nazis enjoyed hanging Polish children in front of their pare
nts who assisted Jews, yet so many Poles took the risk anyway. At Yad Vashim, more Poles are honored than any other peoples.

During the war in Poland, everyone was victimized. The Nazis were cruel to the Poles and even more cruel to the Jews. But now, in retrospect, why is it that the victimized Poles are blamed? Who will remember the Polish victims of the Holocaust? Why is it that simply taking note that there were other Holocaust victims is interpreted as anti-Semitism? And why, for heaven's sake, is Poland singled out as "actively involved" in collaborating when the exact opposite is true? Even the Israeli War Crimes Commission acknowledged there was virtually no collaboration in Poland.

It's time to stand up for the people of Poland, flawed as they are. It is deeply unjust to continue to pin an "anti-Semitic" crown on a nation that gave refuge to the vast majority of European Jews, a nation that was brutalized time and again, a nation that was betrayed by its European "allies," and a nation that was sold into Soviet slavery. Anti-Semitism is not a Polish invention, nor a Polish peculiarity. It is an evil that was nurtured by Christianity, and as Christians we all need to stand up against it.

If the time ever comes that we Americans have to face brutal occupation, murder and unbridled savagery, who among us will be willing to place a noose around our children's necks to save someone else? And if we do not, who will sit in judgment of our actions and how will we be condemned?

Dear Donna,

I wish that statement to which you refer was untrue. Unfortunately, it is not. Poles were listed in my article along with almost every other country in Europe. No, of course this does not mean that every Pole was guilty, but one cannot go to the Jewish Museum at Yad Vashim and come away with a sense of no or even minimal Polish involvement in the Holocaust. Anti-Semitism was in fact alive and well in Poland and pictorial documentation of this fact is on the walls of Yad Vashim for all the world to see. I do not believe that denying reality is ever the way to escape the past.

Much of what you say about Poland is true. Every nation has its heroes and its tarnished history. Polish pilots who escaped to England after their homeland was crushed by the combined forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union continued to fly with the RAF against Germany and won the admiration of the English-speaking world.

If you look again at my article Israel: A Secular State Erected on a Religious Base, you will see that far from singling out Poland, what I did was to show that Germany did not act alone, but that anti-Semitism was rampant in all of Europe and indeed in the United States and Canada.

Anti-Semitism is the child above all else of the Christian faith. It finds its first expression in the gospels. One thinks of such horrendous texts as Matthew having the Jewish crowd say of Jesus, "His blood be upon us and upon our children," or John having Jesus say that th
e Jews have Satan for their father. It was fed by the writings of the Church Fathers, Jerome, Chrysostom, Irenaeus and Polycarp. It was excited by the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century, for which the Jews were blamed. It is rampant in the words of the Reformation Leader Martin Luther and it found expression in every nation of Christian Europe, including Poland, though it reached its highest level of killing frenzy in Nazi Germany.

We are called to move into the future, but none of us must do it by ignoring the past or denying its dark shadows.

Thank you for your letter,
John Shelby Spong

Send your questions to support at johnshelbyspong.com 

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