[Oe List ...] 1/05/12, Spong: The Monolithic Conservatism of the American Heartland Is NotSo Monolithic!

Thu Jan 5 15:04:22 EST 2012

Agree. Congratulations Donna!

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of Carol Crow
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2012 2:39 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community
Cc: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] 1/05/12,Spong: The Monolithic Conservatism of the
American Heartland Is NotSo Monolithic!

Yay and Congratulations to Donna Ziegenhorn in Kansas City!  (Read article)
I'd love to hear more!

In Community,

Carol

On Jan 5, 2012, at 8:16 AM, Ellie Stock wrote:

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The Monolithic Conservatism of the American Heartland Is Not So Monolithic!

There are times when one's perceptions are challenged and one's
stereotypical prejudices are shattered.  This happened to me in recent days
when I fulfilled invitations to speak in three cities that one thinks of as
traditional, heartland cities.  They were Birmingham, Alabama, Tupelo,
Mississippi, and Kansas City, Missouri.  I share with my readers these
experiences and my own response of being surprised by joy.

I went to Birmingham under the auspices of an organization called SPAFER,
which stands for South Points Association for Exploring Religion.  The
brainchild of a Presbyterian minister named Ken Forbes, this organization
was designed to allow people in the Bible Belt of the South to encounter a
non-fundamentalist version of Christianity.  In some ways, it is obviously a
counter-cultural movement.  At its beginning the traditional religious
voices of the South responded to SPAFER by denouncing this movement and s
separating themselves from it, portraying it as "heretical," perhaps, they
hinted with great concern, even "communist."  I have been the featured
speaker at SPAFER events on two previous occasions beginning in 2002.  On
one of these earlier events the Episcopal Bishop of Alabama, fearful I
suspect of "guilt by association," took pains to tell the media that I was
not in Alabama under the auspices of the Episcopal Church.  I was also
invited to be a guest on a morning television talk show in which the
co-hosts, who were husband and wife, were consistently rude and derogatory
in their interview, which prompted me to ask them whether they were always
this rude to their invited guests or if I was somehow being singled out for
this special honor?  Religious rudeness seems to be thought of as a virtue
in conservative or fundamentalistic circles and it always stems from an
assumption that truth is something they and they alone possess.

The reality was, however, that crowds of people attended those lectures,
making me aware that there is a silent, non-fundamentalist minority of some
significance in the Bible Belt of the South, hungry for meaning and
integrity in their understanding of Christianity.  They cannot find this in
their local churches so they sink into passive silence.  Perhaps, because of
their silence, this audience is simply not in the consciousness of the
traditional clergy.

On this year's trip, the audience was not as large, but it was still
substantial.  Its slightly diminished size can be accounted for, at least in
part, by the fact that we were competing with the football game between
number-one ranked Louisiana State University and number-two ranked
University of Alabama.  If not apparent in a larger attendance, there were,
nonetheless, other signs signaling that a new breeze was blowing in the
South.  Many of the people who attended were social and economic leaders in
the community.  The Southside Baptist Church, a magnificent structure in
downtown Birmingham, asked for the privilege of hosting the lectureship.
The leadership of SPAFER, which originally was an Alabama only organization,
has moved into other Southern cities in what they call "Roadhouse
Communities," that is, groups of ten to twenty people, meeting on a monthly
basis, to explore their faith in ways that their churches would not allow
them to do.  The questions following the lecture where consistently
thoughtful and were posed, not to counter some perceived threat to their
religion's security, but to clarify, to expand or to open new approaches.  I
left Birmingham feeling that a shift in consciousness in the deep South was
well underway.  One additional sign of that shift was visible in the huge
levels of discomfort that these mainstream Alabama citizens now seemed to
have with the "Arizona-type" anti-immigration laws recently passed by the
legislature of Alabama and signed by the governor.  One native Alabaman said
to me in a letter that Alabama "seems not to be able to function without a
visible victim.  First, it was the African-Americans, then it was the
homosexuals and now it is the brown-skinned Mexican immigrants." Yet the
over-reaction present in that anti-immigration legislation is now bringing
wide spread economic pain to all segments of the society including
un-harvested crops in the fields of Alabama farmers, something that those
who pushed for the passage of these laws simply did not anticipate.
Amendment and/or repeal of these laws is now obviously under discussion.

We went next to Tupelo, Mississippi.  The Tupelo lecture was housed in
something called the Link Centre, which is directed by a Harvard graduate
named Melanie Deas.  It was held at 2:00 pm on a Sunday afternoon, hardly a
prime time for a church going occasion.  Yet there were almost a hundred
people in attendance and a significant number of them were young people.  In
this lecture, I spoke quite specifically to the fears inside organized
religion in America about both homosexuality and evolution.  This gathering
included some quite openly-gay people.  I asked them whether they were
seeing a shift away from the homophobic hostility that has long marked the
cultural atmosphere in the deep South, spread as it is by evangelical and
conservative Catholic churches. They said "Yes," and gave content to this
answer by saying: "Now, it is OK to be gay in Mississippi, but you are not
supposed to talk about it."  As strange as that sounded to me, it is in fact
a rather significant shift over the last 20 years.

The hot topic among the people we met at a social event, housed in the home
of one of Tupelo's most prominent citizens, was, however, not the gay issue,
but the state-wide referendum that had been placed on the November ballot to
declare that human life began the moment the egg was fertilized.  This law,
if passed, would in fact ban abortion in all circumstances in Mississippi.
We learned at that gathering that every candidate for public office, both
Democrat and Republican, had endorsed this proposition, including Haley
Barbour, the popular Republican governor.  In fact, there had been no local
or statewide political leader who had opposed it. All of the vocal religious
voices were also loud in their support, leading to the general assumption
that it would pass by a wide margin.  They were, however, destined to
discover that even in Mississippi, there is a silent vote of which no one
seemed to be aware and this measure was defeated by a substantial majority,
embarrassing both the political and religious establishment.  Mississippi,
thought to be the most anti-abortion state in the nation, was in fact not in
favor of this draconian measure. Monolithic Mississippi was not so
monolithic after all.

Next, we went to Lee's Summit, Missouri, to do an event for the Unity
Movement at its national headquarters, a truly beautiful campus.  Unity had
bought three tables at a Kansas City Interfaith luncheon and Christine and I
were invited to join their delegation at this event.  There were some 500
people present at this elegant luncheon, including a significant part of the
Kansas City social and political establishment.  The Mistress of Ceremonies
for this event was a popular, local Kansas City Television News anchor.  The
blessing of God before the meal was offered by representatives of 14
different religious traditions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam,
Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Wicca, Sufi and Baha'i.  Two highly- esteemed
recognition awards were handed out, one to an individual and one to an
institution, for effective work in contributing to the task of building "an
interfaith atmosphere of respect" that makes Kansas City "a welcoming center
to all people."   The honored woman was Donna Ziegenhorn, who, in her
attempt to build interfaith understanding, had produced a highly-acclaimed
film entitled The Hindu and the Cowboy that had taken its message of
interfaith respect to countless numbers of school children and adults across
that city.  The honored institution was no less that the prestigious Kansas
City Public Library, which had sponsored classes, designed to build mutual
respect and religious tolerance into being saluted as community values.  A
spokesperson for the library, Crosby Kemper, received the award on behalf of
the library.  He told the assembled people of his own personal journey into
interfaith understanding.  He happened to be, not only a practicing
Episcopalian, but a direct descendant of one of the great missionary bishops
of the Episcopal Church in the West, the Rt. Rev. Jackson Kemper.  Mr.
Kemper is also a highly respected attorney and a recognized leader of the
city.

Kansas City, I learned, has dedicated great energy particularly since the
9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, to foster an
atmosphere of respect and tolerance among the diverse religious communities
of that city.  It had been done not with a guilt message or with repression,
but by educating its citizens to enable them to recognize the beauty and
integrity found in every religious tradition.  I was deeply moved by the
commitment of this city in the heartland of America to this cause and I
immediately revised my own assessment of the status of both religion and
sensitivity in the Midwest.

The world is changing.  A Baptist Church in downtown Birmingham hosts an
event that pushes the edges of Christianity; the people of Mississippi
defeat a right wing attempt to trample on the rights of women's freedom to
make decisions for themselves without political interference, and 500
people, including some of the movers and shakers in Kansas City, gather to
extol the beauty of interfaith respect and to proclaim themselves a city of
welcome to all.  This country is coming to a new consciousness.  For many
the pace seems pitifully slow, but the reality is that it is coming and
heightened consciousness always moves inexorably in a single forward
direction.  The monolithic behavior of the past is not nearly as monolithic
as I once thought.

~John Shelby Spong

Read the essay online
<http://tcpc.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=
589a069b09&e=db34daa597> here.

  _____  

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A Conversation about Marriage, Family, and Sexuality

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jpg> 

John Shelby Spong, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark emeritus

Workshop- Thursday, March 22
Shifting the Christian Paradigm from Salvation and Atonement to Life and
Wholeness

Interview - Friday evening, March 23
A Conversation with Jack Spong about Marriage, Family, Sexuality

Panel - Saturday morning, March 24
Westar Fellows on the Legacy of John Shelby Spong

  _____  

Question & Answer

Stephen, via the Internet, writes:

Question:

I am often disheartened by the mind set of some Christians-the mentality of
which I used to be part-that they alone seem to possess the truth.  It
becomes impossible then to discuss Christianity or have any sort of
theological discussion "beyond theism."  With all of the variations of
Christianity telling them that believing these doctrines - the Virgin Birth,
the resurrection, etc, is a prerequisite to being a disciple, how does one
go about asking questions about God without offending or frightening the
"truth bearers?"

Answer:

Dear Stephen,

Anyone who believes that he or she possesses in some creed, in the Bible or
in the doctrinal and dogmatic teaching of a particular Church the ultimate
truth of God reveals himself or herself to be little more than a frightened,
insecure, uninformed person.  One cannot engage such a person in serious
dialogue for there is nothing to be gained by the endeavor.  It is therefore
a waste of time. One does not argue rationally against the irrational claims
of biblical inerrancy or papal infallibility!!

The idea that any person, any church or any religious tradition could ever
embody the ultimate mystery of God is little more that hysterical idolatry.
Those who hold that point of view have to defend it at all times and against
all comers or else seek to validate it by imposing it on others.  Much of
our conversion and missionary activity is little more than the product of an
attitude that leads to bigotry, religious persecution, inquisitions and
religious wars.  If the biblical axiom that one judges behavior by the fruit
it produces is accurate, then this religious attitude can hardly be anything
other than evil.  Because claims of absolute certainty are normally wrapped
up in religious language does not make them virtues.  Religious imperialism
is no more virtuous that political imperialism.

So you need to broaden your experience of religious people from those who
possess the truth to those who seek the truth.  This means that you seek the
company of those who know that the holy God cannot be reduced to a set of
human words and those who understand that "graven images" can be created not
only out of gold and silver, but also out of nothing less than human words.

~John Shelby Spong

  _____  

Register by Monday, January 9, for early bird discount!

Westar Institute

Spring Meeting
March 21-24, 2012
Salem, Oregon

<http://tcpc.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=b51b9cf441b059bb232418480&id=
2ba9e7dca7&e=db34daa597> Register for the Religious Literacy Seminar

All in the Family
A Conversation about Marriage, Family, and Sexuality

Featuring

<http://johnshelbyspong.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Spong_Westar_2012.
jpg> 

John Shelby Spong, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark emeritus

Workshop- Thursday, March 22
Shifting the Christian Paradigm from Salvation and Atonement to Life and
Wholeness

Interview - Friday evening, March 23
A Conversation with Jack Spong about Marriage, Family, Sexuality

Panel - Saturday morning, March 24
Westar Fellows on the Legacy of John Shelby Spong

  _____  

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