I feel I must begin my post with a disclaimer: I love Bishop John Shelby Spong. His books have done much to help reclaim the Bible and Christianity from the religious right who have sought to turn a religion based on compassion and concern for the neighbor into a self-serving, dogmatic, and often just plain mean form of religion. Bishop Spong is an acquaintance of mine and was kind enough to offer an endorsement for my book Bulletproof Faith: A Spiritual Survival Guide for Gay and Lesbian Christians.
So, I admit up front that I have a bias toward the good bishop, but I will strive to not let my own personal connections cloud my take on his latest work — A Manifesto! — in which Bishop Spong quite eloquently spells out why he's done arguing over whether or not gays and lesbians should be fully welcomed within not just the church but society.
He writes:
The battle is over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled, whether voting privileges should be offered to women?
As a lesbian, it's hard to not feel this victory lap is a bit premature. I still can't marry my partner in 44 states, we can be discriminated in housing, fired from our jobs simply for being gay, and there is still no federal hate crime law increasing punishment for those who may attack or kill us just because we are gay. If my partner dies, I cannot collect her Social Security, and inheritance taxes will probably force me to sell our house and other property just to pay the government when she's gone. Yes, I do believe these things will be rectified in time, but I often wonder if it will be in my lifetime. I wish I could be as confident as Spong.
I do, however, agree that the gay and lesbian community should stop wasting its time debating those who say we're sick or sinful. Much biblical scholarship has been done to refute literal, fundamentalist readings of the six or seven passages that seem to condemn gays and lesbians. No matter what the religious right says, the Bible is far from clear in its condemnation of homosexuality in all its forms. All sexual acts condemned are those that use or abuse another or break covenant with another - committed gay and lesbian relationships are never condemned by the Bible.
In his manifesto, Spong takes the time to call out some of those on the religious right who feel that discrimination against gays and lesbians is proscribed in the Bible - what they consider to be the literal "Word of God."
I will dismiss as unworthy of any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.
Falwell, of course, is not longer around to offer any opinions, but Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is still around to make a response:
Bishop Spong clearly hopes that his new manifesto will bring all debate over homosexuality to an end. Not hardly. While the bishop's manifesto is written in the language of bravado, it actually represents an intellectual posture of surrender.
What Mohler fails to understand is that Bishop Spong's manifesto is not a surrender at all. Instead, it is a bold statement that the "debate" about homosexuality is moving into a new phase - just as past debates over other "sins" that were so biblically clear in the past moved into new phases of "debate." At one time it was seen as God's will that people should own slaves, or that people of different races should be forbidden to marry one another, or that people of other races should be separated or considered inferior or inherently "sinful" because of the color of their skin, or that women should be liberated and not owned by their husbands.
In each of these battles, the tone, tenor, and objectives of the debates changed over the course of time. Let us take interracial marriage as an example. In 1948, California became the first state to overturn a state ban on interracial marriages. At that time 30 of the 48 states had bans on interracial marriage. By 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage in the Loving v. Virginia case, 16 states still had bans on the books.
The judge that had sentenced Richard and Mildred Loving to jail for daring to marry outside their race used the Bible for his reasoning:
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races show that he did not intend for the races to mix."
According to a Gallup poll taken a year after the Supreme Court's ruling, some 72 percent of people agreed with that judge that interracial marriage was wrong. Over the years though, those numbers began to move in the other direction until in 1991, only 41 percent would agree that interracial marriage is wrong.
What changed in those years was the conversation. Biblical justifications for keeping people from marrying outside of their race began to wane as more and more interracial couples married and the sun still rose in the East and set in the West. Life went on as normal. Even those who had adamantly opposed interracial relationships, like the religiously conservative Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, repealed their prohibitions against interracial dating. In 1989, the Southern Baptist convention passed a resolution on race in which they vowed to "repent of any past bigotry and pray for those who are still caught in its clutches."
The "debate" over interracial marriage, and the racism that undergirded its ban, did not end - but the conversation changed from one where blacks were condemned from the Bible as inherently evil and sinful to how best to battle those who still clung to those kind of backward ideas. This is the direction that the conversation on homosexuality is now taking, and Spong is boldly points this out.
He refuses to "debate" people like Mohler on whether or not homosexuality is a sin. That question really has been settled - it is not a sin. Those who continue to cling to that belief are just as wed to their outdated ideas as Louisiana justice of the peace Keith Bardwell who recently refused to do his job and grant a marriage license to a mixed-race couple. One day, we'll be just as horrified at all the JPs who have denied gays and lesbians marriage licenses as we are at the story coming from Louisiana. This is where our conversation on homosexuality is headed.
What is most telling in Mohler's response, however, is that in his inability to defend his position, he personally attacks Spong, accusing him of embracing "almost every imaginable heresy" and rejecting "any claim that the Bible is the Word of God."
This denies Spong's own words. Writing in his book The Sins of Scripture, Spong is clear:
"I am a Christian, a deeply committed, believing Christian. I am not even a disillusioned former Christian, as some of my biblical scholar friends now identify themselves."
Spong, contrary to Mohler's assertion, is a defender of the Bible's authority. His books, far from tearing down the Bible, seeks to give readers "a new way to read and to listen to this ancient narrative […] I want to present a different portrait of Jesus, not as a mythical hero, not even as a divine invader of humanity, but as a God presence, a new dimension, even a new vision, of what human life was meant to be."
Mohler's personal attacks would be no surprise to Bishop Spong, and he doesn't have to violate his manifesto to answer him. It's right there on page 24 of Sins of Scripture:
"The constant attack of these right wing voices on Christian scholarship is a clear tip-off that they cannot face reality. When people cannot deal with the message, the ancient and still regularly practiced tactic is to shoot the messenger."
The religious right will continue to shoot at those delivering the good news to gay and lesbian captives, but the battle lines are shifting and the Mohlers of the world will soon take their rightful place beside the Keith Bardwells of the world.
Just as the battles against racism and sexism continue unabated, even as minorities and women win civil rights and make advances in both church and societal leadership roles, the battle against homophobia is just beginning in earnest. Spong's declaration of victory is no surrender — it is an acknowledgment that once again God's all-encompassing grace has surpassed man's small-minded obsession with constantly dividing the world into "us" and "them."
While I agree with Spong on the issues (ie LGBT inclusion in the church and society) his letter bothered me.
While it is true that people like Haggard, Fred Phelps and the rest can not be reasoned with, he also includes such "moderates" as the Archbishop of Canterbury, misrepresenting his positions on sexuality as condoning violence and hatred. It wreaks of an "if you're not with us, you're against us" and is reminiscent of "we do not negotiate with terrorists." While we do not indeed agree with people like the Archbishop and the like, they are certainly not irrational "others" that can not be reasoned with. It does not sound like loving enemies at all--even when the cause is just.
Perhaps this is just another manifestation of a long-running problem in the work of Spong. Yes, courageous for speaking out and he deserves respect for that. Yet, people like him have yet to articulate a genuine theological basis for the inclusion of LGBT people in the church, especially. You know it's there, I know it's there. It's not sin, as you've said (sin is probably a bad word for JSS, "old fashioned relic" or something). We know that sexual orientation is irrelevant to Christian discipleship, and that the wounds of Christ suffered at the margins with supposed "sinners" also stand for their wounds. Yet, simply dismissing those who don't agree with us--and I'm not including quasi-fascist American idolaters like Robertson and Fallwell, but people who Spong accuses of being in the same boat ie the "moderates"--whom we simply know that dialogue is unproductive as being "medieval" or "out of touch" or by saying "they didn't even know what homosexuality was back then." Spong doesn't seen to have the vocabulary to argue with these people in the first place.
Yes, they are wrong. But perhaps we can open their hearts with a good dose of the gospel truth, rather than saying "I'm not talking to you, na-na-na-na-na-na."
There are certain issues not subject to debate - basic rights and freedoms, in this
case the very existence and dignity of GLBT people.
The manifesto is not about disengaging in debate and dialogue, but is a shout of "No", to the lack of morality, integrity, and humanity, in a debate which should never have been one in the first place.
It is a manifesto to be stuffed shut into the big mouths of the anti-gay Christian movement, embolding the GLBT population not to accept their nonsence anymore but to claim what is rightfully ours, the basic rights, dignity and morality denied.
It is a cry of defiance, that we shall take no more, and the time is come to claim our basic rights and humanity from those who tried to take it away without standing down. We shall not take “no” anymore for an answer,
http://www.psa91.com
I'll say to you what Spong said to his critics:
"When people cannot deal with the message, the ancient and still regularly practiced tactic is to shoot the messenger."
You prove Spong right every time you post.
You prove Spong right every time you post.
You prove Spong right every time you post.
Candace,
As you reply to responses here on RD, you could try to focus more on people who are listening to what you are saying and less on those who are not. Just a suggestion for what it is worth. Thanks.
Jim
I hear you, Jim. It's just fun to point out that the more whodat? posts the more he proves Spong's point. It's fun because he doesn't get it when it's right there in front of him. Fun, but sad.
My concern is he does get it, he just wants to degrade the conversations for some reason. There has also been a lot of people making pseudo-posts for the purposes of spam advertisements, and now today one of them from some far away country seems to be using some spam generator program to put junk in every thread. How much more of this can RD take?
Speaking of degrading the conversation, seems we have a whodat? clone ...
John Spong, who speaks for less than 27,000 poor lost souls in Newark, New Jersey, says the battle is over; homosexualism is somehow now "Christian"? Is he rehearsing for “Comedy Central”? Is this some sort of joke? Benedict XVI speaks for 1.1 billion Christians, and he teaches, as has Christendom since its inception, that homosexualism is part of the Cult of Death, the extermination of the Future, the suicide of Humanity, a hate crime against Nature. With all due respect and compassionate love, John Spong needs to get professional help. He suffers from Delusional Disorder, as do whatever few extremists allegedly following him. Delusional Disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis denoting a psychotic mental disorder that is characterized by holding one or more non-bizarre delusions in the absence of any other significant psychopathology. Non-bizarre delusions are fixed beliefs that are certainly and definitely false, but that could possibly be plausible. To believe that homosexualism can somehow be acceptable sexual behavior for anyone, be they Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Communist, atheist, agnostic, or Christian, is, in itself, a clear indicator of Delusional Disorder.
The voice of the prophet has spoken. No clearer words have been spoken, and as a Democratic Republic founded on a Constitution that this is a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, everybody is included in this great adventure of progressive civilization. Everybody has the same rights, and they are no special rights for any group. Everybody means everybody, and the Bishop speaks for all human beings living in America. Amen. -Wendell Franklin Wentz
While I understand the tenor of your post, I think to characterize Bishop Spong as a "defender of the Bible's authority" is a bit off the mark; not that I have a problem with his theology when it comes to Jewish and Christian writings, I'm right there with him. We don't need to sugar-coat his theology to make him palpable to evangelicals, queer or straight. By evangelical standards, he is a heretic, but that's okay; so am I.
I'll join you in the heretic pool, but I think he is a defender of the Bible's authority. He asks it to be read as it is supposed to be read - as mythos, as story, as a book that gives our lives meaning and deepens our relationship with God. He certainly does not advocate reading as a rule book as many religious conservatives mean when they talk about "biblical authority." Spong takes the Bible seriously be refusing to take it literally. That, in my book, is one what does to protect the "authority" of the book.
WIth that definition of "biblical authority," Candace, I'm with you: "mythos, story, a book that can give meaning to our lives and deepen our relationship with God".... well said... just afraid most folks don't think of the term that way, but then, that's okay, they don't have to...
I would like to like Bishop Spong. I appreciate his eloquent manifesto on gay rights in the church. However, I'm always put off by a kind of reverse-fundamentalism in the writings of his brand of liberal Christians (Spong, Thomas Moore, Marcus Borg, etc.). It's OK if they personally don't believe in traditional understandings of the divinity of Christ, the atonement, or whatever. But they often sound like anyone who still values those doctrines is outdated, simple-minded, or an ally of intolerant fundamentalists. Why can't we have theological AND sexual diversity?
I would second that. As someone who has sat on an adult education committee at a very theologically "liberal" mainline protestant church for the past few years, the Spongs/Borgs/Funks have a lot of currency. Yet, that current is stifling in many ways.
So much time and energy is spent on "WE'RE NOT FUNDAMENTALISTS" and "THIS ISN'T LITERAL" that the alternative theologies or ways of looking at it aren't being examined. Not only that, but one might get accused of being too "Jesus-y" (I've been accused of being too "hardcore Christian!" ha!) for being overly enthusiastic about God, liturgy or the Biblical narrative. The only theology acceptable to some folks in the Spongian mold tends to be one built around a strictly historical Jesus--which I've heard someone call the "secular Jesus" early peasant revolutionary hero with much approval.
It's fine to be into that if that's how the spirit moves you (too Jesus-y still?). Yet, it excludes those of us who this viewpoint doesn't appeal to. The fact is that not everyone will agree on some things, but Spong insists that they should.
Spong's amorphous god is either too uncaring or too impotent to intervene in our little lives. He also is radically homosexualist. After his tenure as "bishop" of Newark, fully a third of the clergy were practicing homosexuals. In other words, it was "Heterosexuals need not apply." The result was catastrophic decline by almost 50%. Only a quarter of parishes in the diocese can afford full time clergy.
Now, he tells the pope, the leader of 1.15 billion, "I am not going to debate you anymore!" That is silly, sad, and very humorous.
It's ironic to see the level of irrationality this subject always draws from otherwise rational people. It's precisely that irrationality - and the level of energy and heat that accompany its expression - that distinguishes the societally based and thus often unconscious phenomenon of heterosexism from homophobia. On that count, Bishop Spong, for whom I share a decided admiration and to whom I owe a personal debt along with Candace, is right on the money here. What sense in continuing to argue with irrational misanthropes who compound the sin of social prejudices with the use of the divine imprimatur to attempt to legitimate them?
One of the truly powerful weapons homophobia has had historically is its ability to evoke the church's confusion of middle class manners with Christianity itself. When the elephant in the room cannot be named because people confuse being nice with loving their neighbors - even as their neighbors spew toxic misanthrophy - the problem cannot be attacked at its roots.
At a very basic level, continuing to argue with those who offer irrational misanthropy wrapped in theological legitimation does little to resolve this issue which has divided Christendom. It also serves to perpetuate the veneer of plausibility that unvarnished homophobia simply cannot maintain when examined in the lights of its own merits.
To paraphrase Gandhi's masterful maxim about war, it is simply impossible to simultaneously love one's neighbor as oneself and practice heterosexism. And that is true whether driven by unconscious social constructions or by a deeper irrational misanthropy.
I think each anti-gay comment posted on this thread proves you point quite handily.
Keep dreaming!
I agree on the point about confusing manners with loving neighbors. Sometimes tables need to be overturned, that much is certain. Being truthful does not equal politeness.
However, I don't know if simply ignoring all others if the right thing to do. I mean, obviously the trolls on this site obviously want nothing to do with conversing on the topic, so yeah, ignore them.
Yet, to assume that all people who cling to heterosexism are irrational and in the same boat with the virulent fundies like the ones who post here is not only a mistake, but untrue. The Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other church bodies who are implicitly anti-gay must be witnessed to if we truly believe what we say to be true. Civil rights activists in the middle of the last century understood the same about white southerners who others simply denounced and said "it's not worth it."
Homosexualism and heterosexualism? Communism and capitalism? Talkism and Ignorism? Readism and Ignorantism? Do you see this "slippery" slope?
Come on, some of the "intellectual" banter here seems to be expressed more comically and so un-intellectully (inelegant while trying to "sound" elegant) so as to, as usual, deflect any honest and straightforward discussion of this oh so touchy topic.
Call a spade a spade. No one has an inherent or different "philosophy" just because they are either gay or straight for, as we all should know, there are gay capitalists as well as non-gay capitalists, gay communists aas well as non-gay communists and so on. So, as a read all of this banter, I can sum it up pretty well.
Most who are expressing their opinions on this topic here are more into their own opinions and nothing else. In the number of bridges in this particular "sport," the scorecard is, basically: Bridges built 0; bridges burnt 0. The same score can be assessed with the level of communiccation or, in this case, talking "at" people and discussing "with" people rather than really dealing compassionately with an issue that is profoundly more human than it is philosophical. In this particular perspective, Spong wins! He just does not want to go through the same meticulous, mind wasting and tedious parsing of words about homosexuals and whether or not they are part of our own society as well as of our own congregations. Well, the truth be told, they ARE a part of our society and of our congregations and just the fact that this is a topic of conversation prooves that point! Why, then, argue time and again the same thing when it is a "given" is just what Spong addresses. So, in respnse to Spong, people here just want, again, to "divide" us up into polar oppositional forces and then to set the meelee into motion. I, like Spong, do not wish to particcipate in such intellectual blood sport.
So, my dear RD readers, care more about one another and less about what each one of is is in terms of some "definition" given through scripture, social conditioning or just plain prejudice or ignorance.
Take care for no one is right on this one at this point, again, proving Song's observation to be "correct" on its face.
"care more about one another and less about what each one of us is"
I think the RD readers have done an excellent job of dispatching most every religion. That was probably a necessary step because religion was the way things worked long before science ever came on the scene. Religion is what happens when God is not micromanaging human affairs.
Imagine there's no heaven. 35 years ago it was hard to imagine. Perhaps John was just ahead of his time.
[T]o assume that all people who cling to heterosexism are irrational and in the same boat with the virulent fundies like the ones who post here is not only a mistake, but untrue. The Vatican, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other church bodies who are implicitly anti-gay must be witnessed to if we truly believe what we say to be true.
Clearly the job of sorting the irrational misanthropy of homophobia from social, cultural or politically driven heterosexism is not easy. It is no more intellectually responsible to paint everyone who holds anti-gay views and fosters discriminatory social structures with the broad brush of being irrational, misanthropic or homophobic than it is to reduce LBGQT people to caricatures based in their sexuality. Critical thinking demands more of us and as the United Negro College Fund has frequently reminded us, "A mind is a terribly thing to waste."
I appreciate the pastoral sense of "witness[ing] to" others. I believe that happens in a wide range of behaviors from simply being hard working, law abiding, G-d loving LGBQT people to preaching sermons calling for repentance from prejudices to testifying at public hearings on anti-discrimination ordinances. And I appreciate the insistence upon recognizing the humanity of the other even as their values are challenged that implicitly informs this approach.
However, I ultimately see conceptualization and practice of heterosexism as something to be confronted, not ministered to. LGBQT people are not asking the straight majority for any favors, they are simply requiring that majority to be who they say they are. It is impossible to simultaneously proclaim love of neighbor as oneself - as the second Great Commandment summing up all of the faith tradition proclaims - and treat one's neighbor as a second class citizen. It is impossible to simultaneously pledge allegiance to a country idealized as "one nation, ...indivisible, with liberty and justice for all..." and create legal caste systems of rights and privileges that divide and denigrate its citizens. What is at stake in both cases is integrity. Ultimately, all prejudices are statements about their holder's character.
It is those who are capable of rational, critical and compassionate thought who merit ongoing expenditures of time and energies. Indeed, it is those who are capable of rethinking their understandings and changing their minds who embody the religious vocation of repentance. I sense that Bishop Spong is correct when he says the outcome is inevitable. But the amount of time between that vision and its realization turns on how quickly repentance, a change of hearts and minds and a resulting change of direction, occurs. And that is a process that does not let any of us who care about justice and the Gospel off the hook.
I don't know if anyone is still checking this comment thread, but I am very interested in what some of you are saying, particularly Ryan, frharry, and Anyse1. I would consider myself one of Ryan's "moderates": one who supports civil rights for homosexuals and wants to embrace homosexuals in the life of the church but doesn't believe God's ideal for marriage includes same-sex marriage. Like most of my friends in the church, I do not derive my views from those six or seven "clobber passages" used to attack homosexuals, but from a holistic view of the Bible's teaching on sex and marriage. I am in the midst of starting a blog to try to articulate my views on the subject, and I invite all of you to join me. Please engage with me, point out where I am wrong, and state your own views respectfully, so that we may learn from each other. I am willing to listen to a well-reasoned, theologically- and biblically-sound argument, and if I am convinced, I am willing to repent and change my mind. As of right now, I've only written the introduction and arguments about some preliminary issues, like truth and the Bible. I haven't quite finished writing out my own position on the issue at hand, but I will do so within the next few days.
We feel that Spong may be right to proclaim his manifesto.
http://www.psa91.com/manifesto.htm
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.