Pacific Views

Shelby's Got Game

In his open letter to political columnist George Will, Bishop Shelby Spong shines a refreshing light in the dark places where bigotry and prejudice hide. Will (Nuclear fallout in the Anglican Communion) had attacked the Episcopal church's decision in Minneapolis to confirm as New Hampshire's bishop a noncelibate gay priest. He sees this as a struggle between the "cultural trendiness" of the Church "progressives" against the "doctrinal clarity" of the conservative faithful.

Episcopalians, the American adherents of Anglicanism, were once a formidable cultural force -- the American establishment at prayer. But after years of pursuing communicants with political and cultural trendiness rather than doctrinal clarity, Episcopalianism is a small and dwindling faction of American Christianity

Rev. David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, agrees with Will: "the presenting symptom is sex, but that is not the issue." The issue is "the loss of Biblical authority."

Shelby Spong eloquently cuts to the chase and exposes George Will's prejudice. He chastises Will for using the Bible to cling to outdated social immoralities.

I regard that analysis as breathtakingly naive and suggest that it is revelatory of nothing more than your own deep and abiding prejudice. For you to speak publicly about this issue, when you are as poorly informed as your words reveal you to be, calls either your competence or your integrity, perhaps both, into question... perhaps you need to understand why it is that people who quote the Bible to under gird their own inability to embrace reality might need to be enlightened.

Spong goes on to point out how the Bible has been quoted to support a number of social ills -- the divine right of Kings, the imprisonment and torture of Galileo and the rejection of Darwin's evolutionary theory in Origin of Species.

We could go on and show how "doctrinal clarity" led the Church to participate in, and to justify with biblical quotations, the institution of slavery as well as slavery's two bastard stepchildren, segregation and apartheid. Are you not aware that even the popes in history have been slaveholders? Is our present integrated society, which has opened the door to people like Colin Powell to serve in an office that was previously denied to any African-American, just another example of "cultural trendiness?" Women in this country were certainly treated up until relatively modern times with what you call "doctrinal clarity." The Ten Commandments defined the woman as property that, along with the ox and the ass, was not to be coveted. With full biblical encouragement, the Church in the Middle Ages regarded women as anything but equal, and even today the Southern Baptist Church, has directed women to be subject to their husbands. The word "obey" required of the woman alone, was not taken out of the Episcopal marriage ceremony until 1928. Women could not enter our universities in any significant numbers before the 20th century. Women did not receive the power of the vote in the United States until 1920 and even that was accomplished against the opposition of the Bible quoters. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1876 that a woman could not practice law in the State of Illinois because "God has designed her for the more domestic role." Is that what you are now calling "progressive cultural aggression" which you suggest is challenging "the conservatism of institutions?" I consider it a step into enlightenment.

What our church has done, George, is nothing less than to challenge the ignorance and prejudice that has allowed people like you and me to participate in the oppression of countless numbers of people throughout history, whose only "sin" was that they were born with a sexual orientation different from the majority... Our Church has done an audacious thing. We will not now tremble at our own audacity.

Bishop Spong speaks truth to power. We should take heart in his courageous act, and not tremble at his audacity. Instead, let us follow his lead and continue to shed light in the dark places.

Posted by Norman at January 15, 2004 04:00 AM | TrackBack