[Dialogue] My 8/30/12, Spong: Fourth Great Mentor: Edwin Anderson Penick VI, Bishop of North Carolina

Thu Aug 30 11:18:43 PDT 2012

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	My Fourth Great Mentor:
	Edwin Anderson Penick VI,
	Bishop of North Carolina
	All of us are mentored in life by other people.  Sometime this mentoring is done by example, sometimes by words.  An essential aspect of maturity is to recognize those from whom we have learned, so from time to time in this column I pay tribute to my mentors.  The catalyst for this column today came from a letter from a retired priest named Charles I. Penick, the youngest and the only surviving child of the man who was my fourth great mentor.
	It is difficult for reality to be seen through the eyes of a child.  A child’s world is so local and so circumscribed that the tendency is to universalize one’s childish perceptions.  Lives that intersected my childhood were perceived in heroic proportions.  Authority figures were beyond criticism and influences were powerful.  All of that needs to be understood and embraced in order for me to tell you this man’s story.  His name was Edwin Anderson Penick.  Few people will recognize that name today.  The memory of great lives is fleeting and this man died in 1959, more than fifty years ago.  He was, however, the first bishop I ever knew and he shaped forever my image of what it means to be a bishop. I remember him vividly.
	Once I found a home at age eleven in St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in downtown Charlotte, N.C., first as a soprano in the boys’ choir, later as an acolyte or altar boy and finally as a youth leader, I tended to deal with the insecurities of my youth in a bifurcated manner.  My father had died when I was twelve.  My mother, who did not finish the ninth grade in her formal education, was thus a widow at age 36 with three children, no money and few marketable skills.  To put it bluntly we were poor, dealing with bill collectors, fighting off the utility companies who threatened to cut off our telephone, our electricity, our water and our heat.  Poverty showed itself in the food we ate, the clothes we wore, the car we drove and in our inability to do anything beyond what might be called the basics.  So school for me was a difficult experience.  I was one with little or no social status among my peers.  I participated in no extra-curricular activities.  Even my grades, which had been good until about age 14, began to plummet.  I took on the attributes of the few friends I had, most of whom would be categorized as losers.  We were expected to do poorly academically and we lived up to that expectation.
	In my church, however, I had a very different experience.  I had success as a boy chorister, even doing an occasional solo.  I became an acolyte and then the senior acolyte. Next I was elected president of the church youth group.  My rector, Robert Crandall, about whom I have written previously in this series, had become, without his knowing it, my surrogate father and my ultimate hero. In talking with him, however, another figure loomed large on his horizon.  He referred to this person simply as “the bishop.”  Once a year, “the bishop” visited our church for confirmation.  The mood of expectation, the degree of preparation all bore witness to an aura of importance that gathered around him.  He lived in Raleigh, a city that in my experience was a very long distance away.  He was well known in my church for he had been rector of this church when he was elected bishop in North Carolina in 1922 at the ripe old age of 35.  He was a man of keen intellect, immense dignity and powerful oratorical skills.  He was widely respected across the state.  I knew nothing else about him except that he was regarded as very important.  My rector clearly treated him with respect and deference.
	As I grew up I tended to spend most of my available time in the church, an environment that enhanced my life, rather than in school, an environment that diminished my life. This meant that the bishop, not the principal, was the authority whose recognition I most coveted.
	My youth group activities led me into diocesan-wide responsibility.  In the summer I turned 16 I was elected treasurer of the diocesan youth group known as the Young People’s Service League or the YPSL.  In that capacity, I attended some diocesan gatherings at which Bishop Penick was always the acknowledged leader, so I came, vaguely, to his attention.
	A child of our diocese, William Jones Gordon, Jr., the son of the rector of a small church in Spray, North Carolina, had been elected by the House of Bishops, at the unusual age of 29 to the missionary position of bishop of Alaska.  Just a few years earlier Bill Gordon had been the president of the diocesan YPSL and so our young people felt justifiable pride in the success of “one of our own”.  Various organizations of the diocese decided to equip him for his work in the far north.  The young people agreed to raise the $500.00 required to purchase his “Bishop’s Ring.”  As the YPSL treasurer, I was put in charge of the fund raising campaign.  Almost every youth group in the diocese joined in and the goal, which to us seemed enormous, was reached with great fanfare.  I sent a letter with the check for $500.00 to Bishop Penick to pay for the ring that was to be presented to the new bishop when he was consecrated in Raleigh that spring.
	In response to that letter, I got a surprise telephone call from the bishop.  In those days, long distance telephone calls were operator-assisted and used only in the gravest of emergencies or the most ecstatic of good news.  I don’t think I had ever received a long distance call before.  Even my mother was startled when the phone rang and the operator said, “I have a phone call for Jack Spong from Bishop Penick in Raleigh.  Is he there?”  My mother handed me the phone. “Jack,” I heard, “this is Bishop Penick.  I want to congratulate you on the success of your campaign to raise the money for Bishop Gordon’s ring. I want to invite you to come to Raleigh on the day of his consecration and present it to him at that service on behalf of the young people of the diocese.”
	In my world at that time, that was like getting a call from the president of the United States inviting me to come by for dinner.  Of course, I went.  I’m sure my church helped me with the travel expenses and I stayed at the home of a friend I had known through youth work.  If I had not been one before, that service made a church romantic out of me.  There were some 25 bishops there. I assumed all of them were as important as Bishop Penick.  Well over a hundred clergy were vested for that service.  All of the pomp and ceremony the church could muster was present and, above all else for me, Bishop Penick clearly knew who I was.
	The next year I became president of the YPSL of the diocese.  I was told more than once that this office had launched “Bill” Gordon on his trajectory toward the office of bishop.  I reveled in that association, but at this time in my life I had no ambition higher than that of becoming a priest. I did not even know how bishops were chosen.
	Three years later while I was a junior at the University of North Carolina and at the end of a long process, Bishop Penick made me first a postulant and then a candidate for Holy Orders.  This meant that I was required to write to him four times a year at “the Ember Days” to report on my progress toward ordination. He always responded.  When I finished my seminary training in 1955 Bishop Penick ordained me to the priesthood in my first charge, St. Joseph’s Church in Durham, N.C.  I then took my place among the clergy of that diocese.  I was young and immature but full of confidence.  Bishop Penick appointed me to various responsibilities in the diocese, including membership on a committee to evaluate and to report to the diocesan convention on “The State of the Diocese.”  I was the junior clergyman on this committee, chaired by one of the senior priests.  That priest, however, moved out of the diocese during that year and Bishop Penick declined to appoint a replacement, and so that responsibility now devolved to me.  I accepted and only three years out of seminary proceeded to present a far-ranging report that resulted in the closing of a “black” hospital run by my church in Charlotte, thereby forcing the publicly-supported medical facilities of the city to accommodate black patients. This committee also called for the diocese to re-think both the purpose and the role of a long-revered Episcopal orphanage also in Charlotte that was lost somewhere in the 19th century. Later it too closed. I am still amazed that this bishop had that level of confidence in one well short of his 30th birthday.
	I watched this man for years, mostly from afar.  He was always prepared.  His administrative skills were awesome.  His entire staff consisted of a single part-time secretary.  He was such an impressive master of the pulpit that when he visited Episcopal Churches in small towns across the diocese, other churches would suspend their services so their congregations could listen to “the bishop” preach.  He was an old school “prince bishop.” He filled the office with dignity and grace, but he was the unchallenged authority.  He was, however, as all of us are, a child of his time.  When the desegregation decision of the Supreme Court came down in 1954, he met it with a positive – it would have been called in the South “a liberal response.”  Today, it would be viewed quite differently.  He called for “gradualism,” which meant that white sensitivities were to be placed ahead of black justice.  The Episcopal Church of North Carolina and the diocesan camp remained deeply segregated.  Separate, but equal was the justifying myth.
	No one doubted Bishop Penick’s integrity, however, and he filled his office with a bigger than life fullness.  The church required its bishops to retire at age 72.  Bishop Penick approached that day with dread.  He announced that he would retire at midnight on the date of his 72nd birthday.  I do not think he knew who he was outside that office.  Shortly before his 72nd birthday, he had a stroke from which he never regained consciousness.  Those who knew him well did not grieve for they understood that some people are not emotionally equipped to retire.  Those who loved and admired him were content to remember him for the great leader he was.
	People like me have incorporated some of the virtues of Edwin Anderson Penick into ourselves and he continues his life through those of us who regarded ourselves as his sons. To this day, I am deeply in his debt.
	~John Shelby Spong
	Read the essay online here.

	Question & Answer
	James van Koolbergen, CFC, from Tampa, Florida, writes:
	Question:
	I have been reading your online essays with great benefit and eye-opening insights since early 2009.  I also recently finished reading Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes and have found your perspective, initiated by the work of Michael Goulder, on the structuring of the synoptic gospels as lectionary material for the Jewish/Christian liturgical years very persuasive.  It seems to me that this explanation of the writing of the synoptics would have significant consequences in the Christian churches for the understanding of these gospels, for preaching about them, and for education in these scriptures in parishes, colleges and seminaries.  Several questions about the follow-up to Liberating the Gospels have occurred to me.  It has been fifteen years now since your book was published, what impact has this book had on the study of the synoptic gospels?  Has this thesis been pursued by any other scripture scholars in their writing or lecturing?  Has this thesis become a discussion point in the curriculum of scripture studies in any seminary or college or of any textbook for scripture study?  Have there been any ventures in these directions?  Or am I living in a dream world?
	Answer:
	Dear James,
	You are not living in a dream world, but you do not understand how complex the field of biblical studies is.  At fundamentalist seminaries, this thesis would not even be known and, if it were, would be resisted vehemently.  The mainline denominational schools are not much different.  In the Jesus Seminar, made up primarily of scripture scholars, who are teaching in university departments of religion, the debate is far reaching and wide.
	When I wrote that book, I was reflecting, as you have noted in your letter, on theories developed by one of my great teachers, Michael Goulder of the University of Birmingham in the UK.  I have lectured at Harvard Divinity School, the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Drew Theological School, the University of Ghent in Belgium and a variety of clergy conferences around the western world on the thesis of this book and have always had a good reception.  Does that mean that I succeeded in converting them all to my point of view?  No, that has not happened, but the debate is on and the future, not me, will determine which ideas gain traction and which do not.
	In another field of astrophysics, the idea that we now call Quantum Physics was introduced by Niels Bohr.  This theory challenged the conclusions of Albert Einstein who resisted them vigorously.  Bohr and Einstein are both dead today, but Bohr has prevailed and now physics assumes the quantum theory.
	A century from now, we might be able to determine an answer to your question.  I am content to let history make that determination.  I am still convinced!
	My best,
	~John Shelby Spong

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