[Dialogue] 11/22/12, Spong: The Boil Has Been Lanced. A New Consciousness Has Arrived

Thu Nov 22 09:09:18 PST 2012

     HOMEPAGE        MY PROFILE        ESSAY ARCHIVE       MESSAGE BOARDS       CALENDAR

	The Boil Has Been Lanced. A New Consciousness Has Arrived
	The votes have been cast, counted and the results have been made known.  Radio and television stations are no longer relentlessly broadcasting anti-Obama and anti-Romney ads.  The emotions of both victory and defeat have been experienced and expressed.  The “blame game” is well underway.  The 2012 election is over.  President Obama has four more years in the White House.  The Senate has a larger Democratic majority.  The House of Representatives has a smaller Republican majority.  Beyond these measurable results, however, another reality needs to be embraced. A new consciousness has emerged in this nation’s life and with it different and clear definitions of race, women, homosexuals and tribal thinking have entered the body politic.  The birth pangs of this new consciousness are being felt in both the exhilaration of the victors and in the anger and despair of the losers.
	Racism has been a powerful, unspoken reality in every aspect of American life from the moment of this nation’s birth, contradicting everything we said we believed as a nation.  When our Declaration of Independence was written it stated that each “man” was endowed by his creator with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Yet, its author, Thomas Jefferson, was a slave holder and, indeed, the father of a number of children by a slave woman, Sally Hemings, none of whom would be counted as his heirs.   When the Constitution of the United States was written, it counted each slave as 3/5 of a human being for the purposes of determining the size of congressional districts.
	In those documents marking this nation’s birth, women were completely disenfranchised and would not be given the vote until a constitutional amendment conveyed that right in 1920.  Obviously, no woman could hold elective office, since women were excluded from institutions of higher learning that might have equipped them for careers outside the domestic sphere.
	At the beginning of our nation’s history, homosexuality was viewed as an abnormality, which brought great shame on the parents.  The liberal understanding of homosexuality was that it was a mental sickness that the victim could not help, which should elicit at least a sense of pity.  The conservative understanding was, that it was an act of moral depravity that evil people chose freely and thus it should be opposed and or repressed like all other unacceptable kinds of behavior.
	Ethnic or tribal feelings also ran deeply in that era. The white American majority identified themselves primarily with their European tribal roots, which included among others, the Angles, the Saxons, the Welsh, the Scots, the Franks and the Prussians.  Historically, these tribes roamed across Europe’s unstable and ever-shifting map, seeking to lay claim to space to call a homeland.  Germany, under Prussian pressure, did not become a nation state until the 19th century and Italy had to fight the Pope, Pius IX, to form a unified country, also in the 19th century.
	All of these attitudes were based on the operating definitions of that day and were in turn undergirded by the cultural forms of religion, which were assumed to be authenticated by scriptural quotations from the Bible, called the “word of God.”  One by one the definitions behind each of these attitudes was challenged and the previously established values began to change, as a new consciousness based on new definitions was evolving.  At first this new consciousness was only the voice of an agitated and alienated minority that was viewed in establishment circles as a threat to both law and order and needed to be destroyed or suppressed.  As this new consciousness grew, however, the majority point of view began to feel power slipping away and this fear expressed itself in rising decibels of anger that frequently turned violent and even resulted in random acts of murder.
	The issue of race has dominated this country from its founding in 1776 to the civil war that brought an end to slavery by 1865.  In 1876, in a political compromise that awarded the electoral votes of four disputed Southern States, including Florida, Rutherford B. Hayes was elected president.  The compromise called for the removal of Northern troops of occupation from the South and the quid pro quo was a willingness to allow slavery to be replaced by segregation as the law of the land.  This new law allowed the total disenfranchisement of black citizens and its implementation was enforced by intimidation, lynching and the activities of the KKK.  Segregation held sway from 1876 to the birth of the civil rights movement after World War II, which finally resulted in the 1954 Supreme Court’s 9-0 decision desegregating schools.  In 1964 and in 1965, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed by the Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.  The first black Supreme Court Justice, Thurgood Marshall, was also appointed by Lyndon Johnson in 1967, creating the idea of a “black seat” on the court that Republican President George H.W. Bush honored in 1991.  As segregation receded, however, police dogs, fire hoses and church bombings were used to prop up the dying power of the old order.  No new consciousness is born without rampant anger from those being displaced.
	In 2004, I attended, as a member of the press, the Democratic National Convention, in Boston, which nominated John Kerry to be President of the United States.  I listened to the keynote address given by a sitting Illinois State Senator and the Democratic nominee in Illinois for the United States Senate in the coming elections.  His name was Barack Obama.  I filed a story from that convention stating that I believed I had finally seen a black politician, who could be elected President of the United States.  Just 4 years later that indeed happened.  A new racial attitude was clearly breaking through.
	Changes in the roles of women and gay people were happening simultaneously.  The first successful women politicians tended to be wives of successful male politicians.  One thinks of Lurleen Wallace in Alabama, for example.  Women had not been allowed to receive university educations in America until the early years of the 20th century and the state universities and private colleges were not open to them until well after World War II.  Since then their rise in power and influence has been rapid. Today in some states both senate seats are held by women.  Women first appeared on a major party’s national ticket in 1984.  When Franklin Roosevelt appointed the first woman to his cabinet in 1932 it was a radical and hugely controversial step.  Today it is a universal expectation.  When Ronald Reagan appointed the first woman, Sandra Day O’Connor, to the Supreme Court, he established the principle that there is a “woman’s seat” on that court.  That idea that there must be “one woman justice” soon departed and today there are three female sitting justices.  Quite typically, the churches of this land have been very late in adjusting to female equality and some have not done so yet.
	Beginning with the Stonewall riots in 1969, the gay population entered in a major way the struggle for recognition and a new definition.  In time Barney Frank, the openly gay congressman from Massachusetts, entered the ranks of national leaders as chairman of the House Banking Committee and gave his name to the Dodd-Frank Bill designed to curb the speculative practices of banks.  Once again religious institutions were the most dismissive of these trends and many religious bodies split as some in their ranks could not adjust to new realities.
	While all of these things were happening on the level of what had once been the plight of those we called minorities, the economy of the world began to draw nations beyond their tribal identities into an economic interdependency never before imagined.  The European Common Market withered the independence of Europe’s nation states.  The same economic trends are happening in North and South American and in Southeast Asia, although they are not yet as far advanced as in Europe.  National sovereignty is giving way to larger economic entities.
	So the fact is that this change in consciousness, which began as a crawl, is now galloping in all directions and as the world changes the fear of those whose power is declining is increasing.
	In the American primaries of 2008 a host of candidates, who would never have been considered for the presidency earlier, were serious contenders.  There was a viable Hispanic candidate in Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico; a viable female candidate in Senator Hillary Clinton of New York; a viable Mormon candidate in Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts; a viable twice divorced and three times married candidate in Mayor Rudy Giuliani of New York City, and a viable African-American candidate in Barack Obama.  When Barack Obama was elected it was a major breakthrough in consciousness, but the loss of both power and influence of the defeated ones found expression in thinly veiled racist language: “He is not one of us.”  “He is illegitimate because his birth certificate was forged.”  “He is a Muslim.”  “We must take back America.”  “He was really born in Kenya.”  “He channels his Kenyan father’s anti-colonial mentality and hatred of white people.”  These opposing voices vowed to limit him to being “a one-term president.”  All of that lay behind the election of 2012.
	The rise in consciousness, however, has proved not to be a temporary phenomenon.  President Obama, despite a weak economy, high unemployment, his public support for same sex marriage and the visceral anger of his opponents, was reelected.  A post-election analysis revealed that his winning coalition was made up of women, minority and young voters.  The world has changed.  This nation has changed.  An African-American is president for four more years.  The number of women in the Senate has doubled.  Two new members of the House of Representatives are under 32 years of age and more black citizens have entered the political process and occupy seats of power.  Three states voted their approval of gay marriage and a lesbian was elected to the Senate from Wisconsin.  The power of white males, supported by the overwhelmingly male religious institutions, that have controlled this nation’s political and religious life for so long is in obvious decline.  The idea that a white, male establishment can direct women on issues of abortion and contraception has been broken.  By 2016, the candidacies of women, Hispanics, African-Americans and openly gay people will be normal.  Both parties will seek their votes.  Republicans are already looking at their rising Hispanic stars, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, for the presidency.  The Democrats yearn even now to anoint Hillary Clinton to be their new standard bearer.  The grid-lock between the old establishment and the new consciousness that held the government hostage for the past two years will be broken and will no longer be tolerated by the people.
	The election of 2012 reveals that the United States is in a new place.  The anger exposed in such movements as the Tea Party will now dissipate.  This was anger’s last stand.  The citizens of this nation will adjust to this new reality.  That is what always happens.  Perhaps the feeling is not universal today, but in another generation this nation will be very proud of what we did in the presidential election of 2012.
	~John Shelby Spong
	Read the essay online here.

	Question & Answer
	Bryan Turk from Arlington, Texas, writes:
	Question:
	First off, I want to thank you.  I have read The Sins of Scripture and Jesus for the Non-Religious and truly enjoyed both works.  Your progressive view of God and theology has certainly been inspiring to me.  I admire your strength of character and integrity for standing at odds with your religious upbringing.  You are a hero of sorts to me and I can't thank you enough.  I know all too well what it is like to grow up and currently live in the buckle of the Bible belt.  While my sociological and political views today are much more progressive, I grew up in Louisiana in a fundamentalist Bible church.  My father was on the board of elders.  After several years of doubting what he believed and following his divorce from my mom, he embraced atheism.  For years I struggled with his conversion and felt so lost in my own spirituality.  The old worn-out tenets of Deep South Christianity gnawed away at me.  I felt like I would lose him to eternal hell.  After a few years, my own search for what I believe led me to viewing YouTube clips of you and subsequently some of your books and essays.  At this point in my life, I’m still charting my course on my view of a God and things of spiritual nature.  I lean towards atheism, but could be considered agnostic or deist or even pantheist at best.  I really don’t know how to characterize what school of thought I espouse.  However, theism for me is dead or rather non-existent.  It still feels really great to know that I don’t have to believe the Bible in a strict, literal sense anymore.  I still struggle with guilt from time to time.  Especially the fear of death at times because of my apostasy.  I would like clarification of the gospel writers.  I know that Mark was the first gospel written around 70-72 CE shortly after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans.  I recently had a fundamentalist Christian tell me that her reason for believing the literal account of the life of Jesus was because the gospel writers were “disciples” of Jesus.  It would seem to me that obviously these were not first hand accounts of Jesus because the first gospel was written some 40 years after his death.  And Paul gives us sparse details on the actual life of Jesus.  Paul would seem to be a better fit for someone that actually “saw” Jesus.  Do you believe that any of the gospel writers walked or talked with Jesus?  Through reading Jesus for the Non-Religious, I realize that Matthew borrowed heavily from Mark and so on.  Much of what was written in the gospels were filtered through the lens of Jewish heritage and the Old Testament.  I just want to increase my consciousness on these points so that I can discuss cogently and truthfully with people I come across who are fundamentalist Christians.
	Answer:
	Dear Bryan,
	First, thank you for your generous comments.  Second, thanks for sharing with me some elements of your own faith struggle.  It is not easy sometimes to move beyond yesterday’s certainties even when you have been disillusioned by them.  My advice is simply to engage those feelings and not to be afraid to talk about them.  For many people their religion is part of their security system and they hide within its defensive walls from any study or threat. When those walls don’t hold, that person feels exposed, let down and angry.  It is not surprising that you now wish to hurl the whole system overboard.
	Christianity is, I believe, far more than what you have experienced.  Another path for you might be to decide to study Christianity, including the Bible, more deeply than you ever have done before.  To do this, however, you must be part of a church that welcomes such a dialogue.  I hope you can find that.
	To answer your specific questions, your fundamentalist friend is simply wrong.  It is clear that none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses to what they wrote about in their gospels. First, the gospels were written between 40 and 70 years after the crucifixion.  That same time frame embraces between two and three generations.  If the disciples were Jesus’ contemporaries, they would have been when the gospels were written between 70-100 years old, far beyond the normal life expectancy in the first century.  Second, the gospels were written in Greek, a language that none of the disciples or indeed not even Jesus himself appears to have either spoken or written.  Third, the gospels reflect the background of the liturgical year of the synagogue.  Prior to their having been written, the memory of Jesus had already been incorporated into the worship life of the synagogue and interpreted through the Hebrew Scriptures that were present in those synagogues.  Paul does not seem to have ever interacted with the Jesus of history.  He does claim to have “seen the Lord,” but that is apparently a reference to the conversion vision.
	I wish you well in your conversations with your fundamentalist friends.  I have never found that to be a productive avenue to pursue because religious discussions are not really about religion.  They are about people’s personal security and anything that confirms their security becomes what they believe.  People move out of fundamentalism when they are ready to move, not when someone like you tries to push them.  This was at least my experience when I was a fundamentalist.  Most of the things I talk about in Jesus for the Non-Religious have been available in the world of biblical scholarship for almost 200 years.  Fundamentalists have simply ignored these discoveries and insights if they could and they have denied them if they could not ignore them.  I suggest that you simply love your fundamentalist friends, but don’t try to argue with them.
	Live well!
	~John Shelby Spong

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