[Dialogue] 5/17/18, Progressing Spirit: Felton: A Conversation with John Shuck: Part 2 “All Shuck. No Jive.”; Spong revisited

Thu May 24 09:05:44 PDT 2018

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A Conversation with John Shuck:
Part 2 “All Shuck. No Jive.”

 Essay by Rev. David Felten on May 17, 2018
What follows is the second part of an interview with the Rev. John Shuck. In this installment, Shuck offers perspectives on the risks of being honest in the “corporate church” and the struggle in dealing with other people’s worldviews when coping with personal tragedy.
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David Felten:…The first part of our conversation revolved around the necessity of telling the truth. Would you say you’re an advocate for honesty?
John Shuck:…Yes. That’s it. Period. That’s the primary thing. No matter what. Whatever it is. Maybe that sounds simple, like what the Boy Scouts believe. But when it comes down to it, it’s harder than you think.
David Felten:…It sounds like you’re affirming what Jack Good asserts in The Dishonest Church – that the dishonesty of clergy is in large part the catalyst for the downfall of the mainline denominations. But it seems that many clergy still feel that it’s more important to maintain a superficial expression of creedal, all-points-approved-doctrine than being honest with the congregation about where they’re at personally, theologically, and spiritually.
John Shuck:…Right. The problem is the model of “the corporate church” that Diana Butler Bass talks about. Making sure all the trains run on time. I mean, the typical response I get from fellow clergy is: “I know that but I don’t want to say it, because how’s that going to help the budget?”
Frankly, I disagree with the excuse that being honest ultimately hurts the budget. If you’re looking past the immediate generation, I think the very fact that we now have so many non-religious people – and they’re young – is because they’ve had enough of the dishonesty. It doesn’t take ten minutes on the internet to realize that all the things we’ve been talking about, in terms of creeds or whatever, are full of holes.
David Felten:…OK, so what message would you want to tell people who are trying to be honest — be they lay people or clergy?
John Shuck:…The message I want to share is surprisingly hopeful. Being honest has actually been a great thing. It’s been liberating and, for me, it’s been a matter of spiritual growth. There are many, many people who are looking for that same thing. Whether they’re lay people or clergy, you’re not alone. It kind of reminds me of what it must have been like being gay twenty years ago.
David Felten:…Come out of your closets.
John Shuck:…Yeah. Come out! The fruit of that is – who knows? We don’t know where it might lead. I think that’s the conservative thing, “knowing” how everything works. What’s it going to look like for us? Well, I don’t know – but it’s going to involve trust.
David Felten:…And that’s okay.
John Shuck:…Yeah. You’ve got to trust that however it ends up, it’s going to be what it is – and that’s okay.
David Felten:…It’s going to be hard for some people to let go of the idea that Jesus had everything planned exactly the way things turned out in his life and is still intervening supernaturally in people’s lives right now.
John Shuck:…My experience is that the bible comes alive when it’s released from its supernatural moorings. For instance, I always used to think that the events of Palm Sunday – where Jesus tells people to go find the donkey and if they ask this, then you tell them that – that this fulfilled some kind of supernatural prediction. But now I realize, no. Jesus is just working the system. He’s got an underground thing going. He’s hiding out in Bethany and he can only go into Jerusalem when it’s daytime because the crowds are there. It isn’t a supernatural prediction of events. Jesus has figured out how to make this demonstration work and that’s what this “find me a donkey” dialog is.
So, when I started to think about scriptural stories this way – and preach them and teach them – I think they become far more authentic. The responses I’ve received are, “Yeah, this really makes sense now,” where they haven’t before.
David Felten:…We just came through Easter and not that I want you to recount your sermon from Sunday, but how do you approach preaching on Easter?
John Shuck:…John Shuck: It was very helpful this year that John Dominic Crossan had just come out with his book on Resurrecting Easter. In it, he basically talks about the iconography of Easter and the resurrection from the perspective of the Eastern church.
David Felten:…A triumphant Jesus bringing everybody out…
John Shuck:……yanking them right out of Hades, right? First, this didn’t happen. You couldn’t have taken a photo of the event. But Crossan says that this image is an advertisement. It’s promoting a way of talking about a movement – of the way that Jesus and Jesus followers can be in the world. It was violence, Roman state-sanctioned violence that put him to death. And so, he comes out with the wounds on his hands, yanking all of humanity, including Adam and Eve, out of death. So, this image, this “advertisement,” is saying “no” to whatever it is that forces us into death, yanking everybody out of death, and says “yes” to the things that Jesus stood for.
David Felten:…And he stood for…
John Shuck:…Compassion. He stood for justice. He stood for love. He stood for inclusion for everyone. That wins. That’s what this image is saying.
David Felten:…But I can hear people saying, “The historical Jesus also embraced a theistic God – and if we don’t have an appreciation for, or a belief in, the God that evidently Jesus did, what’s the point?”
John Shuck:…Well, we don’t have any idea what Jesus really believed about anything – and it really wouldn’t matter because he was a product of his century just as we are of ours. Jesus lived in a universe where everyone believed the earth was the center of a three-tiered cosmos and you could go up and you could go down in a literal manner. Whatever the gods were, they did all kinds of stuff: interfered and answered prayers.
But that doesn’t work anymore. We have to translate those ideas into today’s language and include what we learn from other sources. I think just being honest with what doesn’t work anymore is important.
David Felten:…Are you comfortable saying a word about the death of your son and what role being an atheist played in dealing with that?
John Shuck:…Thank you for asking. Zachary died in 2012. He suicided. I’m comfortable saying it, but I oftentimes just don’t know what to say. I don’t know what effect that actually has on my theology. I’m not trying to not say anything, or not not say anything, I just really honestly don’t know sometimes.
After Zach died, what bothered me was that it sometimes felt that people were more upset because I was pretty dark in terms of a lot of my writing. Had I lost my faith? That seemed to them worse than losing my son. I said, “No.” That’s an easy answer. But some people felt I needed to find comfort from heaven or whatever and I don’t. I didn’t and I still don’t.
I feel that all we’re asked to do is to bear witness in our lives. The witness I wanted to give was that I’ve gone through this experience. Here it is. You can take it, you can leave it, you can have it. If it’s dark for you, you don’t have to watch it. You can turn away. But I’m not just going to cover it up with something “light” in order to make someone else feel more comfortable.
David Felten:…As a spiritual leader, that’s such a complex position to be in. Everyone wants to support you, but all you get is the boiler plate clichés. You have to say, “Hang on. That, in fact, is not comforting to me. So, let’s just dial that back.” I mean, you must have had some weird encounters.
John Shuck:…Oh, it’s very difficult to know where your role is. Am I always needing to be the minister? Can I sometimes be the one who just simply goes through life here? Very difficult. And lots of stuff within my own self: how can I even call myself a minister if I can’t even do my primary job of raising a son to full adulthood?
This is scary stuff, but when I was still in Tennessee, I remember a local church doing one of those haunted houses where they drag you though a “Hell House” kind of thing. Well, the year Zach died, the theme happened to be – and I’m sure it was a coincidence – but it happened to be, “Those who commit suicide go to hell.”
David Felten:…Wow.
John Shuck:…That was also the culture there. I’d heard that stuff going around in the community: it was because I was this bad believer that this happened to my son. It’s a rough thing. Sometimes you actually take that personally. Part of me is also saying, I lost my son. There’s nothing worse – but there’s an odd sense of courage you get after that. I’m going to do what I need to do and…
David Felten:……and be honest.
John Shuck:…And be honest with whatever my life is and accept that at any moment things can change drastically. So, at the end, you’ve got to look back and say, are you happy with yourself?
David Felten:…So, are you happy being where you are today – a non-theistic, atheist, humanist, pastor? Maybe how it’s freed you?
John Shuck:…I would say, yeah. I’ve developed a great admiration for those who go and research and then tell uncomfortable truths. For example, I’m also a member of Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth. I have been for some time. It’s basically based on a theologian, David Ray Griffin, and his work in looking at some of those issues. So, whatever. Go ahead and look at whatever it is out there and seek to be honest about it. I think it’s an incredibly liberating thing. And most importantly, talk about it with your congregation.
~ Rev. David Felten with Rev. John Shuck

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About John Shuck: 
Once a professional radio announcer at stations in Boise and Seattle, Rev. Shuck has served as a Presbyterian pastor for 25 years. Through his blog, Shuck and Jive, John became known in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia as the “Radical Reverend.” His popularity (infamy?) lead to the development of his podcast, Religion for Life, which began broadcasting in 2012.
Now moved to Oregon, John is the full-time pastor at Southminster Presbyterian Church in Beaverton, Oregon. He currently hosts the radio program/podcast, “The Beloved Community” on KBOO FM in Portland, Oregon. Since 2012, John has interviewed over 250 authors, scholars, and activists about social justice issues, religious scholarship, politics, sex, science, and more. The internet version of The Beloved Community, Progressive Spirit, can be subscribed to on iTunes and Podomatic. Be sure to visit John’s website by clicking HERE

About the Author
Rev. David M. Felten is a full-time pastor at The Fountains, a United Methodist Church in Fountain Hills, Arizona. David and fellow United Methodist Pastor, Jeff Procter-Murphy, are the creators of the DVD-based discussion series for Progressive Christians, “Living the Questions”.
A co-founder of the Arizona Foundation for Contemporary Theology and also a founding member of No Longer Silent: Clergy for Justice, David is an outspoken voice for LGBTQ rights both in the church and in the community at large. David is active in the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and tries to stay connected to his roots as a musician. You’ll find him playing saxophones in a variety of settings, including appearances with the Fountain Hills Saxophone Quartet.
David and his wife Laura, an administrator for a large Arizona public school district, live in Phoenix with their three often adorable children.

Question & Answer

Q: By Interested Readers

Dear Friends:

The volume of questions that this column elicits from its readers continues to amaze me. There is no doubt that this column connects with people all over the world who are seeking a new kind of spirituality that combines truth with empowerment. Sadly enough, these letters suggest that this searching, growing process is not welcomed by most institutional church leaders. It appears to threaten their sense of security and certainty. It does and they should welcome it. Is it not incredible to embrace the fact that the church so often appears to be the enemy of those who seek to develop their own spiritual dimensions?

In every area of life, growth requires the ability to question, to doubt, and to look at issues from a new perspective. So any attempt to suppress questions is the enemy of growth. Whenever the claim is made by any church that infallibility is its possession, or that its sacred scriptures are the source of the inerrant word of God, or that any church is the true church or any religious system possesses the only way to God, this is a manifestation of the presence of idolatry. That is also the source of the threat that they feel.

This column exists to enable questions to be raised, issues to be faced and new insights to be engaged. So your questions are its lifeblood. That is why approximately once a month I devote the entire column to the questions you have raised. At this point I am able to use about one out of every ten I receive. If you would like to pursue some of these issues further, I invite you to post your response, positive or negative, on this web site or enter one of the chat rooms limited to our subscribers and dedicated to the pursuit of religious knowledge.
I appreciate this chance to be in dialogue with you through this medium. So read on!

~ John Shelby Spong 

A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong

Margaret from Salem, Oregon asks:
Our Roman Catholic Church has invited a visionary to speak to us to increase our faith. This visionary receives messages daily from the Virgin Mary. This disturbs my faith rather than enhancing it. Would you comment?
Dear Margaret,
Religious nuts are sometimes tolerated when they ought to be in mental hospitals! Sometimes an apparently religious framework will gain for people toleration that their behavior could never otherwise merit or command.
Why would God choose this means of communication? Would the message gained through this means be about something as yet unknown? Would the agenda be so self-serving as to assist in enforcing an already believed idea?
I think you are right to be disturbed. The priest who invited this man and the bishop who approved the invitation are guilty of being irresponsible charlatans. Superstition and ignorance are not transformed by pious language. That only changes them into being pious superstition and pious ignorance. I do not think that is an improvement.
~John Shelby Spong
Todd of Atlanta asks:
Do you believe in Christ's Resurrection? If not, what distinguishes you as a Christian vs. something else?
Dear Todd,
There is no Christianity apart from the resurrection. That is not the question. What you are really asking is, 'What was the Resurrection?' Was it a supernatural transformation of a three-days dead body into a resuscitated living being? It is interesting to me to note that this is not what Paul thought and Paul wrote all of his Epistles between 50 and 64 C.E., long before the story of the resurrection of Jesus achieved a narrative form. It is also noteworthy that in the first Gospel, Mark (70-75 C.E.) the risen Christ never appears. In this Gospel there is only the proclamation of the messenger to the women that Jesus had been raised, that the disciples are to be informed and that Jesus will go before them into Galilee.
It is not until the 9th decade of the Common Era that resurrection, understood as resuscitation to life in this world, entered the Christian tradition. That occurred in the writing of Matthew (80 to 85), who says that the women met the risen Jesus in the garden and there they grasped his feet. The implication is clear that these feet were physical. It is interesting that when Mark related this same episode a decade earlier, the women did not see the risen Christ in the garden. Scholars know that Matthew had Mark in front of him when he wrote, so we know that Matthew has deliberately changed Mark at this point. Luke, who also had Mark in front of him when he wrote, agrees with Mark and disagrees with Matthew stating that the women did not see the risen Christ at the tomb. That means the Bible registers a 2-1 vote against Matthew's story being authentic.
If you take that disputed Matthean account out of the debate, then only in the later Gospels of Luke (88-92) and John (95-100) does the definition of the Easter experience, as a resuscitated body, become the meaning of the resurrection. These data surprise people who have only heard the Easter story told simplistically for most of their lives.
In my book entitled Resurrection: Myth or Reality? A Bishop Rethinks the Origins of Christianity I took over 300 pages to dissect the meaning of Easter with what I hope is scholarly precision. I think Easter is real. I do not think that Easter originally had a thing to do with a deceased body walking out of a tomb alive. What it does mean is far more profound than that. But that is as far as a question and answer format will allow me to go. I hope this much intrigues you to pursue the subject much more deeply than your defensive sounding question suggests that you have done thus far.
~John Shelby Spong
Chuck from Northfield, Minnesota asks:
Why is Christianity growing in its fundamentalist forms and dying where it tries to engage the thought of the present world?
Dear Chuck,
Statistics can lead to fascinating conclusions. Conservative churches do appear to be growing and the main line churches, or those churches that are open to engaging today's world, do seem to be shrinking. A more accurate statistic, however, is that behind these shifts Christianity itself is a declining reality in the 21st century in every developed nation of the world. Increasingly, modern, educated people abandon the church because its message no longer makes sense to them. Those who remain become more and more narrowly focused on a smaller and smaller piece of reality. They claim certainty and thus attract those in search of security. That is their primary appeal. Some of them have also developed positive public relation campaigns to promote growth
Where churches engage reality and confront the thought processes of the modern world, they can no longer talk in terms of the traditional religious language of miracles, divine intervention, answered prayers and Jesus as the sacrifice that paid for their sins. They become more certain about what they do not believe than they are about what they do believe. Negative messages are never appealing. That is why the main line churches are dying.
Certainty and security are, however, not gifts that conservative or fundamentalist Christian Churches can finally deliver even when they traffic in them. So eventually reality will puncture these fantasies. An organization in New York City called "Fundamentalists Anonymous" once existed to assist those who had been Protestant fundamentalists but who had become disillusioned with a certainty that is not real. Others, not dissimilar, refer to themselves as "Recovering Catholics." There are some Christian communities in all denominations, Catholic and Protestant that have begun to define themselves positively not negatively. They stand for openness, for engagement, for breaking boundaries for journeying beyond the familiar signposts into the mystery of God. They are marked by the ability to honor people's questions rather than pretending to have all the answers. These churches are also growing. An international organization called The Center for Progressive Christianity (know in the U.K. as "The Progressive Christianity Network") acts as a central office that links them loosely together. You can contact this organization in the U.S.A. by writing to JADAMS at TCPC.org, in the U.K. by writing to info at pcnbritain.org.uk, or in Australia by writing to pcnet at effectiveliving.org . It might be worth your while. Perhaps one of these congregations is located near you.
~ John Shelby Spong
Christine in Leicester, UK asks:
What do you mean when you say that we can no longer envision God in theistic terms?
Dear Christine,
Theism is the primary way human beings have understood God throughout history. By theism, I mean defining God as "a being, perhaps the supreme being, supernatural in power, external to life, dwelling somewhere beyond the sky and periodically intervening in history to accomplish the divine will." This is the majority but not the exclusive view of God in the Bible.
In that Book God is portrayed as controlling the weather to bring about the flood in which only Noah's family was saved and all others were killed. Would those victims feel like worshipping such a God? This theistic God was also said to have killed the first born in every Egyptian household as a prelude to the Exodus. This God was pictured as splitting the Red Sea to allow the Hebrews to escape but then to have closing the Red Sea to drown the Egyptians. Could the Egyptians worship such a God? Can we? Is this not the portrait of a tribal deity that we surely have outgrown?
I do not think that atheism is the only alternative to theism. I believe, however, that theism is a very inadequate way to envision the holy. I prefer to think of God as the Source of the life that flows in all of us, as the Source of the love that humanizes us and as the Ground of Being that calls us and empowers us to be all that we can be. These are not theistic images. They are words that are designed to carry us beyond the sterile debate between atheism and theism and into a new way to make sense out of our experiences of the transcendent, the holy, God.
I am confident that a radical revision of the way God is conceived is the first essential ingredient in keeping Christianity alive in the future. I welcome you to the New Reformation.
~ John Shelby Spong
Craig from Boston, Mass asks:
Do you believe that same sex couples should be allowed to adopt children or to have children through artificial insemination or surrogate mothers?
Dear Craig,
There are many dimensions to your question not the least of which is the way homosexuality is still shrouded in irrational fear and ongoing prejudice. What we have to keep our focus on is the goal. Every baby whether conceived naturally or by artificial means, whether raised by his or her parents or by adoptive parents should be guaranteed proper parenting.
The fact is that much parenting is ineffective and some parenting is destructive. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that sexual orientation has anything to do with making one a more or less competent parent. Overwhelming data, for example, suggest that a higher percentage of heterosexual people abuse children than do homosexual people.
There is surely something to be said for every child having two parents but death, divorce, and pregnancies outside of wedlock make that ideal not universally available.
If you pose the question: Would you prefer to see children raised by a heterosexual couple rather than by a homosexual couple, I suspect, given the depth of our cultural homophobia, that a large majority would vote for the heterosexual alternative. But if the question is posed: Would you rather see a child raised by an abusive heterosexual couple or a loving homosexual couple, the answer would be quite different.
However, we still live in a free society so prospective parents do not need government approval to conceive. There will always be some risk to children in the fact that they are born. There is no evidence that being a gay or lesbian person adds to that risk.
Perhaps my feelings about this emerge out of my own experience. I was raised by my mother, who did not complete the 9th grade, in a single parent family. She was 35 and I was 12 when my father died. My father's alcoholism and early death put the whole family into economic straits that I would not wish on any child. Yet there is no doubt that both of my parents were heterosexual.
My point is that good people make good parents. Some of those good people are gay and lesbian, some are heterosexual. I favor encouraging good people who will make good parents to do so.
~ John Shelby Spong
Originally published June 4, 2003

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Theology and Baseball

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong on August 10, 2005

 Last month an anonymous member of my class at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, left this unsigned question on my lectern: “How can you be so right about religion and so wrong about baseball?” I did not have the opportunity to address this profound theological concern in the class, so I have decided to do it in this column. First, the context.
The Graduate Theological Union is a Consortium of nine seminaries-five Protestant, three Roman Catholic and one Unitarian-physically located adjacent to or near the University of California in Berkeley. Each school retains its own name and denominational affiliation and gives its own degrees. The libraries of these separate institutions, however, were merged in 1962 to create one of the best theological libraries in the nation. Students enrolled in any of the Consortium’s entities may take courses offered at any other as well as at the University of California. The Consortium then formed the Graduate Theological Union to award advanced degrees (PhD and ThD) and to operate a joint summer program. I have been on the faculty of this institution at least five times, primarily responsible for one full week of the summer program. It was a very demanding week since academic standards have to be met in order for students to receive academic credit. My duties included teaching for four hours a day beginning at 8:30 a.m. During my week I gave ten one-hour lectures, presided over ten segments of 45 minutes each devoted to questions, answers, clarifications and discussion and collected, read and graded graduate level papers of some 1500 words from each student who took the course for credit. My class had an enrollment of 100 students, 65 of whom were ordained pastors doing continuing education or working on an advanced degree. The remaining 35 were theologically inquisitive lay people who fell into three categories: professionals in other fields like medicine and engineering eager to integrate theology into their lives; people describing themselves as atheists or agnostics with challenging questions; and those considering ordination and eager to taste the academic world that might be their home should they decide to move in that direction.

Engaging these diverse, fertile minds is a privilege, albeit it an intensive one. I learn much from my students about the issues facing the various churches in the western part of our nation.
>From one of them I received the question with which I began this column. It came as a response to the fact that each day, as the class was settling in, I did an analysis of the New York Yankees’ victory or defeat the night before. I discovered that while the Yankees are not universally loved, they are the best-known sports franchise in the land. People both admire and resent New York’s power, its wealth and its influence. They are aware that the Yankee owners spend more money on that team than is spent anywhere else in baseball.

One Yankee player’s contract has been known to be bigger than the entire budget of other teams. New York’s owner, George Steinbrenner, can and does pay whatever it takes to acquire the best team  that money can buy. When they win it is expected. When they lose it always has the feel of an upset, a David slaying Goliath. So, while I grieve, people across the nation rejoice when the Yankees have a difficult year, which is the situation in 2005.
I have always been addicted to this game. I was raised a devoted fan of the Charlotte Hornets, a second-tier minor league team owned by the old Washington Senators, that as Charlotte’s parent club, was my favorite big league team.

When the Senators were moved to the twin cities of Minnesota, I transferred my affections but they were considerably diminished. When a new team was established in Washington, my affections returned to our nation’s capital. Once again, however, D.C. fan support was lacking and that team soon moved to Arlington, Texas, becoming the Texas Rangers. Having never been enamored with Texas in any area of life, I simply severed my emotional relationship and became a fan without a team.
While serving as a young priest in Tarboro, North Carolina, between 1957 and 1965, my enthusiasm for sports led me to become the play-by-play radio announcer for our local high school team, covering football, basketball and baseball. By submitting accounts of these games to our local four-page paper, called The Daily Southerner, I also became the de facto Sports Editor of that journal. Few people outside Tarboro ever read that paper or listened to WCPS-FM, so I felt free to fill my stories and broadcasts with human-interest tidbits about the players, their families and the coaches, all of whom I knew well since many of them attended my church.
It was a rather unique role in a town of 7,500 people to be the local Episcopal Rector, the Sports Editor of the daily paper and “the voice of the Tarboro Tigers.” My radio sponsors were “Wink, that sassy drink and Happy Dan the TV Man.” The pay was quite modest, about $100 a season, but the fringe benefits were great. I took my little daughters with me to every game at home and away, sometimes traveling on the team bus. They had the run of the stadium and became partisan Tiger fanatics. I found conflict in my dual roles only once when Tarboro’s left tackle, Alan “Tiny” Baker, a 240-pound behemoth, cracked a vertebra in his neck in a game against the Wilson Cyclones. He was one of my acolytes. I left the booth during the commercial, which we always had ready whenever there was a break in the action, to go down to the field. When the injury appeared to be serious and the ambulance was called, I signed off immediately, startling those back in the Tarboro studio who had to scramble for programming to fill the void. I went with “Tiny” and his parents, Noah and Ophelia, in that ambulance to the local hospital. My role as priest always took priority over my work as broadcaster.
When I was elected Bishop of Newark (Northern New Jersey) in 1976, I was a Washington Redskin fan in football but uncommitted in any other sport. However, it was not long before the great Yankee teams that included Thurmond Munson, Reggie Jackson, Ron Guidry and many others captured me lock, stock and barrel. So successful were these teams that I began to think that the only reason we had the other major league cities was to provide the Yankees with someone to play in the World Series. During the long 162 game season each year, I would come in at night from some meeting or Episcopal activity and discover that I could still watch the final two to three innings of the game.

Later, when my first wife began to sink into the illness that would lead to her death in 1988, I spent many hours at home alone watching the Yankees. A bond was forged that sometimes, I do admit, reaches the level of the absurd. I cannot believe it even now, when there is no Yankee story in The New York Times during the “hot stove” season of the year. The Giants and the Knicks are fun but they are not theYankees. During the World Series of 2000 when the Yankees played the Mets, I was lecturing in Wales. Discovering that BBC TV’s Channel 5 carried the entire series with the each game beginning at 1:00 a.m. Greenwich time, I saw every pitch. Being up until 6 a.m. each night, however, did make teaching the next day a bit difficult. I hope the members of my class did not notice.
Given this background and my own level of compulsion, it was thus a fairly normal routine for me, as the class began, to do a brief analysis of the Yankee game brought to me on my computer the night before. As I extolled Yankee virtues, groans poured forth from these otherwise normal people. Out of those groans the anonymous question undoubtedly emerged.
What does Yankee baseball do for me? First of all, it is a pleasant, highly enjoyable diversion. It diverts me from the dreadful war in Iraq, the current political pressure to move this country into a religious past, the public hostility toward gay and lesbian people, the battle over the right to die with dignity and the consuming task of my professional life – namely to rethink the Christian faith in the light of the 21st century’s knowledge. It gives my life a dimension, beyond that of the “the controversial Bishop” which has become a synonym for me in the secular press. It has also graced my life with special moments, like the time that my wife Christine and I were guests of the President of the National league, Leonard Coleman, at the sixth game of the World Series between the Yankees and Atlanta in 1996. We sat in a box seat close enough to the field to be able to touch Charlie Hayes, Yankee third baseman, who caught a pop foul to end the game. That catch made Jimmy Key the victor over Greg Maddox, and crowned the Yankees as World Champions. In that box with us were Joe Black, the former pitcher of the Los Angeles Dodgers and one of that generation of great black athletes who broke baseball’s color line and Christine Todd Whitman, the Republican Governor of New Jersey. The Governor, my wife and I cheered for the Yankees while the President of the National League and Joe Black indulged us despite their affinity with the National League. We stayed in Yankee Stadium long after the final out savoring the moment, taking in the full moon as well the spectacle of Wade Boggs riding backward on a New York policeman’s horse across Yankee Stadium. It was a magical night.
Yankee fans, like the Church, have a “Communion of Saints.” Center field belongs to DiMaggio, Mantle and Williams; shortstop to Crosetti, Rizzuto, and Jeter; right field to Heinrich, Jackson and O’Neill; catcher to Dickey, Berra, and Munson; first base to Gehrig, Skowran and Mattingly. Baseball is, however, not a matter of life and death. It is a field of dreams.
My anonymous questioner asked how I could be so right about religion and so wrong about baseball? Perhaps this person might examine my hate mail to discover some debate about his or her first premise. To the second premise, however, I plead ‘Not Guilty!’ I stand in awe of baseball’s ability, discipline, effort, team play, vision and competence. I admire this human arena where, far more than I see in Churches, people are judged on merit alone not on race or ethnicity. The important thing is that I know the difference between reality and fantasy. I love them both.
~  John Shelby Spong

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