[Dialogue] 11/22/18, Progressing Spirit: Felton/Spong: A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 3 “On Conservatives, Liberals, and the Way Forward”

Thu Nov 22 05:54:17 PST 2018

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

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!important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateBody .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent, #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateBody .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent p{ font-size:14px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }@media screen and (max-width:480px){ #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateFooter .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent, #yiv1765969432 #yiv1765969432templateFooter .yiv1765969432mcnTextContent p{ font-size:12px !important;line-height:150% !important;} }  The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia.  
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A Conversation with Bishop John Shelby Spong: Part 3 “On Conservatives, Liberals, and the Way Forward”

Column by Rev. David M. Felten
November 22, 2018

The following is taken from an interview with Bishop John Shelby Spong on September 18th, 2018. Recorded at his home in Richmond, Virginia, it has been edited for length and thematic focus.

David Felten: You’ve talked about how hard it is for people to grasp what is meant when we’re talking about atheism or non-theism. There’s another word that a lot of people aren’t completely happy with but it’s the one we’ve kind of been shackled with. Is there a word other than “progressive” we can use – another approach?

Jack Spong:  Yeah. Progressive. That’s like talking about liberal and conservative. There is no such things as a liberal scholar or a conservative scholar. There is a scholar. You take the scholarship and it goes wherever scholarship leads. Then you can relate to those conclusions in a liberal way or a conservative way, but you don’t have liberal or conservative scholarship.

I did a radio interview with Jerry Falwell one time and he was introduced as a conservative biblical scholar. He wasn’t a conservative biblical scholar, he was an illiterate biblical scholar, but for me to say that about Jerry would not have been appreciated because it would not have been considered nice.  Jerry’s long dead and he’s probably a lot wiser today than he used to be. I always thought he was a “good ol’ boy.”  He wasn’t an evil man, he was just an illiterate man and a good showman. At Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg he put on a show every week and it was really wonderful to watch. He’d have the chaplain of Bourbon Street come and talk and he’d have somebody wrestle with a bear.  It was a big show every week and he packed that place. The Lynchburg paper built him up because he was a conservative pastor.

When I was in Lynchburg with him, he was really a racist. He started Liberty Baptist College as a segregation academy. It’s not a segregation academy anymore. He tried to grow on the gay issue, but he could not quite make it.  A ghost writer wrote his autobiography…

David Felten: Mel White.

Jack Spong:  Yes. Jerry hired Mel to write his autobiography because Jerry’s not a writer. While he was getting the data to write the book, Mel shadowed Jerry very closely for a year or two years, maybe three years. Then the book came out and Mel came out the same week! Jerry suddenly realized that he’d been in pretty close association with a gay person for years. Mel tried to get him to agree to talk with a born again Christian gay person, but Jerry didn’t believe there was such a thing. You know, “You can’t be a born again Christian and a gay person at the same time.” But Mel got a bunch of these gay Christians to come down to Lynchburg and Jerry agreed to have dinner with them and to talk with them.  I think it was about the year 2000 and there was a religious right presidential candidate running in the primary, along with George Bush…

David Felten: Gary Bauer?

Jack Spong:  Yeah. Gary Bauer. He began to put pressure on Jerry not to have dinner with those born again gay people. So, Jerry had a conversion experience, went to Mel White and said, “Well, I’ve given my word that I’d meet with them and I will. But I can’t eat with them because the Bible says you don’t eat with sinners.” And we said, “Well, who do you eat with then, Jerry? Do you ever eat alone? Are you able to do that?” — just to show the irrationality of that sort of thing. Well, I think Jerry was trying to grow in all of those areas. I liked him.

I didn’t care for Pat Robertson. Pat Robertson was devious. He was a law school graduate; he was not dumb. He was the son of a Virginia senator. The senator was retired to private life by my first cousin in 1966, an interesting period of time in history.

Jerry was just a good ol’ boy, and that’s all he was.  Interestingly, his son is a University of Virginia Law School graduate and is now president of Liberty University. He’s conservative and applauding Trump all the time. But, he’s a jump ahead of where Jerry was and he is going to have children who are a jump ahead of where he now is.

David Felten: And by “jump ahead” you mean?

Jack Spong:  More liberal. Jerry Falwell, Jr. couldn’t go to the University of Virginia’s law school without having some brains. That’s a good law school. But he’s caught in the world he’s living in.

David Felten: Growing up, you were caught in a very particular world yourself. You’ve overcome so much of your conventional religious “programming.”

Jack Spong:  My earliest religious experiences were where I would bargain with God. I was age 12 and didn’t have a father. I had a “Heavenly Father” – and I bargained with God because if I did so-and-so, God would let the Charlotte Hornets win their baseball game that night. So, I really played this game all the way through then.

David Felten: How did that work out?

Jack Spong:  Not so well. Yeah, not so well!

I also remember when my father died – he died when I was 12 and I didn’t really know him, although I remember he didn’t have much use for church. But when he died the people from church came to me and said, “Your father is so lucky because now he’s gone to be with God.” But before he died those same people were saying my father’s never going to be with God because he did everything the church said you shouldn’t do: he drank too much, he played cards, he did all sorts of “evil” things. That’s part of my upbringing and where I began to move away from institutional Christianity. You can’t live by the way the church taught at that time. You just can’t do that.

David Felten:  In your Twelve Theses and your latest book, Unbelievable  you’ve outlined a number of ways the church needs to “jump ahead.” If you had to make one thing a priority moving forward, what would it be?

Jack Spong:  I don’t know. I don’t know that you can chart it that way. I think you have to speak to the priority that is emerging because you are in the world and you can’t predict what issue will come up.

I could be blatantly political and say, “If the Christian church doesn’t engage Donald Trump and his amoral behavior, there’s not going to be much left for us to do after he gets through.” But how do you engage Donald Trump? You’ve got do it with a strong person and that person’s going to get clobbered.  He or she has not yet appeared.

It’s not that Trump is conservative. We’ve had some great conservative leaders in our nation. Ronald Reagan didn’t hurt this nation. He was a strong leader, but he was a strong leader from a conservative point of view.

Donald Trump is a strong leader from an amoral point of view – and he doesn’t know anything that isn’t in his own self-interest.  That worries me a great deal. I don’t know how we’ll get through four years of this man.

It’s strange listening to the news and it’s easy for me to understand why Trump thinks the media is all corrupt: the media is constantly bringing to the attention of the people of this nation what an inadequate person this man is in this office. I don’t know how he gets away with what he gets away with. He’s got five or six members of his administration already indicted and he keeps saying it’s a witch hunt.  He is also an unindicted co-conspirator according to his former lawyer..

David Felten: It’s a hoax.

Jack Spong:  Yeah, it can’t be a witch hunt if you’ve indicted five or six people. We’ve got to live through some tough times and I don’t see anybody speaking truth to power today. I look to Republicans in congress to speak truth to power and they don’t. They leave – the senator from Tennessee, the senator from Arizona – they leave rather than take him on. And that’s sad. The Democrats are not much better.

David Felten: What are some of the big questions you’re living with these days?

Jack Spong:  Well, I like the title “Living the Questions” (which you’ve made famous) because I think that’s what the church ought to be doing. We’ve portrayed ourselves as the institution that has all the answers, and that’s just not so. We have the questions and have to articulate those questions with honesty.

David Felten: How about life in general?

Jack Spong:  In my present life, I have a sense of real contentment. I’ve done everything in my life that I wanted to do. I’ve loved being a priest and being a bishop – and I’ve loved being the kind of priest and bishop I was. I love the fact that I had 16 years since I retired and before I had the stroke, to be a very active person doing my thing, carrying my message, writing books, doing my weekly column. I don’t know why I would have any regrets. I don’t know if I’ll be alive a year from now.  In a great sense it doesn’t really matter. What difference is a year or a year-and-a-half or two years going to make to the world? Not much. But I don’t have any regrets and don’t want to change anything.

I will have some regrets: I’ll regret losing Chris.  She is a fascinating woman. She’s been so deeply a part of my life that I don’t know who I am without her. She’ll get along fine: she’s the most competent woman I know. It is now easy living for us. We’re in a condominium and buying prepared meals – sort of one step closer to a retirement home. I told my doctors that if they couldn’t keep me alive for one year, it was not worth the move because moving is really a difficult thing to go through. But if I keep alive for a year I’ll be happy. And if I get two years, I’ll be happier. But I don’t feel anxious about it.

It’s fun to be in my old church, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond. I hadn’t been to that church for 42 years. Can you imagine what it’s like to leave a church and come back to it 42 years later? The only people I know are elderly. Most of the people I don’t know at all.

There’s a vigorous spirit there and I’m enjoying just simply being a member in the pew. I don’t force my opinions on anybody else. I’ve been here enough so they have a real sense of who I am and they’ve read my books.  It is a joyful experience to be there on Sunday morning.  I’m not trying to create anything there. I’m not concerned with creating a church in my own image.

David Felten:  …enjoying the privilege of just being there.

Jack Spong:  Yeah, just being. I hope I won’t be a problem to the next rector. If I am, I’ll have to leave. But I also loved being a member of St. Peter’s in Morristown, and I loved my rector there very much – and that’s all been a retirement experience. It’s been fun.

David Felten: Well, you’ve been extremely accommodating and I appreciate you sharing so much.

Jack Spong:  I appreciate you, David, more than you know. You and Jeff Procter-Murphy have done for the Methodist church what I think I’ve been doing for the Episcopal church.

David Felten: They haven’t made the mistake of making one of us a bishop though!

Jack Spong:  Well, one of my predecessors at St. Paul’s was Walter Russell Bowie, who taught at Union in New York for years and was rector of Grace Church in New York. He was elected bishop of Pennsylvania and turned it down. He had great sense to do that. He said being a bishop is a staff job and you have to leave the ministry to do it. If I hadn’t turned being bishop into a teaching role, I think I would have gone crazy. But it’s not a very happy job. I’d much rather be a rector of a parish and be with people in trouble, sorrow, need or sickness and any other adversity and watch the cycles go. I had a wonderful time at St. Paul’s.

David Felten: Any closing advice as we finish up?

Jack Spong:  I would say that you have got to spend your time relating to the issues of your world – and I don’t know what they’re going to be. But if you can’t make the Christian church speak to the issues of the world, then it will quickly become irrelevant.

David Felten: That kind of advice makes a lot of clergy nervous.

Jack Spong:  Well, that’s not a comfortable role to be in. I think most clergy seek comfort and it’s a rare group – maybe a minority, maybe 1% of the clergy – who see the way things are and are not content to just ask, “Why?” They dream of things that never were and ask, “Why not?” That puts you in a different mode. You have to be willing to be a change agent. But if you’re nothing but a change agent, after a while you wear out your congregation. They get tired of changing. But that’s the key, you’ve got to have that element in there.

I would hope that the clergy would stay informed professionally and I think that means knowing the Bible. That sounds so strange but I go to church and I hear people say, “Our second lesson this morning comes from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.” Well. I immediately say, “But Paul didn’t write it! He had been dead ten years before Ephesians was written!” That is such a simple thing and there is no reason why we can’t be on top of that little detail.

David Felten: Yeah, but those little details are intimidating to some folks. Added together, they may leave people with no other choice than having to change their understanding of the Bible.

Jack Spong:  Bible study is able to do that. I don’t see why people ever thought that the Christian stories were anything but myths. They didn’t develop for decades. You don’t have a star in the sky that sends off a message of a child being born, a star that moves, that has a GPS system that allows camels to follow it to the promised land. Or wise men hanging out in the wilderness because they know the Messiah is going to be born so they keep a good supply of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and a couple of camels around the place. It’s amazing to me that anybody ever thought that was anything other than a myth – it’s a glorious myth – but it’s a myth. And I think we ought to say that.

Most people don’t believe in the virgin birth, either, but they don’t know what to do with it because it’s been crammed down their throats. It is the same thing with resurrection. We’ve confused resurrection with resuscitation and we’ve got people convinced that if they don’t believe in the resuscitation of Jesus they can’t be Christians. That’s absurd. Resurrection does not mean resuscitation. It’s a whole new word. That should be just elementary stuff for the Christian pastor.

David Felten: It sounds like you’re touching on one of my soapbox issues: the expectation that pastors be honest.

Jack Spong:  Well, yeah, that’s right. An honest person would never present the virgin birth story as anything but a myth. It just doesn’t make sense any other way. The resurrection – the body of Jesus – doesn’t appear until Matthew’s gospel, that’s in the year 90. It’s resuscitation by that time and that’s what we’ve got people believing.  Well, they misread Paul. Paul says, “If Christ be not raised, we are of all people most to be pitied.” I think that’s true, but it’s not resuscitation that he’s talking about.

What is the role of miracles? There are no miracles in Paul and miracles don’t appear until Mark. Paul never knew Jesus as a miracle worker. You’ve got to go back to the Jewish root to see them. Did Judas exist? No, I don’t think he did. Every detail of the Judas story is a detail of an Old Testament “traitor story” applied to Judas.  To name the traitor Judas (which is simply the Greek spelling of Judah) is just too clever.  Then people say, “Well, why did Jesus die?” I think he was a radical that they executed to get rid of him. I think that’s what happens to most radicals. I feel very lucky to have survived.

David Felten: I think you’re hitting on your favorite themes here with Judas having been a fictional character and Paul perhaps having–

Jack Spong:  …been a homosexual.

David Felten:  Yes! There’s a play-list of sensational Jack Spong ideas that, when people know your name even beyond the church, they say, “Oh yeah, he’s the one.”

Jack Spong:  That’s right. That’s right. It was a wonderful career…

David Felten: Thank you so much.

Jack Spong:  …and thanks for coming by to spend some time with an old man. I hope you can make something out of that.

~ Rev. David M. Felten

Click here to read online and to share your thoughts

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 have three children.
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Question & Answer

Dear Friends, Your letters come in such numbers that if I responded to each one I would need a full time staff. I can assure you that every one of them is read and I try to pick the most interesting ones for publication. Using only one each week, however, means that inevitably most of your questions do not get the response that they deserve. For that reason, periodically, I devote a whole column to a series of your letters and their questions. I am doing that this week.

The range of these questions is amazing. They go from trying to unload the hostility that has been associated with a particular biblical text, to a question about Mary Magdalene, to a quotation from the late Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, to a question on sexuality. I thank all of you for your letters and hope that this column will continue to elicit them from you. Enjoy the “dog days of summer.”

~ John Shelby Spong (Originally Published August 16, 2006)

Questions

Garnet and Douglas, Unity Ministers from Little Rock, Arkansas, write: “We know that it is generally known that Mark 16:9 to the end of that final chapter was a much later addition to Mark’s Gospel. Since the statement, ‘Go in to all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation’ is in that added segment and is USED as the excuse to ‘go into all the world and push certain religions on people.’ I am interested to know if there are any clues as to ‘who’ created this idea, when, and what was their real purpose?”
Dear Garnet and Douglas,

The quotation you cite is from one of two proposed endings that were attached to Mark in the early years of the second century. In the King James Version of the Bible they are still included in the text.

In both the Revised Standard Version and in the New Revised Standard Version, these additions are either separate from the text or footnoted to inform the reader that they are not part of the earliest Marcan documents that we possess. The verse you cite (Mark 16:15) is thus not regarded as authentic Marcan material. A close reading of these added verses makes it clear that a later editor was attempting to harmonize Mark with several of the later gospel accounts. The original “Go into all the world” text is found originally in the second resurrection story told by Matthew (Matthew 28: 16-20) so the person who wrote this new ending to Mark took it from there. Matthew’s version has come to be called “The Great Commission” or “The Divine Commission.” Since Matthew is the originator of this phrase, to answer your question we need to understand what it meant to Matthew. There is no doubt that these texts have been used throughout history to justify missionary and conversion activities that are less than edifying, to say nothing about being out of touch with the spirit of Jesus.

Matthew was the most Jewish of all the gospel writers. It is terribly important to him to show the Jewishness of Jesus. That is why he opens his narrative with a genealogy of Jesus that grounds Jesus’ very DNA in the line from Abraham to King David, to the Exile and finally through Joseph to Jesus.

That is also why Matthew wraps Jesus in the Scriptures of the Hebrew people. “This was done that it might be fulfilled that was spoken by the prophet,” is a regular refrain in Matthew’s gospel. This is also why even the Wise Men in Matthew’s gospel are forced to consult the Jewish Scriptures before they know that the new King of the Jews is to be born in Bethlehem.

However, this intensely Jewish Jesus is wrapped in an interpretive envelope that Matthew uses to show that although Jesus arose from the Jews and fulfilled the expectations of the Jews, his ultimate purpose was to bind the human community into one community in which there were no barriers of tribe, race, or national identity.

The first part of that envelope is the story of the Star of Bethlehem. Matthew, following a long time Jewish practice, says that a star announced the birth of Jesus. The unique thing about the star is that it shines not just on the land of the Jews but is seen across the world. That star draws the world, in the persons of the Magi, into the worship of this Jewish Jesus. Jesus called all people to step beyond their boundaries into a universal humanity. This vision also fulfilled the original call of the Jews. They were not the Chosen people as a sign of privilege, they were chosen to be the people through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

Matthew proceeds to tell the story of Jesus from his baptism to his crucifixion and resurrection. In this narrative, the barriers that divide human beings fall before Jesus. A new humanity bound together only by love is portrayed. The Jesus invitation is, “Come unto me all ye,” not, “some of ye.” A barrier separating anyone from the God met in Jesus would destroy all that Jesus stood for.

So Matthew comes to the very end, the last five verses of his gospel in which the first and only time he has the risen Christ speak. His message is simple, “Go into all the world!” Go to those who are different, who you previously have called gentiles, unclean, uncircumcised and proclaim to them the message of the universal love of God. Tell them about God’s love that transcends all human barriers and all human limitations. That is still the purpose of the Christian Church – to proclaim the love of God for all that God has made.

Only when Christianity identified its message with particular beliefs about God and Jesus that needed to be imposed on others in order to be saved do we get the kind of missionary imperative about which you speak in your question. That attitude is about as far away from Jesus’ original meaning as one can get.

You cannot love a person when you say to them, “My religion is better than yours so I intend to impose my religion on you.” You cannot proclaim the love of God if you approach someone under the stance, “I’m OK, you’re not OK. And you will not be OK until you are just like me!” Unfortunately, that is what so much of the missionary activity of the Church has tended to do.

Henrietta writes: “I am currently reading a book about Mary Magdalene written by Bruce Chilton that has a map in the beginning of the book that clearly shows a town of Magdala that is in Galilee. He states that Mary Magdala is from that village of about 3000 people. It is an extremely interesting book. Can you please explain your reason for not believing in a village of Magdala? (you might find a lot of food for thought in this book as well.) Thank you.”

Dear Henrietta,

Bruce Chilton is a good friend and admired colleague. He has accepted common wisdom and common maps on the subject of Magdala. There is no evidence that there was ever such a place but because Magdalene was interpreted to be Magdala, efforts have been made to find a town that might have been called by a different name. Dalmanutha is the favorite candidate. Truth was not served in that enterprise but the tourist industry was.

I wonder why people would not have said Mary of Magdala in the New Testament if ‘Magdalene’ meant her place of origin. They knew how to say Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, and Peter of Bethsaida. Why not say, Mary of Magdala? They did not, I am convinced, because that was not what Magdalene meant.

Only two names have words attached to them in the New Testament that are written as if those words are part of their names. They are Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene. Once people argued that “Iscariot” meant that Judas came from the village of Kerioth and that Magdalene meant Mary came from the village of Magdala. I do not believe that either claim can be substantiated.

So I think Bruce is wrong – so are most of the sources I looked at on the Internet that struggle to identify the location of the mythical Magdala. To pretend that Magdalene means she hails from Magdala hides something of the true meaning of Mary Magdalene that I think comes from the Hebrew word, Migdal, which originally meant a large tower which shepherds climbed to keep watch over their sheep. In time the word came to mean large in the sense of being great. I think the attaching of Magdalene to Mary was an affectionate way the early disciples referred to her and it meant ‘Mary the great’ or the great Mary. Her place in the early Christian movement was far higher than that assigned to her by the later church that invented the idea that she was a prostitute. Thankfully we are just now beginning to recover something of her original stature.

Bill from Norfolk, VA, asks: “Would you please comment on the late Roman Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen’s comment that, ‘Since God is just, I believe there is a hell; since God is merciful, I believe there is no one in it’.”

Dear Bill,

Fulton Sheen was expressing his hope in such a way so as not to contradict the teaching authority of his Church. It was a good compromise.

Yet the idea that either hell or heaven is a place to which people go is a part of the human experience of limited language. We are beings, God is Being itself but in human language we conceptualize God as a Being, for that is all we understand.

We are creatures bound by time and place and so we describe life beyond this life in terms of linear, spatial concepts. We have no other language. The problem arises when we assume our language is literally true. It isn’t. If God is life then heaven is life in God, Hell is life apart from God. It is about relationships not about space.

Is anyone apart from God? That is not for me to say.
Do we have the capacity to say a final and ultimate “No” to God?
I suppose that is theoretically possible.

The Church has always used both heaven and hell as promise and threat in the task of behavior control. Bishop Sheen’s answer comes out of that mindset. I find those categories meaningless. If we would stop worrying about other people and concentrate on our own relationship with God and others, we would have a better world.

S. M. Cornwall of Exeter, England, writes: “In your recent talk in Exeter, the implication seemed to be that homosexuality is either a chosen path (and thus undesirable/reprehensible) or unchosen (and thus not reprehensible). Is it not possible that, for some individuals, homosexuality is chosen but not thereby inherently reprehensible? To say otherwise risks the implication that homosexuals are only homosexual because they have no choice and that if they had a choice, they would probably choose heterosexuality. ‘Nature’ as a category is highly problematic but there do appear other ‘unchosen’ human impulses (e.g. exploitative sexual activity), which are still not viewed as ‘desirable.’

Dear S. M. Cornwall,

It seems to me that your letter misunderstands two things. First, if sexual orientation is a given then it cannot be something judged as evil simply because it is a minority expression of our humanity.

Homosexuality/heterosexuality is like skin color, racial characteristics and lefthandedness/righthandedness. It is a given in life, something to be accepted as that which is. It is true that the boundary between the genders in all of nature is not near as severe as we once thought it was but none of that is now seen as unnatural or abnormal.

When you then move on to exploitative sexual behavior or, as some have argued to an innate propensity for alcoholism that they suggest is also “unchosen,” you have introduced a whole new element and confused the discussion. Exploitative sexual behavior and alcoholism both have a victim. Someone’s humanity is diminished by this behavior including certainly the humanity of the sexual exploiter or the alcoholic. Homosexuality surely can be acted out in such a way as to produce a victim but it may also be acted out in such a way as to enhance life for both partners. What we forget in our prejudice is that the same thing can be said for heterosexuality. Both sexual orientations are morally neutral. Both can be expressed in moral and in immoral ways. It is harder to do that when society condemns one that is the minority orientation and says that no expression of that orientation is ever good. No exploitative behavior is ever desirable. No self-destructive behavior is ever desirable. Sexual orientation is not, per se, exploitative. That is a difference not to be confused.

~ John Shelby Spong

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