[Dialogue] 6/17/2021, Progressing Spirit: Special Edition: Celebrating Bishop John Shelby Spong on his 90th birthday
Ellie Stock
elliestock at aol.com
Thu Jun 17 06:22:51 PDT 2021
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Special Edition:
Celebrating Bishop John Shelby Spong
On His 90th Birthday
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As we continue to celebrate yesterday's marking of Bishop Spong's 90th Birthday, we dedicate this week's newsletter to previous Essays and a Q&A from Bishop Spong. In particular, we want to acknowledge his lifelong dedication to human rights and social justice reform as the Nation celebrates Juneteenth this week.
We have forwarded hundreds of emails from readers wishing him a Happy Birthday; we encourage you to add your best wishes, please address them to admin at progressivechristianity.org. |
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Meditation on Turning 80 in London
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
August 25, 2011I marked the 80th anniversary of my birth in Green’s Restaurant, Duke Street in London this summer. What I thought was to be a quiet, romantic dinner with my wife Christine was jarred a bit when we arrived at the restaurant and were told “Your table for five is ready.” Five, I thought, who are the five? I looked at my wife for clues and was told that this was her party not mine. So we went to our table, sat down and waited to see who these invited guests would be.In about five minutes the mystery began to clear up when two of our closest friends, Liz and Geoff Robinson appeared. I had not thought of them since they live in Wellington, New Zealand. Liz has directed each of my book tours to New Zealand and Geoff is the news anchor of Radio New Zealand and thus the best recognized voice in that country. We have together hiked the Milford Track on New Zealand’s South Island and vacationed on the tip of the North Island in previous years. I was vaguely aware that they were going to be in the UK this summer, but did not know that our dates would overlap so I was as amazed and delighted to see them.About 15 minutes passed before the mystery of the final guest was solved. The door opened and in came Karen Armstrong, a close friend and a former nun, whose books have catapulted her to be one of the best commentators on religious matters in the Western world. Her sensitive treatment of Islam has turned her into almost a rock star in Iran. We have known and loved Karen for more than a decade and see her regularly in London and in New York. She travels extensively and finding her home on this particular day was a long shot.So now my birthday dinner guest list was complete and the party lasted until 11:30 pm. There was no one else in the restaurant when we finally departed. The waiters seemed perfectly content to let us continue as long as we wished, but they did look relieved when we finally left. That dinner gathering was the beginning of my meditation on what it means to reach 80 years of age. Age is a gift that I believe must be embraced and even cherished.Frequently the joy of life is not fully appreciated until the years begin to creep up. When I was a young man, my focus was always on the future. I worked hard at each stage of my life to prepare me for the next. There came a time, however, when I realized that I was not preparing for life, I was living it. That is a crucial distinctionI have had three quite distinct and exciting careers. I was a priest, then a bishop and then an author-lecturer. Each was a full time occupation. I loved them all. In my 21 year career as a priest I lived in four distinct and wonderful locations. My first church was located quite literally between Duke University and the Erwin Cotton Mills in Durham, N. C. and its congregation straddled both worlds. The two leaders of my vestry were Dr. Herman Salinger, head of the Department of German at Duke and a published poet, and Milton Barefoot, known as “Piggy,” who was a child of the mill community and was then working as a gas pump regulator for the State of North Carolina. Both were wonderful human beings.My second location was in the farming belt of Eastern North Carolina – the town of Tarboro in Edgecombe County. This rural community was filled with good people, but racial tensions were high in those days as segregation was dying and a new way of life was struggling to be born. Among my responsibilities as a 26 year old priest were Calvary Church, a wonderful community of dedicated white people, and St. Luke’s Church, another wonderful congregation of dedicated black people located just one block away in that deeply segregated world. I loved both of these congregations. The people of Calvary helped me to grow in many ways and the people of St. Luke’s took me in and loved the racism out of me. I was never the same after serving those two churches.My third location was Lynchburg, Virginia, where I shared that town with an up and coming Baptist preacher named Jerry Falwell. Once again the significant issue in that town was a deep racism. St. John’s Church where I was privileged to serve, was also across the street from Randolph Macon Women’s College and for the first time I embraced how powerful a force the presence of an institution of higher learning can be in the life of a community. It was in Lynchburg that I also learned that congregations are made up of people who are not only willing, but quite capable of learning anything that I knew. The people at St. John’s were politically conservative, but biblically uninformed. They were, however, not mushrooms meant to be kept in the dark and covered with manure, and so with them I learned a valuable lesson. It is not lay people, but the clergy who are overwhelmingly afraid of truth, insight and biblical scholarship. Lay people do not need to have their God or their religion protected by frightened clergy.My final priestly location was St. Paul’s Church in the heart of Richmond, Virginia. It was then and remains today the greatest church experience I have ever had. In this congregation the people were leaders in business, finance, law, medicine and government. Yes, they also were politically conservative, but they were open to new possibilities and I loved that congregation passionately. Here people flocked to an adult Bible class that I taught, eager to learn if the church was willing to teach. Being a priest was a deeply satisfying, enormously fulfilling life. Perhaps in the terms of personal meaning, it was the most satisfying of my three careers.In 1976 I was elected bishop of Newark and began my second career. A bishop is an administrator, a conflict manager, a personnel officer, a fund raiser and a figure head. I say this not to be pejorative, but to state a fact. The bishop of a diocese is also, I learned, the articulator of a vision for the church in that area. In the diocese I served I was, by dint of my office, the chairman of the board of a major urban hospital. I had to learn about health care, medical politics and more legal issues than I knew existed. The office of bishop required talents I did not have and knowledge for which I had no training. I embraced a steep learning curve.How does a bishop measure success? That is hard to do. The thing I’m proudest of is that ten of the clergy who worked with me in this diocese at some point in their careers went on to become bishops. Six of our clergy went on to become cathedral deans across America and others served in parishes that occupy critical places in the life of the church and this nation.When I retired from this office in February of 2000, I moved immediately on to my third career in academia. I taught at Harvard, at the University of the Pacific, at Drew Theological School and at the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, California. I began to write a weekly column first for Beliefnet, then for Waterfront Media, then for Every Day Health and now for TCPC. I was amazed at the expanse of that column. We, and I say we because my wife Christine organized and facilitated this phase of our lives, began a lecturing career that carried us not only across America, but to the United Kingdom at least annually; to Australia and New Zealand nine times; to Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Thailand, Canada and IndonesiaThroughout my career I took a crash course in institutional politics and worked to put institutional Christianity on the side of the full inclusion of people of color, women and gay and lesbian people in both church and society. I rejoice today that my nation has an African-American President, my home diocese of North Carolina has an African-American bishop and half of our clergy are now female, including our extraordinarily gifted woman Presiding Bishop.I am proud that when I retired as the bishop of Newark I had 35 out of the closet gay and lesbian clergy serving with high effectiveness and 31 of them lived openly with their partners. I rejoice today that my church has two gay-partnered openly elected and confirmed bishops.In those three phases of my life, I was always planning ahead and looking forward. As I grew older, the present became increasingly where I wanted to live, not the future. Meaning was found, life was lived and relationships were treasured in the present. My family became more and more important to me. Freeing people to be whole and to offer the gifts they have to offer, whether modest or impressive, became an essential mark of life. Faith became existential not theoretical. God became a living presence, not an external being. Christ became a principle lived out fully in history by Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity became a universal experience that crossed all boundaries. Staying connected with old friends became an increasingly precious part of life. Repairing broken relationships, where possible, became a priority and where it was not possible it helped simply to acknowledge my part in the brokenness.I have never been one to speculate on the content of life after death, but I do trust it, feel it, and seek to live into it. The only way I know how to prepare for life after death is to live deeply, richly and fully now, scaling life’s heights, plumbing life’s depths, risking love, affirming others and accepting differences. It is by living fully that I prepare for death.St. Paul was wrong, death is not the last enemy to be defeated. Death is a friend to be embraced. Death adds zest and passion to life by forcing us to live and investing each moment with ultimacy. I thus never want to miss an opportunity to tell my wife how much I love her. I live for the moments when my children or grandchildren call or when we visit. I love to hear about their victories and defeats, their struggles and joys. I want to live every moment of the life that I have, but I also want to relinquish that life with grace and dignity when it is time to do so.These were the streams of consciousness that flowed through my mind as I reveled in turning 80 years old and celebrating that with my wife and three special friends in London on Duke Street in the summer of 2011.~John Shelby Spong
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Question & Answer
Q: By Ted
I was pondering this past week about the right wing fundamentalists and their real fear of anything that smacks of socialism. For me, the word socialism means that the society cares for those who are marginalized, who have major difficulties coping with basic life issues, the poor, etc. My understanding of Christian belief is that this care is at the core of our belief - to care for those who need our care, our support, our understanding. Why do those who are “fundamentalist” refuse to see this as part of the Christian gospel? Or am I missing something?
A: By Bishop John Shelby Spong
Dear Ted,Thanks for your letter. Socialism is one of those words bandied about today rather loosely. To you it means care for the marginalized. For members of the Tea Party in America, it seems to mean having the government control one’s life down to telling us when one must die. I do not believe that using loaded, easily misunderstood words is helpful to dialogue, so let me approach your question from a different angle.
I do not see any economic system devised by human beings that does more good for more people better than capitalism. Capitalism, however, devoid of social conscience that expresses itself in making sure that the wealth of the nation is not limited to a very small number of people at the top of the economic pyramid on one side and that no one falls through the safety net on the other, simply does not work. This means that I support things like a graduated income tax, Social Security, mandated universal health care and the regulation of institutions to guarantee fair and equal opportunity in wealth creation for all citizens. If capitalism is not tempered with these restrictions then I am convinced that the capitalist system will drive toward the revolution that Karl Marx predicted. So socially responsible and democratically established legislation is today necessary if capitalism is both going to endure and to be effective. This means that it is essential that capitalism develop the means to allow the wealth of this nation to be spread more equitably and thus allow capitalism to continue to be the best economic system yet devised by human beings.
We are in fact mandated by our faith to care for the poor, to feed the hungry and to tend the sick. We are also enjoined to love our neighbors as ourselves. I do not see how those ideals can be served if we allow capitalism to develop an underclass in which poverty is never escaped and in which the basic elements of a caring society do not exist. Christian history, which includes the development of capitalism, also reveals that we have not only violated these ideals, but we also have been anti-Semitic, anti -Muslim, anti-people of color, anti-women, and anti-homosexual. That is a strange way to follow Jesus’ command to love our neighbors.
What is going on in America at this moment is the political manipulation of basic human fears in order to gain power over others or to have power, which the ruling classes believe they have lost, restored. One manifestation of this is that the white Anglo-Saxon population that claims to be the “first families” of America is facing the fact that the United States now includes enormous numbers of citizens whose ancestors migrated not from Europe, but from Africa, Latin America and Asia. We are thus engaged in an internal struggle between the American spirit of inclusion and the vested interests of the earliest settlers. The anger in our political system today also reveals our latent racism, our greed and our xenophobia. When these fears are coupled with unstable economic forces that cause the future to feel insecure, the problems are compounded.
I believe we will get through this time in our history. We need long term stability in our government so that the big problems in energy, financial reform, health care and the environment may be addressed. Whether we will have that long term stability is the question. My sense is that with an economic revival and the creation of jobs, the fears will subside. Will that economic upturn come before the election of 2012? I do not know, but that election will be crucial to our future as a nation. ~ Bishop John Shelby Spong
January 19, 2011
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| To acknowledging the impact and contributions Bishop Spong has made in the lives of people all over the globe, we are asking his readers who have been touched by his life and writings to help keep them alive on ProgressiveChristianity.org and Progressing Spirit by making a donation today assuring his teachings and writing will be preserved for future generations. |
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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited
Should this Column Deal with Political Issues?
Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
February 24, 2011I value the letters I receive from my readers. They often offer me new perspectives, bringing to my attention new facts that contribute significantly to my understanding or challenge my conclusions. Frequently these letters express appreciation for insights that I have been able to give them. The most appreciative letters come from two major sources: first, from those who are struggling to build or to rebuild their religious frame of reference in the light of knowledge available to those of us living in the 21st century, and, second, from those who share in my attempts to apply insights gained from my faith commitment to the social, political and economic realities of our day.
Indeed, the columns that elicit the most positive feedback are those that some would call “political.” The recent column on the role of Texas oil money in American politics, for example, received record positive mail; as did my column more than a year ago entitled “My Manifesto” on my stated refusal to debate any longer the issue of homosexuality. Since I, along with the vast majority of the medical and scientific community, no longer believe that there is any rational basis on which to discriminate against homosexual people, I do not want to dignify continuing ignorance with a willingness to debate what is no longer debatable. I do not debate whether the earth is flat or whether slavery is moral either.
Despite these realities, I still get letters from readers complaining about the “political” columns. One reader seems to write every time a column comes out on a theme that is not specifically religious. I have ignored those letters for almost a year but they keep coming from the same source and so I have decided to respond to this limited but consistent criticism. This person professes to be thrilled with my columns and books on religion. Indeed, he tells me that he delights in sending many of these columns to friends to share with them this new religious point of view. He seems, however, to resent any column with which he disagrees. His comments run the gamut of the things I have absorbed all of my professional life from one-dimensional conservatives. He argues that he does not subscribe to my column to get “political analysis,” of which, he claims, he can get all he wants from newspapers, radio and television.
I find that a fascinating idea! I would argue that none of these media outlets offers a view of political events from the unique perspective of faith. Nor are any of them expressions of “objective” political reporting as he seems to think. An editorial in the New York Times and another in the Houston Chronicle, for example, will reveal radically different political perspectives. Listening to televised commentaries on the proposed budget of the Obama administration from conservative commentators on Fox News and from liberal commentators on MSNBC will do the same. These spokespersons on both sides of these issues are all legitimate participants in the American debate, some may be more informed than others, but each sees reality through the lens of his or her own priorities and prejudices. I make no claim to do otherwise.
My perspective is that I am a Christian, who believes I must examine political and economic decisions in the light of those values. The basis upon which I make political and economic judgments is that I believe every person, rich and poor, Anglo-Saxon and African, Hispanic and Asian, male and female, gay and straight must to be treated with the dignity of being a child of God. They should not, therefore, have their sense of infinite worth compromised by the insensitive decisions of elected officials, whose primary goal is to be reelected.
I accept as the purpose of Jesus and thus of his disciples, a category in which I include myself, that the Christ task is to enhance human life. The Fourth Gospel quotes Jesus as saying that his purpose is to bring abundant life to all. I do not see how one can bring abundant life or enhance present life if racism, masquerading as “States’ Rights,” is allowed to linger; if economic decisions are made to balance the nation’s budget on the backs of the poor, while just having passed an extension of tax cuts for the very wealthy top one percent of America’s earners. I do not believe that life can be enhanced if this nation allows the gap between the rich and the poor to continue to expand. I do not believe that life is enhanced if wars are entered into on the basis of deliberately falsified statements about weapons of mass destruction and in which thousands of America’s young people are killed. I do not believe that, in the interest of enhancing the wealth of the oil industry, our sons and daughters lives ought to be put at risk. I do not see how the lives of gay and lesbian people can be enhanced by allowing uninformed and homophobic people to place their prejudices into the law or state constitutions.
Yet all of these things have occurred in the recent life of our nation by decisions made in the political arena. I have no intention of abdicating my responsibility both as a commentator and a citizen to speak in and to that arena. To stay outside the debate is to do little more than to create a vacuum that will be filled by the Sarah Palins, the Glen Becks and the Sean Hannitys of the world. I require no one to agree with me. My opinions are certainly not infallible. My thinking has changed dramatically over the years and I hope will continue to do so as “new occasions teach new duties and time makes ancient good uncouth,” to quote the poet James Russell Lowell.
The second implication in these letters is that because my professional field is religion, I have no right or competence to speak to political issues. Jimmy Carter’s field of expertise was engineering and peanut farming. He offered his unique life’s experience to lead first the State of Georgia and later the United States. George W. Bush had done some oil drilling and headed a baseball team. Did those backgrounds render them incapable of speaking or acting on political issues? The majority of American people did not think so.
Both American and world politics have actually been life studies of mine. At the drop of a hat I can discuss the major political issues with which every president of the United States has had to deal, including the little known ones like Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Rutherford B. Hayes. I have had very close members of my family deeply involved in politics. One of them, my first cousin, William B. Spong, Jr., defeated the Byrd machine in Virginia in 1966 to wrest the United States Senate seat from A. Willis Robertson, the ultra-conservative father of TV evangelist Pat Robertson. He lost that seat in 1972 running as an incumbent Democrat on a national ticket headed by George McGovern. I study every presidential election to determine what it says about where our nation is at that moment in its history. I have attended, as a political reporter, the nominating conventions of both of our major political parties. I have been interviewed on national television a number of times and have debated Pat Buchanan on Crossfire and William F. Buckley on Firing Line. I am a lot of things, but a political novice is not one of them!
I am also amused when receiving these letters that anyone thinks they have a right to determine the content of this weekly column. It would not occur to me to tell Bill O’Reilly or Rachel Maddow what their subject matter should be. Sometimes the letters I receive are little more than hostile and rude rants. I received one recently that read. “Put it all the way to Hell, Sir! I am interested in your spiritual take, not in your stance on political matters. I may have to unsubscribe unless you get back to spirituality and back off from political B.S. Does your new content have anything to do with your new “carrier/
sponsor?” To this reader I am eager to say first, that the content of this column has been consistent for all of its life. The column’s title, begun nine years ago, is “Bishop Spong on the News and the Christian Faith.” No publisher has ever asked or tried to edit my content. Second, spirituality however you define it, is not divorced from life. Third, I am amazed that a reader feels that, since he or she might not agree with a particular column, he or she has a right to attack me personally or to attempt to coerce me into abiding by his or her wishes by threatening to “unsubscribe” to this column. Readers are, of course, free to disagree with anything I write or to unsubscribe at any time. They are not free, however, to dictate to me what the content of my column should be.
The idea that religion is a separate activity from politics always feels strange to me, coming as it does normally from a right-wing mentality. If anyone wonders why this seems so strange, all that person has to do is to examine the content of Christianity. It is a radical movement! In Christ, says St. Paul, all tribal identities fade away. One can hardly be an uncritical super-patriot and be a Christian. Christianity calls us to love our enemies. That makes support for wars of aggression difficult. Christianity calls us to deal with the poor in a sensitive manner even if it raises our taxes. A member of Congress who opposes the current version of health care bill, which covers forty million previously uninsured Americans, has an obligation to offer a bill spelling out an alternative way to cover these uninsured. Otherwise, honesty demands that there be a public admission that he or she does not really care about the issue of forty million people without health care because they cannot see beyond their own needs. I mean by this to suggest that I believe political tactics can always be debated, but I do not see how Christians can fail to agree on the goal of universal health care coverage for all our citizens. Politics is the arena in which public issues are decided. I intend therefore to be a participant in the political arena because “faith without works is dead” to quote the New Testament book of James.
I treasure the privilege I have to be in dialogue with my readers. I will explore the Christian faith in depth each week and I will speak to public issues from that perspective wherever those issues arise. The growing number of subscribers indicates to me that they are happy to be in this dialogue.
~ John Shelby Spong |
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