My Evening with Bishop John Shelby Spong
by Mark Tooley - March 25, 2010
Reprinted with permission.
This wasn't what Bishop John Shelby Spong expected. Meeting in a posh ballroom of the glitzy, glass Marriott Hotel on Times Square, his audience was overwhelmingly white-skinned, white-haired, well-educated, and well-heeled. Nothing unusual there. But the questions?
"All evidence suggests that pre-modern forms of Christianity are in better health than the small strands within Christianity that have tried to embrace the modern world," one Jesus Seminar participant noted pointedly to Spong after the bishop's speech to the several hundred assembled academic skeptics and free thinkers.
"It seems the liberal church is in the hospital, so I'm wondering why Christianity must 'Change or Die?'" the questioner asked, referring to Spong's 1999 book of the same name. Perhaps, the man continued, Spong's book should instead be titled: Why Christianity Must Change or Be Distasteful to a Handful of People in Northern California and the Northeastern United States.
The audience laughed as Spong managed a wry smile.
"I've never been impressed that statistical success means you're in touch with truth," Spong replied with a chuckle. "The idea that we have strong right-wing, growing religious institutions doesn't strike me as testimony except [that] they're meeting certain basic needs."
No doubt Spong is accustomed to giving such explanations. The U.S. Episcopal Church's Newark, New Jersey, diocese lost over 40 percent of its members under his nearly two decades of leadership. The Episcopal Church itself – much of it beholden to Spong's liberal theology – has lost over 40 percent of its members over the last 40 years.
Not overly concerned with the numbers himself, Spong went on to describe growing conservative churches as "banking the fires of human hysteria," while he admitted that liberal mainline Protestant churches are "vapid."
"Rigor mortis is too lively a word to describe its life," he said of his own mainline Protestant tradition. But, he insisted, the statistical success of "right-wing religion" is only the "last glorious burnout of the meteor before it plummets to its death."
More laughter.
A Strange Kind of Shepherd
Bishop John Shelby Spong, now retired from the Episcopal Church, has long been an ecclesiastical provocateur. Starting in the 1980s he began writing books and appearing on the talk-show circuit, denying that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, suggesting that the Virgin Mary may have been a prostitute, ordaining some of his denomination's first openly homosexual priests, and, most recently, denying that "theism" has any relevance for modern believers.
The foundation of his approach is the notion that orthodox Christianity is dying – or will die – and for the church to survive, it must have a new, relevant belief system. This is his gospel: The Questionably Good News of John Shelby Spong. That some disagree matters little to him. The author of 15 books, Spong likens himself to Galileo, Darwin, and Freud – influential thinkers who were once condemned by the Christian church, only to be vindicated in later generations.
And so he builds his own legend. Describing himself as the child of a Fundamentalist past in his native North Carolina, he came from difficult circumstances. His father – an alcoholic and traveling salesman – died when he was twelve. And his fiercely exacting mother was a "strict Calvinist," though he has said she didn't "have the education to understand who John Calvin was." The influence of a young Episcopal priest drew him into that denomination, and he found himself moving toward a high-church, Anglo-Catholic liturgy that contrasted sharply with his mother's austere Presbyterianism.
As a young Episcopal priest in North Carolina, Spong spoke out against racial segregation, earning him condemnation, threats, and a growing taste for polemical controversy. Early in his marriage, his wife descended into "deep paranoia," as Spong recalls in his autobiography. She would later leave him to live near their grown daughters.
"I cared for her during a mental illness that lasted 15 years and a physical illness that lasted six and a half years, but I did not run the full course," Spong recalled. After his wife's death, he married a former staff member of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark over which he presided.
Courting Controversy
Spong was serving as a priest in the Diocese of Virginia when he was elected to the bishopric in 1977. As bishop of Newark he began to unveil his more radical positions, especially on homosexuality. When he ordained the openly homosexual Robert Williams in 1987, it was a media field day.
While he was already a fixture on the talk-show circuit, the Williams appointment would excite further attention – and book sales – for Spong. Even an embarrassing twist failed to undermine his media-darling image: Williams publicly renounced monogamy and suggested that even Mother Teresa should "get laid." He later left the priesthood and died of AIDS-related complications.
Undeterred, Spong ordained several dozen more openly homosexual priests. His associate bishop, Walter Righter, would ultimately face a rare Episcopal Church backlash – instigated by conservative bishops – for his own ordination of homosexual priests. (The statute of limitations had by then expired on Spong's troubling ordinations.) In 1996, an Episcopal trial court declined to convict Righter, ruling that the church had no canon law prohibiting homosexual clergy. This "heresy" trial paved the way for the Episcopal Church's unfortunate 2003 decision to consecrate Gene Robinson, its first openly homosexual bishop.
Homosexuality was Spong's first big media issue. It would not be his last. In the 1990s, he authored several books disputing the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, and ultimately "theism" itself – fairly generic exercises in theological liberalism. But his stabbing attacks on Christian orthodoxy – which he derided as "fundamentalist" – gained media attention because of his unique role as bishop of a declining but still socially prestigious denomination.
Seeing It Backward
To Spong's mind, orthodox Christianity has been dying for nearly 2,000 years – its phenomenal growth from a few hundred disciples to two billion adherents notwithstanding. "It is a well-known fact that people reaffirm only those things which are passing away," he says about traditional believers who cling to their archaic doctrines.
For Spong, this is an apt description of the global Anglican prelates – now mostly from the Third World – who have denounced the U.S. Episcopal Church's 2003 consecration of Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. Interestingly enough, despite his lip service to cultural diversity, Third World Christians are especially sinister in Spong's worldview. He noted in a column in 2003 that the Third World is well known for AIDS, sexual promiscuity, polygamy, female circumcision, and irrational disapproval of homosexuality.
"Is that the kind of profound ignorance the primates want to endorse?" Spong wondered incredulously. "Why is it that no one will call Third World Anglicans to moral accountability?" He dismissed the Third World bishops and their "backwater elements" in the First World as "voices of yesteryear."
Of course, he neglected to acknowledge that while U.S. and British Anglicanism have been largely stagnant for decades, Anglicanism in Africa, for example, has gone from several hundred thousand adherents to more than 42 million in the last century, with expectations doubling over the coming 25 years. Christian affiliation among Africans has rocketed from less than 10 percent to over 45 percent in that same period. This compares with Islam's increase from 32 percent to 40 percent. More than 120 million Africans are Roman Catholics, with evangelicals comprising most of the rest. Pentecostals and charismatics now number 126 million, out of 400 million Pentecostals around the world.
But numbers that show the growing strength of traditional Christianity don't faze Spong – he has a unique gift for turning negatives into positives. In a column several years ago, he celebrated the fact that the Southern Baptist Convention in 1988 had reaffirmed its disapproval of homosexual practice. "Hooray," the bishop responded. Fundamentalist churches were now forced to defend their position on homosexuality. "The battle is over!" he declared. (He neglects to mention that, in the years since he published the column, the Southern Baptists have grown by one million members – roughly 50 percent of the entire U.S. Episcopal Church.)
What Spong ignores – as do many theologically liberal clerics – is that Christianity is most robust when it is counter-cultural and underscores its differences with the unbelieving world. In Spong's ecclesiology, the church is always a regressive force, opposing science, oppressing women and minorities, defending feudalism, promoting imperialism, and fighting to suppress the truth that is found more vividly outside the church.
An Evening in New York
Despite his professed confidence in the demise of all that he denounces, Bishop Spong generally speaks only before supportive audiences, with little opportunity for debate. Certainly the scholars of the Jesus Seminar – who try to "demythologize" the Bible by voting on which parts of Scripture are actually true – would be a perfect fit.
That's why it was a bit of fun when, at a 2004 session of the Jesus Seminar in New York City – which Spong had recently joined as a member-scholar – the bishop faced some unexpectedly pointed questions.
Having registered as press, I sat in the back of the large ballroom of the Marriott Hotel on Times Square. Taking a look around the audience, I realized that I was the youngest person in attendance – by a couple of decades. Most were upper-middle aged, seemingly either academics involved with the seminar or simply retired people who follow its activities.
One seminar questioner asked Spong whether the "heretics" of the 21st century that he envisions will actually be proponents of "traditional forms of Christianity," and if so, how would the bishop suggest handling them.
Sidestepping the bit about "heretics," Spong acknowledged that of the 280 clergy formerly under his jurisdiction in the Diocese of Newark, "not all of them were on our wave length." But he added that the only way to change people is to love them and then empower them to "become something they have not yet become."
"Of all the people I need to love, evangelical fundamentalists are the most difficult," Spong confessed. He warned that the "religious right neo-fundamentalist evangelical" comes in both Protestant and Catholic forms. For evidence, he pointed to the late Pope John Paul II, who illustrated "what happens to this great tradition of faith over the years as it's walked backwards into history."
"The price of church unity appears to be the perpetuation of ancient prejudices," he continued. "It is Rome's inability to move into a new consciousness that constitutes for many the real 'grave impediment' to the unity of the Church." But he regretfully admitted that the late pope was "very popular to a lot of people."
The seminar attendees couldn't have been surprised by Spong's attitude. The bishop has rarely been gracious in describing orthodox Christians, routinely dismissing them for their "childlike, fearful, defensive prattle." No one can tell another person who or what God is, he insists. To do so would violate the Second Commandment's prohibition against idolatry. But there's the irony. Why, after all, should the one commandment be followed so carefully when Spong so easily dismisses the other nine?
But what's even more outrageous is that Spong expends a great deal of ink and breath violating the very commandment he so enthusiastically urges on others. Indeed, much of his work can be reduced to answering the question of who and what God is. Or, more to the point, Spong is very careful to tell you exactly what God is not. Certainly not a creator or a judge or savior, his deity is an experience, unique to every individual, wondrous and mysterious, outside all doctrine and creed. But this God does have some uncompromising attributes, which include steadfast opposition to racism, sexism, homophobia, and intolerance. This is core doctrine for the bishop.
While they didn't disagree with the bishop's politics or sociology, the Jesus Seminar's unsentimental religious skeptics were a little dubious about Spong's sentimental expression of the "God" experience, which he still drapes in Christian language about love, sacrifice, and kindness.
One questioner challenged Spong's comparison of the divine "life force" to the cat who lovingly licks her kitten or the bird who maternally feeds her chick. "How about the cat who toys with a terrified mouse before killing it?" the questioner offered in contrast. "What about the bird that ripped apart a living lizard to feed it to its young? How would that view of nature affect our attitude towards the 'source of life?'" he asked, with thinly disguised sarcasm.
Spong nodded. "Evolution says survival is the highest quality," he said, throwing in the dig that "DNA evidence has removed the debate from anybody who is able to read, though parts of Georgia and Kansas have a hard time with that." But he nevertheless insisted that humans have experiences that "transcend the desire to survive," citing his love for his wife, Christine.
While that may not have persuaded the questioner, Spong soon moved quickly to friendlier grounds. "I cannot be what some people call a first-century, Bible-believing Christian," he said. "I have to be a 21st-century Christian." While acknowledging that the current century has no monopoly on truth, "it is the only frame of reference that I can finally have."
For Spong, there's no "body of beliefs that have ever constituted what the Epistle of Jude calls the faith once delivered to the saints." Christianity has been in a constant state of evolution – from Augustine, to Aquinas, to the Renaissance. "Every articulation of truth cannot be tempered in the way in which reality is perceived in movements of history," he said. "Eternal truth never assumes a human form."
"There is no intervening, supernatural, miracle-working deity that I as a Christian in the 21st century can still believe in," Spong noted. "And if I am honest, I must stop pretending that this God still exists."
"Today's Christian does not need to be born again," he said simply. "Today's Christian needs to grow up and celebrate maturity."
A Dying Breed
Despite the confrontational questions, Spong was received warmly by most of his Jesus Seminar fellows. Wearing his white collar and brightly colored bishop's blouse, he was surrounded by admirers after his performance.
If nothing else, Spong had dexterously straddled the fence between Enlightenment rationalism and postmodern experientialism. He spoke of the church's need to accept Galileo, Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud in this "space age," as though this were a novel insight. The bishop's appreciation and understanding of science is likely not much greater than what he learned in high school.
But Spong spoke with the confidence of a Voltaire, sure that the age of reason will prevail over churchly superstition. This appealed to the aging majority of the Jesus Seminar, no doubt. But Spong's New Agey description of God as a subjective experience unique to every individual was edgy enough to separate him from most of the rationalist skeptics in the audience. He's too old to have ever been a hippie, but he tried desperately to mimic some of the gooey love language of Sixties-era theorists such as Marcus Borg, Matthew Fox, Marianne Williamson, or Rosemary Ruether. The aging bishop's efforts to be "with it" were perhaps not entirely unsuccessful, at least by the standards of this crowd. But that's not saying much.
When Spong had finished and the seminar adjourned for a break, I left the hotel ballroom and had walked only a few blocks down Broadway before coming face-to-face with the right-wing religion Spong had so colorfully warned me of just an hour before.
There was loud singing coming from a store-front church meeting in an old theater. I walked in and discovered hundreds of worshippers filling the auditorium at a weeknight service, clapping, singing, and, in many cases, jumping up and down. The majority were black, Asian, or Hispanic, and represented the full spectrum of ages. It was standing room only, and the gathering was alive with an energy absent from the hotel ballroom in which the Jesus Seminar scholars had exchanged their wry observations.
It was an unexpected and jarring reminder that even in Manhattan, the Jesus Seminar's perspective is hardly dominant. The multiethnic audience of the evangelical congregation reflected the international nature of the orthodox Christian revival that is sweeping the globe, in some cases even infecting the liberal bastions of mainline Protestantism in the United States. Here is the future of Christianity, and it is leaving Spong and his like behind.
Watching the now very senior, retired bishop implore and gesture before the Jesus Seminar, I was reminded of old newsreel footage of elderly Confederate veterans at their last reunions in the 1930s. Summoning their dwindling energies for final rebels yells; waving the old banners; unbending, stout, still espousing the Old Cause, the veterans were marvelous old fossils to behold. No longer possessed with virility or bayonets, they could no longer intimidate anyone.
So too is it with John Shelby Spong. Still brandishing the stale theologies and ideologies of a half-century ago, most of them now in open retreat, the old bishop is a caricature of what we expect from liberal has-been prelates.
With the sound of joyful song in my ears, I left the old theater and returned to the Marriott. There were a few more speakers remaining, and I wanted to take every opportunity to view that dying breed.
