An Open Letter to George F. Will at The Washington Post

By Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong (ret.)

 You have a platform to be a major influence in shaping public opinion. I am impressed by some of your insights but less impressed by your right-of-center political musings. I am absolutely amazed at the profoundly uninformed positions you recently offered the public on the questions that are currently the content of ecclesiastical debate in our churches. You seem to have no understanding of what it means to seek to bind together an ancient faith with the insights of our contemporary world. I appreciate that you are a fellow Episcopalian and are interested in the issue of the consecration of Eugene Robinson to be a bishop. The fact that this was covered by the media of the world indicates that it was a significant moment of history, a turning point in the Christian Church. I believe it was the enabling vote at the General Convention Church that allowed this consecration to go forward and opened our church decisively to the full inclusion of homosexual people. It also struck a mighty blow at cultural homophobia. It has inaugurated a great consciousness-raising and a welcome discussion that has reached far beyond the boundaries of the Episcopal Church. That is a major accomplishment for a relatively small church. Yet, in your column, you have characterized this debate as one that pits the "cultural trendiness" of the Northern Hemisphere nations against the "doctrinal clarity" of the Southern Hemisphere nations. I regard that analysis as breathtakingly naive and suggest that it reveals nothing more than your own deep and abiding prejudice. For you to speak publicly about this issue, when you are as poorly informed as your words reveal you to be, calls either your competence or your integrity (perhaps both) into question. Since you added a gratuitous comment about me by name in one column, I think it appropriate that I respond in an equally public way. You pose the issues of this debate as between modernism in religion and the true faith of antiquity. You suggest that two thousand years of Church teaching about sexuality and family are being imaginatively construed in "a certain interpretive trajectory." You quote approvingly a priest who said, "When the plain teaching of the Bible was referenced, we were told that it was time to move on; the Bible simply had not kept up." You appear to be saying that those who quote the Bible, as if it provides the last word on moral issues, are to be commended. Well, perhaps you need to understand why it is that people who quote the Bible to under-gird their own inability to embrace reality might need to be enlightened. The Bible was quoted to support the divine right of Kings when the Magna Carta made its appearance; history has demonstrated that the Bible was wrong on that issue and today people have embraced democracy. You might think that represents "cultural trendiness," but I believe it represents an emerging consciousness that the writers of the Bible, bound to their time in history, could never have contemplated. In the 17th century, the Church, acting out of what you call "doctrinal clarity," al-most executed Galileo because his study of the motion of "heavenly bodies" led him to the conclusion that the earth was not the center of the universe and that indeed the earth rotated around the sun. The "fathers of the Church" quoted a verse from the book of Joshua as sure proof that the sun rotated around the earth. Today, eyes would roll when this "clear teaching of the Bible" is referenced. In the 19th century, Charles Darwin challenged the "clear teaching of the Bible" in the story of creation. But no matter how many passages of scripture have been quoted since “The Origin of Species” was published, our modern world is quite sure that it is Darwin rather than the Bible that is closer to the truth (unless you want to regard DNA evidence as more "cultural trendiness"). One could go on and show how "doctrinal clarity" led the Church to participate in, and to justify with biblical quotations, the institution of slavery as well as slavery's two bastard stepchildren, segregation and apartheid. Is our present integrated society just another example of "cultural trendiness?" Women in this country were certainly treated until relatively modern times with what you call "doctrinal clarity." The bible defined the woman as property that, along with the ox and the ass, was not to be coveted. With full biblical encouragement, the Church in the Middle Ages regarded women as any-thing but equal. Women did not receive the power of the vote in the U.S. until 1920, and even that was accomplished against the opposition of the Bible quoters. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1876 that a woman could not practice law in Illinois because "God has designed her for the more domestic role." Is that what you are now calling "progressive cultural aggression" which you suggest is challenging "the conservatism of institutions?" I consider it a step into enlightenment.

You note approvingly in your column, that when dissident Episcopalians met recently to nurse the wounds of their defeat at the General Convention, that they received a letter of support from the Pope and Cardinal Ratzinger. Would you have our church in this 21st century approve the incredible negativi-ty that emanates from the Roman Catholic Church about women? Do you think that this Church, which has spawned a veritable culture of abuse and cover- up, is qualified to lecture anyone on issues of either morality or "doctrinal clarity?" You see, the battle over the full acceptance of homosexual people in both Church and society is like all of these other movements. It pits an old and dying definition, supported by appeals to scripture, against an emerging new consciousness. Slavery was sustained as long as African people could be defined as subhuman, childlike and without sufficient intelligence to be full citizens of this land. Slavery and segregation collapsed when that definition was mortally wounded by a new consciousness informed by new data. Are you suggesting that this was the result of "cultural trendiness?" The same thing happened with women’s rights; the breaking of the traditional female stereotype began when women challenged the male-imposed definition of what it means to be a woman. Women insisted on the right to define themselves. This new definition led women not only into education and the workplace but also into positions in the cabinet of the President, and into the House of Representatives, the Senate, the governors' mansions and the Supreme Court as the 20th century unfolded. This is not "cultural trendiness"; this is the direct result of a new consciousness that neither you nor anyone else will ever turn around. The battle for the full inclusion of homosexual persons in both the Church and the social order is the result of a similar new consciousness attacking an old and inadequate definition. Homosexual people were once defined, with biblical under- girding, as sinful people. It was assumed by this negative definition that gay and lesbian people either chose to be homosexual, as an act of moral depravity, or that they were mentally ill and could not help themselves. That definition has simply been rendered inoperative by new knowledge. Most educated people today accept the fact that sexual orientation, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is something over which people have no control. Human beings simply awaken to it; they do not choose it. Homosexual orientation is also now generally recognized as consisting of a stable percentage of the population at all times and in all places. This means that it cannot be externally caused as assumed by the old definition. The scientifically documented presence of homosexuality in the animal kingdom argues against it being classified as "unnatural," unless you attribute to animals the ability to make moral choices. These are the factors that have created the emerging new consensus, and if they are correct, as more and more scholars now believe, then homosexuality must be seen as being in the same category as race, gender or even left-handedness. They are the "givens", not the choices of the individuals. To discriminate against a person on the basis of something the per-son is must be seen as nothing more than prejudicial ignorance that leads to the willful destruction of another's humanity. That makes it an overt act of bigotry. To quote the Bible to render bigotry acceptable is neither new nor is it any more convincing in this situation than it has been when used earlier in history to justify other evils. What our church has done is nothing less than to challenge the ignorance and prejudice that has al-lowed people to participate in the oppression of countless numbers of people throughout history, whose only "sin" was that they were born with a sexual orientation different from the majority. Our Church has done an audacious thing. This is a cause for rejoicing that another in a long list of human prejudices has begun to fall. The fact that we have justified our destructive behavior in the past with quotations from the Bible does not excuse our negativity. This is not "cultural trendiness," nor is it a denial of "doctrinal clarity." Maybe it is time for you to examine these issues more thoroughly before you place your uninformed biases into the public arena.

(Spong is retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, NJ; his letter was forwarded by email from CTA’s National Office).