[Peace-discuss] Bishop John Shelby Spong -- A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

[Karen Medina]

October 15, 2009
Bishop John Shelby Spong -- A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of
homosexuality in the church with anyone. I will no longer engage the
biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians
about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view
still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or
listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God,"
about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through
prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured."
Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy. I will no
longer dignify by listening to the thoughts of those who advocate
"reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and
need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that
the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the
presence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and lesbian people. I
will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and
undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call
homosexuality "deviant." I will no longer listen to that pious
sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ,
which suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest
phrase that "we love the sinner but hate the sin." That statement is,
I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to
cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear
homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible
with the Christ they claim to profess, so they adopt this face-saving
and absolutely false statement. I will no longer temper my
understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny
smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to
emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries
conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews,
women and homosexual persons with what it assumes is "high-sounding,
pious rhetoric." The day for that mentality has quite simply come to
an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it
any longer. The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the
Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new
consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer
talk to anyone but themselves. I will no longer seek to slow down the
witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle
ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice
postponed is justice denied. That can be a resting place no longer for
anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice
awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding was to "Roll
on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

I will particularly ignore those members of my own Episcopal Church
who seek to break away from this body to form a "new church," claiming
that this new and bigoted instrument alone now represents the Anglican
Communion. Such a new ecclesiastical body is designed to allow these
pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no
longer exists, to form a community in which they can continue to hate
gay people, distort gay people with their hopeless rhetoric and to be
part of a religious fellowship in which they can continue to feel
justified in their homophobic prejudices for the rest of their
tortured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is preserved
by allowing injustice, oppression and psychological tyranny to go
unchallenged.

In my personal life, I will no longer listen to televised debates
conducted by "fair-minded" channels that seek to give "both sides" of
this issue "equal time." I am aware that these stations no longer give
equal time to the advocates of treating women as if they are the
property of men or to the advocates of reinstating either segregation
or slavery, despite the fact that when these evil institutions were
coming to an end the Bible was still being quoted frequently on each
of these subjects. It is time for the media to announce that there are
no longer two sides to the issue of full humanity for gay and lesbian
people. There is no way that justice for homosexual people can be
compromised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the
present occupant of that office is either not willing or not able to
inform and educate himself on public issues on which he dares to speak
with embarrassing ineptitude. I will no longer be respectful of the
leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who seems to believe that
rude behavior, intolerance and even killing prejudice is somehow
acceptable, so long as it comes from third-world religious leaders,
who more than anything else reveal in themselves the price that
colonial oppression has required of the minds and hearts of so many of
our world's population. I see no way that ignorance and truth can be
placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is somehow less evil
if the Bible is quoted to justify it. I will dismiss as unworthy of
any more of my attention the wild, false and uninformed opinions of
such would-be religious leaders as Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Jerry
Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Duncan. My country
and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money
trying to accommodate these backward points of view when they are no
longer even tolerable.

I make these statements because it is time to move on. The battle is
over. The victory has been won. There is no reasonable doubt as to
what the final outcome of this struggle will be. Homosexual people
will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legitimate
claim on every right that both church and society have to offer any of
us. Homosexual marriages will become legal, recognized by the state
and pronounced holy by the church. "Don't ask, don't tell" will be
dismantled as the policy of our armed forces. We will and we must
learn that equality of citizenship is not something that should ever
be submitted to a referendum. Equality under and before the law is a
solemn promise conveyed to all our citizens in the Constitution
itself. Can any of us imagine having a public referendum on whether
slavery should continue, whether segregation should be dismantled,
whether voting privileges should be offered to women? The time has
come for politicians to stop hiding behind unjust laws that they
themselves helped to enact, and to abandon that convenient shield of
demanding a vote on the rights of full citizenship because they do not
understand the difference between a constitutional democracy, which
this nation has, and a "mobocracy," which this nation rejected when it
adopted its constitution. We do not put the civil rights of a minority
to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a majority vote of some
ecclesiastical body in order to bless, ordain, recognize and celebrate
the lives and gifts of gay and lesbian people in the life of the
church. No one should ever again be forced to submit the privilege of
citizenship in this nation or membership in the Christian Church to
the will of a majority vote.

The battle in both our culture and our church to rid our souls of this
dying prejudice is finished. A new consciousness has arisen. A
decision has quite clearly been made. Inequality for gay and lesbian
people is no longer a debatable issue in either church or state.
Therefore, I will from this moment on refuse to dignify the continued
public expression of ignorant prejudice by engaging it. I do not
tolerate racism or sexism any longer. From this moment on, I will no
longer tolerate our culture's various forms of homophobia. I do not
care who it is who articulates these attitudes or who tries to make
them sound holy with religious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get settled
and this issue is now settled for me. I do not debate any longer with
members of the "Flat Earth Society" either. I do not debate with
people who think we should treat epilepsy by casting demons out of the
epileptic person; I do not waste time engaging those medical opinions
that suggest that bleeding the patient might release the infection. I
do not converse with people who think that Hurricane Katrina hit New
Orleans as punishment for the sin of being the birthplace of Ellen
DeGeneres or that the terrorists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because
we tolerated homosexual people, abortions, feminism or the American
Civil Liberties Union. I am tired of being embarrassed by so much of
my church's participation in causes that are quite unworthy of the
Christ I serve or the God whose mystery and wonder I appreciate more
each day. Indeed I feel the Christian Church should not only
apologize, but do public penance for the way we have treated people of
color, women, adherents of other religions and those we designated
heretics, as well as gay and lesbian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Russell Lowell once put it more than
a century ago: "New occasions teach new duties, Time makes ancient
good uncouth." I am ready now to claim the victory. I will from now on
assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or to
discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any
longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever.

This is my manifesto and my creed. I proclaim it today. I invite
others to join me in this public declaration. I believe that such a
public outpouring will help cleanse both the church and this nation of
its own distorting past. It will restore integrity and honor to both
church and state. It will signal that a new day has dawned and we are
ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to
celebrate it.

– John Shelby Spong