Theophilic Croutons, Lurkers,
It was my plan not to offer public comment on the declaration [http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/shamers.html] to which I lent my name last week, as that document is pretty clear, but circumstances have caused me to reconsider.
There will be no Spong-bashing around here. Bishop Spong is a perfectly nice man who seems to me to believe what he says as much as I hope I believe what I say. I do not believe him to be evil, but I do believe him to be mistaken. Because his theses [http://www.intac.com/~rollins/jsspong/reform.html] go the very heart of Christian believing, to the heart of what I took a public oath to defend, I felt it my duty to draw a line. The constitution and canons of our church do not use words like heretic, heresy, or apostate, and I think there is wisdom in that. It should be noted that in our canons, "disassociation" is the weakest expression of disapprobation, and that the declaration I have signed is only an informal version of official disassociation. Nobody is out for blood; however, just as he needed to express his beliefs, we needed to say that they are demonstrably not within the bounds of Anglicanism's generous latitude.
Trying to hold the center is hard work, and the rewards are few. Some of you will recall that about two years ago I wrote an opinion piece that was copied by two dozen diocesan papers. In it I was most critical of a right-wing group for using the tragic situation in Long Island to advance their cause by trashing the reputation of the entire church. For this one of the Ambridge people labelled me "a dangerous bishop." Others were much less kind. (They have never apologized for spreading so much proven untruth about the LI affair, btw.) A year later, when I had to point out the theological realities of a project dear to the left, I was treated no better by them. Before General Convention, I publicly urged that we simply leave some sexuality issues to settle before we painted ourselves into one of several corners, I got actual hate mail from a bishop, and a worse letter from his wife. I report all this to help you understand that I was not eager to go public again, did not want the distraction from the great work Bethlehem is entering upon, but did feel it necessary to do my duty.
A word about claims about "context." Bishop Spong did not ask us to read everything he has ever written, or even anything at all, but has put forward his theses on their own terms, and has done with admirabily clarity. They express succinctly a theological stance that has been present in this century and is quite familiar to historians or to us who have been around for a few generations. None of it requires special explanation.
Bishop Spong's call to renounce a "theistic concept" of God is a call to give up the idea that God is available to you in a relationship, the idea that God acts either in history or in your life, the idea that there is a plan or purpose to your life that God will help you live out. (Interestingly, with such a view, I must point out, there can be no saying that "God made me" black, white, straight, gay, left-handed, etc.) This virtual atheism is the keystone to all of his other theses, and Bishop Spong is forthright in putting it first. From it follows the bishop's assertion that there was neither incarnation nor resurrection, that prayer is not heard or answered, that there are no moral principles binding on everyone, and so on. In a "both/and," post-Heisenberg world where physicists are poets, theologians, and philosophers, the bishop's asking us to think in "either/or" Newtonian terms is a puzzlement to say the least.
His view, particularly that about God acting, especially in response to prayer, is in contradiction of every single prayer in the prayer book, every article of the creed, and of course the vows he and I took when we became bishops. Further more, his theses do not ask for lattitude, "room at the table," but are held out as the path the Church must take or else die. I cannot be silent when people are told that what they have staked their lives on is an illusion.
As I did not have a hand in writing the declaration, I have added the comments above, and would add that I would have ended the declaration differently. Permit me to say a word about the Church as home and host to doubters or those who struggle for or with faith. Permit me to speak from experience.
I have been three kinds of doubter in my life, as I look at it. The first kind was the numb near-despair of simultaneously watching my younger brother die horribly by millimetres and trying to cope with the enormity of Nick's brain injury. There was too much pain for me to believe in God (except as ogre, perhaps), too much anger for me to believe, too little light to consider believing. Poor Canon Lesley Northup was subjected to hundreds of emails reiterating my hurt, and I remain in debt to her patience and wisdom.
In the case of that kind of doubt, the only thing I could do or be was a lurker in CHurch. I would sit in the back of Christ Church in New Haven or at chapel services at the Div School, and just be in the company of those who could do the believing, of those who could bear me along without too many words. By staying in their company when I couldn't believe, I came slowly to the times when I could reach out for God.
There have also been times of honest intellectual doubt, times when I have learned that you cannot, in the long run, figure God out, times when you beat your head against the wall. I do not believe that we can think our way to faith, or at least have never met anybody who did.
The temptation that lurks behind honest intellectual doubt, of course, is to be proud of it. That is the third kind of doubt, the pose of doubting. It makes you special, it draws attention, it allows you to keep a distance from really putting your shoulder to wheel in the sweaty work of loving the world.
I know this because I know both real intellectual doubt and the less noble hobby of doubting, the keeping of commitment at bay.
In both sincere and affected doubt, the Church has kept me and millions like me in its embrace, waited with us for light, supported us with prayer, attempted to give direction when the time was right, and generally -- and O, it is so hard to admit this -- tolerated me. It is so hard to look back at one's life and realize how often one has been put up with, but it is also an experience of grace to do so.
So I want to say to those who have expressed their doubt or uncertainty on the "Bethlehem of PA" meeting that there is not and never will be an open season on people in the Diocese with faith struggles just because I have been among those who say that Bishop Spong has crossed a line. There is all the difference in the world between having doubts and telling others that Jesus is not risen. It is that business about causing one of Jesus' little ones who believe in him to stumble, and that is where I find myself to have gotten off the bus.
As I said to Linda yesterday, I am available to anyone in diocese who wants to talk these things through.
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