[Vision2020] Bishop Spong on gays - More

[Ralph Nielsen]

Bishop Spong, Jan. 16, 2008

Kenneth Jacobson from Frazee, Minnesota, writes:

ws has been received that a California Episcopal Diocese (San  
Joaquin) has reached the second stage in voting to leave the national  
Episcopal Communion over the issue of homosexuality. The media is  
describing the anti-gay position as biblical, the pro-gay as being  
against Bible teaching. After reading Living in Sin and The Sins of  
Scripture, I cannot believe that it is that simple. Reporters are not  
doing their job of careful investigation.

Have these biblical stories and texts that are quoted to support the  
anti-gay position ever been read, analyzed, thoroughly debated, and  
defended in bishops' conferences? These are supposedly intelligent  
people who respect scholarship. How can they support exclusion on  
such flimsy evidence?

Am I wrong to think this struggle among Episcopalians might be a  
healthy thing, and that resistance from the highest levels might be a  
way of teaching and illuminating facts and reality, exposing the  
prejudice for the evil it is?

Where is all this going? What could or should be done to bring about  
a rational and acceptable result? Your thoughts and your comments  
would be very much appreciated.
Dear Kenneth,

It is not fair to expect secular journalists to be biblical scholars,  
nor should it be anticipated that they would spend the necessary time  
to research the issue. It is for that reason that they tend to accept  
uncritically the oft-repeated Evangelical Protestant and Conservative  
Roman Catholic definitions that the Bible is anti-gay. If these  
people were honest, they would have to admit that the Bible is also  
pro-slavery and anti-women.

There is also a widely accepted mentality that if the Bible is  
opposed, the idea must be wrong. That is little more than nonsensical  
fundamentalism. The rise of democracy was contrary to the "clear  
teaching of the Bible." as the debate over the forced signing of the  
Magna Carta by King John of England in 1215 revealed. The Bible was  
quoted to prove that Galileo was wrong; that Darwin was wrong; that  
Freud was wrong; and that allowing women to be educated, to vote, to  
enter the professions, and to be ordained was wrong. So the fact that  
the Bible is quoted to prove that homosexuality is evil and to be  
condemned is hardly a strong argument, given the history of how many  
times the Bible has been wrong. I believe that most bishops know this  
but the Episcopal Church has some fundamentalist bishops and a few  
who are "fellow travelers" with fundamentalists

The Bible was written between the years 1000 B.C.E. and 135 C.E. Our  
knowledge of almost everything has increased exponentially since that  
time. It is the height of ignorance to continue using the Bible as an  
encyclopedia of knowledge to keep dying prejudices intact. The media  
seems to cooperate in perpetuating that long ago abandoned biblical  
attitude.

That is not surprising since the religious people keep quoting it to  
justify their continued state of unenlightenment. That attitude is  
hardly worthy of the time it takes to engage it. I do not debate with  
members of the flat Earth society either. Prejudices all die. The  
first sign that death is imminent comes when the prejudice is debated  
publicly. The tragedy is that church leaders back the wrong side of  
the conflict, which is happening today from the Pope to the  
Archbishop of Canterbury to the current crop of Evangelical leaders.  
That too will pass and the debate on homosexuality will be just one  
more embarrassment in Christian history.

- John Shelby Spong