marcscyberchurch

A  Manifesto!

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!



by John Shelby Spong, posted October 15, 2009



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 States 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


I Gladly add my name to this manifesto, since it has been mine for several years already!

Br. Marc Croux
Deacon of the Young Rite in Belgium

Today's Pride Parade in Brussels had as its theme CHANGE YOUR MIND.
This morning I helped lead the religious service which traditionally opens the Pride day.
We elaborated on this theme. 
And one of the things we discussed was the complaceny people get into when they have achieved things and how that creeps up on them.  How we sometimes lose sight of our prime objectives.
Twenty years ago an ngo was formed in which a project to support male prostitutes was developed.  It was then hailed as a worldwide pioneering project etc.  But lo and behold, last year because of various and sundry organisational decisions, the fieldwork was dropped!  And this was the very reason why the ngo was created in the first place.
With the consequence that all the social workers from different local and national government initiatives who used to work together in this project now have created a new non-profit organisation called Alias, that was just formalised last week.
Right before I wanted to go to bed tonight, I opened my old missal that my sister as by a miracle found last week.  It fell open on the 19th Sunday through the year and this is its intro:
The history of a people is wrought with difficult and tragic situations.  This can lead to an entire people losing faith in its future and floundering in despair.  The worst may then be feared.  If this trial is conquered, a people can liven up and overcome their situation entirely.  With its remaining strength and abilities as vantage point, a new beginning is possible.