[REV.
DR.
C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Bishop Spong, first
of all, let me just say what an honor it is
to interview you.
You are a person that I have admired, and
whose writings I have read carefully.
And so to interview you is really a special
pleasure.
You and Christine are so hospitable in asking
us to come to your house and hosting us here.
[RT.
REV.
JOHN SHELBY SPONG, GUEST]: It's a pleasure.
Thank you for doing it.
[WG]: I want to talk about the book, but I
really want to frame it in the context of
your ministry.
I wonder when did you begin to realize that
you are a clarifier and a dissenter and a
reformer for people who have hoped for change
in the Christian Church, but not known whether
it would ever come or go far enough.
When did you realize that you were crucial
to that?
[JS]: I'm not sure I've ever realized how
"crucial" I am.
I think it's a matter of a consciousness emerging,
in time, and you have simply to articulate
that consciousness.
I grew up in a Christian church - an Episcopal
church, as a matter of fact - in Charlotte,
North Carolina, that taught me that segregation
was the will of God, and quoted the bible
to prove it.
They taught me that women were inferior to
men by nature, and quoted the bible to prove
it.
They taught me it was okay to hate other religions,
and especially the Jews, and quoted the bible
to prove it.
And they taught me that homosexuals were either
mentally sick or morally depraved, and of
course, quoted the bible to prove it.
And so my life has sort of been an emergence
out of the prejudices that my church planted
in me.
And they came in various stages.
I'd like to think that it was a Damascus road
experience, and I got up and said, "Now I'm
in a different place," but the fact is that
racism is in the blood of people that grow
up in the segregated South.
I still consider myself a recovering racist,
and the Civil Rights Movement posed the issues
for me very bluntly, and it caused me to look
at people very differently.
And I can remember the stages.
I can remember, as a child, I was maybe in
the fifth grade - maybe ten years old.
World War II had begun; there was a great
rush of patriotism around, and another school
in Charlotte invited my school to send some
representatives to a "patriotic assembly"
that they were planning.
And for some reason, I don't know why, I was
chosen - one of three, maybe four, with our
teacher.
It was a lark for me, because I got out of
school.
And at that point, it never occurred to me
that schools were segregated; it didn't occur
to me to think there were no Black children
in my school - that's just the way things
were.
Segregation builds very high walls.
But I got out to this school, and suddenly
I saw more Black children than I'd ever seen
before in my life.
And I saw Black teachers.
The only Black people I'd ever seen before
had been domestic servants, or people working
in your yard - and these people were teachers.
And the principal was Black; and they were
driving cars.
I'd never seen a Black person drive a car
- I'd seen a Black man drive an old truck
- but this was just an eye-opening experience.
And then we went into the assembly, and we
were honored guests, so we were seated up
on the stage, and they said, "Now let us stand
and say together the Lord's Prayer."
That was quite legal in North Carolina in
1944 - or 1943, I guess this was - and so
we did.
And I knew the Lord's Prayer, so I joined
right in.
And then it suddenly occurred to me that all
these people were praying the same prayer
to the same God - and we weren't allowed to
worship together; I'd never seen a Black person
in worship with me before.
Then they told us to remain standing and say
the Pledge of Allegiance - I did that; I was
a cub scout, I knew how to do that.
I was very proud, I put my hand over my heart.
"And remain standing for the singing of our
national anthem."
Well, I knew that too - it's a pretty tough
song to sing when you're ten years old, but
I knew it; and I stood up and got ready to
sing "Oh Say, Can You See" - and that wasn't
the national anthem!
They played "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which
I heard later was called the Black national
anthem.
And every child in that school knew that by
heart, and sang it - it was a whole new revelation!
And I'd been told that slavery was a really
wonderful thing that we White folks had done
for those poor Africans; you know, we brought
them over here and taught them how to dress
and brush their teeth, and got them baptized,
and we just were wonderful people to have
done this - and this song was talking about
the lash of the master, and bleeding feet
as you walked toward both slavery and freedom.
That was a whole new image.
I didn't know what to do with that, except
to begin to process it.
And so it sort of began to be the process.
I had one other experience as a child.
My father had taught me that I always must
say "sir" or "ma'am" when I address my elders;
and I would say "Yes, sir," "No, sir," "Yes,
ma'am," "No, ma'am" - if i failed to do that,
they would say, "Yes, what?" and I would quickly
put the "ma'am" in there for fear of the consequences.
But my father had hired two Black men to help
him build a decorative brick wall in our yard,
and I was just a little kid - maybe five - and
I was going to help.
And in the course of the day, one of the two
Black men, who had white hair and was clearly
elderly, said something to me and I responded,
"Yes, sir" to him, as I had been taught.
And my father grabbed me, took me into the
house, and lectured me sternly that you do
not say "sir" to - I'm not going to say what
he called him - but again, that's the first
time I remember thinking, maybe my father's
wrong.
You know, a father, parents, are sort of God
figures to little children, and yet this didn't
add up.
I'd been taught to respect my elders; this
man was clearly my elder; I'd done what I'd
been taught, and I was disciplined for it.
And that didn't make any sense to me.
Nobody'd told me there's another factor in
there called "race."
It didn't fit in.
So, you know, that was again, discomfort;
and that's about all I can remember from my
childhood.
My life - all my prejudices were enforced
with biblical quotations.
And the first step I took out of that was
when I was about 14, and we had a new rector
who had come to our church.
And he broke all the molds in my mind - this
was right after World War II.
He was a Navy chaplain in the South Pacific;
he was 32 - I really thought you had to be
about 80 to be a priest, because I'd never
known one that wasn't 80.
He drove a Ford convertible - that was just
very shocking to me.
I thought all clergy drove hearses; I'd never
seen a clergyman in anything but a hearse.
And he wore white buck shoes, which might
not be stylish today; it was pretty stylish
in 1946.
And he played a guitar, and he sort of reminded
me of Bing Crosby in "Going My Way," but I
hadn't seen Bing Crosby at that point.
But this man just was very different; in every
area he was different.
And he was not a biblical fundamentalist;
he was what I call an ecclesiastical fundamentalist.
He didn't say "The bible says," he says "The
Church teaches."
But I found out the Church has been teaching
for 2000 years, and it's awfully hard to track
down exactly what they teach on every subject;
so you've got a lot more flexibility.
When you say, "The bible says," somebody says,
"Well, show me where it says that," and you
have to go to chapter and verse.
So it was the first sort of step into flexibility.
Then when I got to the University of North
Carolina to begin my undergraduate work, everything
about modern education came into collision
with my fundamentalistic worldview.
And you can't be both.
You're either going to be religious in the
old sense, or you're going to be modern.
And you can't keep a foot in both camps.
And I found that terribly difficult.
And one of the people that was most helpful
to me was my professor of Zoology.
His name was Clayburn Jones, and he was an
active, practicing lay Christian; and he was
a thoroughgoing Darwinian Evolutionist - and
I'd never seen those two things put together
before.
So I really wrestled with that man, took a
number of courses with him, and I became sort
of what I am now: I'm absolutely convinced
of the reality of God; the meaning of the
holy, the transcendent; I'm not convinced
of anybody's definition of that God.
And so I see my life as a journey into the
mystery of that God.
The only path I know how to walk is the Christ
path; if I were a Buddhist I'd walk the Buddhist
path, but I'm not a Buddhist; I'm not a Jew,
I'm not a Muslim.
I don't have any disrespect for these three,
but the path I know, the path that's been
opened to me to walk is the Christ path into
the mystery of God - so I walk it.
I don't believe that God's a Christian.
And I think if I walk my path, my Christ path,
deeply enough, I will transcend all the limits
of my religion.
My hope is that the Jew and the Muslim and
the Buddhist and the Hindu will do the same
thing as they walk their path into the mystery
of God, and that once we transcend the limits
of human religion, then maybe we'll be able
to share in a way that we can't share now.
We don't have to sacrifice anything; I can
say to my friends in other faiths, from walking
the Christ path, "This is the gift that I
have received, and I want to share it with
you."
And they can say, "Well, this is the gift
I've received from walking the Jewish path,
or the Muslim path, etc., and I want to share
it with you."
And so we can take on the treasures of the
other without anybody having to sacrifice
their principles.
Now, you put that kind of transition into
the same life that's wrestling with the fact
that I have four daughters who crashed every
boundary that people had placed on women's
potential, and that I became a bishop in the
metropolitan New York area, where I had to
engage the Gay community, and I began to see
humanity in all sorts of forms; and any discrimination
against any child of God on the basis of any
external thing simply becomes a violation
of everything that I believe about God and
everything I believe about humanity.
And I'm the sort of person - I describe myself
as having an overdeveloped left brain and
an underdeveloped right brain.
But once you get through my brain and convert
my mind - there's no way I can't act on that
new conviction.
And so when I became aware, after a lot of
study with some doctor friends of mine - that
homosexuality is simply one aspect on the
spectrum of human sexuality, and that it's
neither good nor bad, and it's not chosen
- you simply awaken to it; I didn't choose
to be heterosexual, I just woke up and girls
didn't seem obnoxious to me any longer.
I didn't make a decision about it; I just
sort of followed my glands, I guess.
And so you realize that others don't do that,
either; and so it makes no sense to discriminate
against people because their skin is different
from yours, or their gender is different from
yours, or their sexual orientation, or they're
left-handed is different from mine.
There are lots of things in the human family
that set us apart from one another.
And we fear anything that's different - that's
one of the bases of our biology.
I think we've been taught to fear anything
that's different because it's a threat to
survival - and survival drives every living
thing, from a plant to a human being.
So the process of seeing humanity as human,
and to see God in the midst of humanity, which
is the center of the Jesus story, just drives
you to a set of different conclusions.
And so for what it's worth, I've walked through
these revolutions and I think history will
record that I've been on the right side of
all of them; and the Church, by and large,
as an institution, has been on the wrong side
of every one of them, and has had to be dragged,
screaming and kicking, past that boundary.
But we do make it.
You know, as I look at my Church today - North
Carolina, where I grew up, has one Episcopal
bishop, and he's and African-American, elected
by the people.
That's a long road from arresting people who
come to worship in a White church, to electing
an African-American to be the top of your
Church's structure.
My Church has a woman as the Presiding Bishop;
if we had a comparable office to the Archbishop
of Canterbury in America - she is a female,
and she is a very competent female.
My Church now has two openly-Gay bishops,
and we've got a number of Gay clergy.
I had 35 when I retired - perfectly open,
male and female, and living with their partners,
in most cases - some were single, but most
of them were living with their partners - and
there was never any conflict about this.
I've watched these revolutions, and I'm really
grateful to have had a chance to share in
them.
[WG]: You know, Bishop Spong, you are making
a point that is so resonant with me, because
I grew up in the South as well; and what you
described was my background.
You encountered biblical fundamentalism, and
you encountered what you called "ecclesiastical
fundamentalism."
How did you do that and realize that fundamentalism
was wrong, but retain a respect for the bible
and a respect for the Church?
[JS]: That's an interesting trick.
Yes, by and large, when people are disillusioned
by their religious upbringing, they just kick
over the traces.
I guess there's a part of me that still respects
the fundamentalism - not the hardcore misunderstanding
- but I was a child in a fairly dysfunctional
home.
My father was an alcoholic, and he died when
I was 12.
And fundamentalism gave me a sense of security
that I didn't have in my family, and so I
don't want to disrespect it at this stage
in my life.
My mother died a fundamentalist - she didn't
finish the ninth grade and did not have the
intellectual ability to cope with much beyond
that.
And so I began to see fundamentalism more
as a personality style and a cover for insecurity
than I do anything else.
And so the last thing I want to do is to hate
the fundamentalist, or even to judge the fundamentalist.
But I'm not going to be one.
And the journey is a pretty profound journey,
and I don't want to do anything other than
that.
I believe that every time a human being tries
to define God, that they commit idolatry,
because they act as if God can fit into the
categories of the human mind.
And yet I'm not going to be godless; that
is, I don't know how to be godless.
I call myself a God-intoxicated human being;
but the form of God is very non-defined I
love the statement that a retired bishop made
to me on one occasion, and I find myself repeating
it: he said, "The older I get, the more deeply
I believe; but the less beliefs I have."
And I think that's sort of where I am today.
I love going to church; I say the creeds every
Sunday, I have no trouble with the creeds
- I regard them as a fourth-century love song
that our ancestors sang to God.
It doesn't bother me that they reflect a three-tiered
universe that no longer exists in anybody's
mind except the most illiterate.
But the creeds to me are the way we framed
our worship song in the fourth century.
So I can sing the fourth century song - I
don't literalize it; I don't think it's a
straitjacket or girdle into which I've got
to force my flabby faith.
But I think it's a guide along the way: this
is how we understood reality.
Now, I live in the 21st century.
I've got to understand reality in a very different
way; and can I make my image of God fit into
the reality of my century?
If I didn't, I don't see how I could be a
Christian.
I fight that battle daily.
[WG]: How do you speak of God?
[JS]: I try not to speak of God as a being.
I think that's where we all get in trouble.
I don't see God as an external being, supernatural
in power, living somewhere above the sky and
periodically invading the earth.
What I think I can do, without being idolatrous,
is to talk about not God, but my experience
of God.
Then I'm talking about something that I can
relate to.
And I have to face the fact that my experience
might be delusional!
I've been in mental institutions, and I find
a lot of delusional talk about God.
Maybe mine is too - but I don't think so.
I believe that I experience God as a source
of life, and therefore I have to regard life
as holy.
And the more deeply and fully I live, the
more I think I make God visible.
I experience God as a source of love - and
this is primarily the Jesus story - but if
God is the source of love, the only way I
can worship God is by loving.
And the more deeply and fully I'm able to
transcend my limits and love another person,
then the more I think God becomes visible.
And then I borrow a phrase from Paul Tillich,
who was my shaping theologian.
Dr. Tillich died about 1963, I believe.
But Tillich defined God not as a being, but
as the ground of being; and that's a phrase
people have a hard time translating.
But if God is the ground of being, then the
only way I worship God is to become all that
I can be; and then to try to build a world
where everybody can become all that they can
be, because that's the way you reveal the
presence of God.
Well, that puts every prejudice to rout, it
seems to me.
And it's so deeply biblical.
When you go back and look at Paul, and when
he wrote Galatians he said, "Once you get
inside the Christ experience, you discover
there's no such thing as a Jew or a Gentile,
or a man or a woman, who wander free."
And I would add to that, Gay or Straight,
Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Muslim - every
category you want.
There's just a common humanity.
Now, how do we enhance that humanity in such
a way as to become humane?
I think Humanism is a religious ideal!
I remember being named the Humanist of the
Year once in New York by an organization,
and my critics wrote and said, "Now, I always
believed you weren't a Christian.
Now I know you're just a Humanist!"
I think the opposite of being a Humanist is
to be inhumane.
I think Christian Humanism is a very real
possibility.
And the fact that at the center of the Christ
story there is the image of God taking on
human form would indicate to me there must
be something okay about being human.
And if we can enhance the humanity of people,
then I think we're able to transcend all the
barriers.
Human beings, as far as I know them, are all
survival-oriented, because I think that's
what biology is about.
I can take a plant from one end of this house
to the other end of this house, and the plant
will turn to get the sun from the other direction
because survival is written into the heart
of life.
And I can take you into all sorts of places
in the world and show you that every living
thing is survival-oriented - but it's instinctual
behavior.
But human beings are self-conscious; so it
becomes self-conscious, adopted behavior.
And one of the reasons that human beings fear
anybody that's different is that that's a
threat to survival.
That's why we're xenophobic: it's not because
we're evil or because we've fallen into sin
from the Garden of Eden; it's because our
biology warns us to be aware of anybody that's
different!
So prejudices come out of that; sexism comes
out of that; homophobia comes out of that;
tribalism comes out of that; religion comes
out of that; religious wars come out of that.
The terrible things that we human beings do
to one another, and we do it all the time
- and even we do it in the name of religion
- but the terrible things we do are all survival-oriented.
Now, if we can project Jesus as the power
of God to call us beyond the self-centeredness
of being driven by our survival into the capacity
to love others as they are, then I think you
transform humanity and you call us into a
whole new sense of what it means to be human.
And I think that's what the kingdom of God
is all about.
[WG]: Is that the Gospel?
[JS]: I think that's exactly what the Gospel
is.
And I think you see that in every place - one
of the things that fascinates me is that when
Mark, who's the first Gospel writer tells
his story, he tells the story of the Christ
- there's no birth in Mark; and there's no
appearance of the risen Christ in Mark.
It's truncated in a lot of ways.
But he gets to the point of Jesus' death,
and he has him dead and limp and hanging on
the cross - and Mark puts a Gentile underneath
the cross and lets him do the interpreting.
That's fascinating!
He's an unclean Gentile: he hadn't been circumcised,
he doesn't keep the Torah, he doesn't obey
kosher dietary laws - he's unclean by every
category that Mark, as a Jew, would have recognized.
And yet he puts this unclean Gentile - and
he says of this dead life: "When you can give
your life away in love for others - that's
what God is."
And we translate that, "Truly this man was
the son of God," as if he had just passed
the Council of Nicea 101's theology.
But that's 300 years later.
He was saying, "We see God when we see a human
life that's so full that it isn't driven by
its own survival, and can give its life away
- and even love those who are killing him."
That's a really God-portrait, and I think
it's a powerful portrait.
