New Jersey Will Be the Third State in America to Legalize Gay Marriage

Column by Bishop John Shelby Spong on 12 March 2009 1 Comments
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Question

I moved from being an atheist to a believer. I would never have been an atheist if I had paid more attention to the church I was raised in, the United Church of Canada. I saw Christianity negatively because of the bad example and message of the conservative churches. To be fair, though, my church should have presented its views better. When I investigated, I found that it was not just secularism applied compassionately, but there were theological roots to Liberal Christian beliefs contrary to what fundamentalists claim. I have since found that there are good and bad wings in the Lutheran, Catholic and Anglican churches. I wonder if it is fair to say that God does not ever intervene. I have heard of some things that defy logical explanation. On a modest point, my Dad almost died in February of 2005. Perhaps it was just the power of positive thinking, but after the United Church Hospital chaplain led a prayer, he improved and three weeks later I brought him home. He has since passed away but he got 17 more months of life. I saw in your records that you wrote an essay, "Why I am not a Unitarian." I tried unsuccessfully to retrieve that essay. Could you repeat it please?

Answer

I share your enthusiasm for the United Church of Canada. It was born in the 1920's as a merger among Protestant bodies in Canada, but primarily between the English Methodists and the Scottish Presbyterians in the Canadian Prairies. Just the fact that these bodies had to be able to see more strength in the things that united them than weakness in the things that divided them created a consciousness within that church that in successive generations would help them to be open to other changing possibilities.


In the 1930's, they affirmed that their ministry was open to women long before any woman sought ordination. Canadian Anglicans did not do that until the 1980's. In 1988 the United Church of Canada declared that no one was to be precluded from their life or ministry because of sexual orientation. At that time, the Canadian Anglicans were putting a priest named James Ferry on trial in a medieval institution called Bishopscourt and found him guilty of "disobeying his bishop" and removed from him the license to officiate as an Anglican priest. His crime? He had confessed his homosexuality to his bishop because he was being blackmailed in his congregation. His bishop responded by outing him publicly and demanding that he leave his partner of some years. When James Ferry refused to obey this command of his bishop he was found "guilty of disobeying his bishop."


Under the leadership of a moderator named Bill Phipps, the United Church of Canada inaugurated theological discussions that moved parts of this church into a contemporary conversation with the modern world.


It was the United Church of Canada that decided to build an experimental church in a Toronto suburb that would lease space in a shopping mall for worship on Sunday and do everything else in the homes of its members. Its life would allow liturgical experimentation and was designed to pursue theological learning even when it challenged conventional Christian understanding. They wanted to meet the alienated former church members more than halfway.


It was the United Church of Canada that produced and nurtured the Rev. Gretta Vosper, pastor at a Toronto suburban church, who became one of Canada's most exciting and, yes, controversial Christian voices. She leads the Progressive Christian Movement in Canada and is the author of a recent Canadian bestseller, With or Without God, a book that seeks a new way of understanding Christianity in the 21st century. While conservatives called for her expulsion, both her congregation and the United Church of Canada have been very supportive.

It is the United Church of Canada that has poured resources into conference centers across that vast nation, from Tatamagouche in Nova Scotia to Naramata in British Columbia, with Five Oaks in Ontario and Prairie Christian Training Center in Fort Qu'ppelle in Saskatchewan.


It is a church that encourages growth, contemporary music, theological and cultural diversity, environmental concerns, Christian education and social activism. I am devoted to it and have been deeply enriched by it.


To your question of whether God intervenes and the anecdotal data that you offer in support of that idea: I am suspicious of most claims but I would never say that God was limited by my knowledge. The theological problem comes when those who support intervention have to explain why God did not intervene to end slavery, to stop the Holocaust, to divert a tsunami or a hurricane. It is not easy or accurate to be theologically simplistic.


John Shelby Spong

 

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