I loved this! A Manifesto!

A personal manifesto of the brilliant Bible scholar, Dr. John Shelby
Spong, retired Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark, NJ.

http://www.johnshelbyspong.com/

from Bishop John Shelby Spong --

A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

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 Sates 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