Jack Spong's Manifesto

Thanks to Erika, I was aware of Jack Spong's latest, but didn't want to carry it wholesale because of his copyrighting and commercial activities in presenting his ideas. There are clauses about permissions about carrying it in full and the like. Now it is made available and is complete via Ruth Gledhill I can more easily comment.

I think his sentiment is right, that he won't any longer debate homosexuality with people. I'm also fed up with adding a justification: I now assume it and write of it assuming it, for example when giving another voice into Fulcrum.

Inevitably, such people who are religiously homophobic, when set against an institution shaking this off, are going to separate off. Let them go, I say. Have the courage of your convictions. Comments such as those by Revd Stephen Kuhrt that he is 'orthodox' on homosexuality as part of his loyalty to the Church of England shows just how backward the Church of England has become, that someone can claim orthodoxy on an issue that has little to do with doctrinal orthodoxy or heterodoxy. He notes also how well evangelicals are doing during the occupation of the office of Archbishop of Canterbury by Rowan Williams, contrasted with Robert Runcie. Keep fighting the ugly corner!

Theology, especially narrative theology, is such a dishonest business these days, that the criticism Rowan Williams when Bishop of Monmouth made of John Spong's Twelve Theses wasn't worth too much attention, but this comment by John Spong now has resonance given the recent lecture by Peter Selby:

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.

The Archbishop is a person who puts religious bureaucracy and its intentions and fantasies before human rights, who can somehow separate out human rights from religious rights. This is why Peter Selby is right with the effective charge of being complicit. It is also why the silence of serving, paid bishops - at least those who should know better - is so deafening.

No, one doesn't debate with the Flat Earth Society, or the equivalent, but sometimes you do have to engage prejudice and stupidity with rationality. Take creationists, for example, whose argument trotted out is that evolution does not have proof of running across species. We now know from DNA and cellular switching that the eye evolved only once, and that it spread through the tree of life through stage after stage of development. There are now some fossils of species in transition. It may not be worth a debate, to say this to creationists, but it is worth saying to underline a point. And if these sorts say the Fall has to be historical with a real person Adam etc. or the whole of the redemptive scheme to Jesus Christ fails, then that's their lookout. You create the height of the barrier, so don't be suprised if (like the athlete Jonathan Edwards) you fail to get over it any more.

So we don't debate, but people of influence, or attempted influence, have to be tackled. Someone who causes real harm has to be tackled. The question is still, whether, the institutions are the right ones given what theologies we hold. Even John Spong is having to be selective.