c. 1999 Religion News Service
HANOVER, N.J. _ Bishop John Shelby Spong, the controversial head of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark (N.J.), may be retiring, but he is refusing to end his fight for the ordination of gays and lesbians and for church approval of same-sex marriages.
On Sunday (Jan. 31), in his valedictory address to the 125th convention of his diocese, Spong, who has spent decades seeking to push the Episcopal Church _ and all Christianity _ in a progressive direction, lashed out at the conservative element within the denomination.”It is sometimes amazing how hostile and how divisive religious extremism can become,”Spong told an enthusiastic crowd of 800.”That was the mentality which emerged in and dominated the Anglican Communion at the Lambeth Conference during 1998.” Spong was a leader in the bitter fight against conservative, mostly Third World bishops at the Lambeth Conference, the once-a-decade gathering of bishops from the worldwide Anglican Communion, as they sought to declare homosexuality a sin and prohibit gays from holding leadership positions within the church.
In the end, the conservatives prevailed. More than 700 bishops from around the world attended the conference, and by a vote of 526-70 (with 45 abstentions), passed a resolution condemning homosexuality as contrary to Scripture and vehemently opposing the ordination of gay priests. “This attitude was expressed in unbelievable rhetoric and in a bitter, negative resolution that was typically camouflaged in the sweet words of piety and with quotations from Holy Scripture,”Spong said.”I pronounce the Lambeth Resolution un-Christian, uninformed, prejudiced and evil.” Conservative Episcopalians have lost most leadership roles in the United States and some have threatened to split from the Episcopal Church over its liberal stance. Conservative U.S. bishops at Lambeth were hoping that strong international sentiment against liberal views would send a powerful message to leaders like Spong.
Africans, Asians and some South Americans, whose Anglican churches are growing dramatically, have voiced serious concerns about the progress of gay rights in the West.
But Spong has never relented. In Sunday’s speech, he dismissed those conservative views as a blatantly hostile stance of rejection directed against gay and lesbian people. “Those who supported this negative action revealed that in large parts of the world there is an almost total ignorance of 20th century scientific facts about the origins and nature of sexual orientation,”the bishop said. He called any attempts by the church to change a person’s sexual orientation”nothing less than pastoral violence.” There are roughly 60 million members of the communion, including 2.4 million in the United States. The Lambeth Conference, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, spiritual leader of the worldwide communion, has no real power over the local jurisdictions, or provinces, and can only make suggestions or recommendations.
Nevertheless, Spong called the London meeting”the most disillusioning experience I have had in my entire ordained life. I never expected to see the Anglican Communion, which prides itself on the place of reason in faith, descend to this level of irrational Pentecostal hysteria.” Sunday’s address is expected to be Spong’s last opportunity to address the diocesan convention as he passes leadership on to his elected successor, the Rev. John Palmer Croneberger, on Feb. 1, 2000. Spong, who suffered from viral meningitis in August and underwent stomach surgery in December, will retire.
Spong has headed the Newark Diocese of 120 churches in Northern New Jersey and about 40,000 members for 23 years.
DEA END BEN-ALI
