~John Shelby Spong
Sometimes, as one goes about the normal duties of
one’s professional life, a pattern of activity slowly becomes visible until one
wonders why this had not been seen before.
When that happens, it is good to stop, to notice, to put the pieces
together, to seek to understand and then to formulate the new insight so that
it can become common knowledge.
This was my experience in the first part of this
year when I was invited to a number of churches in what might be called the
heartland of America. In every
incidence, the church to which I was asked to deliver lectures stood out in its
community like a beacon of light. It was
always the church in that community that engaged the issues of the day. It was the congregation in that community
that encouraged people to think and to study.
It was a church more interested in genuine education than it was in
ecclesiastical propaganda. It was a
congregation willing to be controversial, willing to stand up for truth in the
public marketplace. It was a church that
did not require that the brains of its people be checked at the door prior to
worship. It was a congregation whose
members cared about their world, their community, themselves and their
pastor. These churches also projected
vitality and they were all growing. The
revelation that ultimately emerged, however, was that each one of these
congregations was a part the United Church of Christ-Congregational
denomination. This fact was so
consistent that I concluded it could not be just a coincidence and that
something about the United Church of Christ must be at least in part
responsible and so my appreciation for this denomination soared.
Perhaps, I thought, this church can be the one
Christian denomination that will inspire, bring about and participate in the
necessary reformation required to break the Christian faith out of its dying
patterns, its no longer believable theological understandings and its medieval
worship practices. Maybe this can be the
church that will break the traditional Christian paradigm based on human
depravity and transform it to a paradigm based on human wholeness. Until these aspects of Christianity are
faced, engaged and changed, there is, I believe, little realistic hope for a
Christian future.
Let me briefly tell you, my readers, the story of
these four individual UCC congregations:
The first one was the Plymouth United Church of
Christ in Wichita, Kansas. Under the
enlightened and competent leadership of its senior pastor, Donald Olsen, and
his able staff, Plymouth Church has gathered to itself a group of members who
are individually and corporately stepping beyond traditional religious formulas
to build a church for tomorrow. Gifted
young adults, well-educated and in positions of local and national authority,
are finding the integrity of a new religious dimension for themselves by their
participation in this church’s life. No
one is fighting yesterday’s wars against Darwin, the equality of women or the
oppression of gay and lesbian people.
The Bible is not seen as a cudgel to be used in debate to shore up the
conclusions of a long dead past. They
appear to enjoy their life together and, during the time I was there to deliver
these lectures, they also brought in a spectacular a Capella male singing group
named Cantu for the joy and entertainment of those attending the lecture
series. Cantu was magnificent and the
combination of lectures and entertainment was a memorable experience for me and
for that congregation.
The second one was the First Congregational-United
Church of Christ in Greeley, Colorado.
This small Colorado city, founded by Horace Greeley in the 19th century,
is the home of a community college that has grown into being the University of
Northern Colorado and is now the third or fourth largest university in the
state of Colorado. In a state where
Colorado Springs has become the national headquarters for many right wing
fundamentalist groups such as James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family,” this church
in Greeley has accepted the vocation of speaking to this university with an
understanding of the Christian faith that is well informed and not dedicated to
the perpetuation of biblical ignorance.
Its senior pastor, Nathan Miller, is respected as a leader in the entire
community and one of this church’s most active members is the recently retired
president of the University of Northern Colorado.
The third church was in Norman, Oklahoma, the
location of the University of Oklahoma, where former Democratic Governor and
Senator, David Boren, is now the highly-regarded president. A small group of people led by an urologist
formed a new Congregational Church to fill a vacuum in Norman, where
fundamentalists and evangelical Protestants are the overwhelming majority. They were assisted in this birth by the UCC
pastor at the Mayflower Church in Oklahoma City, Robin Meyers, who is one of
America’s brilliant new religious leaders.
They contracted with a retired UCC minister on a part time basis to lead
this new congregation, which has no more than twenty-five members. Undaunted by their newness and their
smallness, they organized a public lecture on progressive Christianity to be
held in the University of Oklahoma’s Museum of Natural History. This was their way of announcing their
presence in the city. I was invited to
deliver that lecture and also to speak to the members of this congregation at
their regular meeting place on Saturday morning. The public lecture attracted over 400
people. It was also the first time I
have ever spoken with a mastodon on display immediately behind me! In their own worship space on Saturday, which
seated less than seventy people, the two lecture seminar was sold out and every
available chair was filled. This new
congregation is dedicated to finding ways to serve the larger community and
even the world. One program, organized
by the urologist and including his two sons, both of whom are planning careers
in medicine, has them volunteering for medical missionary duty in some of the
deprived parts of the world. Vitality
and the hope of good things to come mark this congregation.
Finally, there was the First Congregational-UCC
Church of Hendersonville, North Carolina, served so ably by its senior pastor,
Richard Weidler. Hendersonville is a
small town in the mountains of Western North Carolina, about 30 minutes south
of Ashville. Calls to repent, invitations
to be saved and warnings to prepare to meet your God are painted on signs on
almost every nearby highway. Three
crosses adorn the countryside in more than one field. A visit on the radio dial will reveal a
steady diet of evangelical preaching, punctuated only by the ranting of Rush
Limbaugh. Yet because of
Hendersonville’s wonderful summer climate, it has attracted many retirees to
that area who are left looking mostly in vain for a church if they do not want
fundamentalism. Into that vacuum, this
church has moved led by its former, now retired, pastor, David Kelly. About a decade ago a layman, named Walter
Ashley, taught an adult Bible class in that church and it had been an erudite
and transformative experience for many. A “Classics Scholar” with a degree from
Oxford University in the UK, he had opened that congregation to a whole new way
of being a Christian. They became the
one church in town that was a haven for thinking Christians. When Walter died, his widow Jo Ann, an
attorney well into her eighties, endowed a lectureship in memory of her
husband. Twice each year, a well-known Christian scholar is invited to do the
Ashley Lectures in this church in Western North Carolina. John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Amy-Jill
Levine and I have all been among those visiting lecturers. The event attracts people from miles away and
has helped to identify this church as something quite different.
Recently in North Carolina, there was a statewide
referendum to ban gay marriage by a constitutional amendment. It seemed like
every preacher in the state from Billy Graham on down came out in support of
this amendment, identifying it with the Bible and the will of God. This was not true, however, of the First
Congregational-United Church of Christ in Hendersonville. Instead they bought
and ran a large advertisement in the local newspaper every other day for a
period of time prior to that vote stating their opposition to North Carolina’s
“Marriage Amendment.” In this ad they stated first the historical tradition of
the United Church of Christ as a supporter of social justice and civil rights. They reminded readers that their forebears
were Pilgrims who came to this country in 1620 seeking freedom from
restrictions imposed in Europe. They recalled the history of their
denomination, telling the newspaper’s readers that in 1785 the UCC ordained
Lemuel Haynes, America’s first African-American pastor; in 1853 the UCC
ordained Antoinette Brown, America’s first female pastor; in 1972 the UCC
ordained Bill Johnson, America’s first openly-gay pastor. Now this church,
representing this denomination, called on all to reject this prejudiced
marriage amendment. This ad dramatically
lifted this church into public awareness causing them to be attacked and
ridiculed by almost every other church in the area, but it also caused the
religiously disenfranchised to discover a new possibility for their religious
lives. So, new people began to show up
at their doors on Sunday Mornings.
These four churches I have described so briefly had
several things in common. They each had a well-trained and well-educated senior
pastor. Each was linked to a national
denomination that encouraged them to press the edges. Each had drunk deeply of that denomination’s
courage in the public arena on the right side of the cultural issues of our
day.
If the United Church of Christ is represented
locally by the churches I have encountered in Wichita, Greeley, Norman and
Hendersonville, they must be doing something right.
So to these churches and to the leadership of the
National United Church of Christ, I first raise my hand in salute for your
courage and your dedication. Second, I
stand before you in awe for what you have meant in my life and in the life of
Christianity itself. Third, I bow my
head and my heart in thanksgiving for your witness to the Truth.
