![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
How shall we love thee, holy hidden Being
if we love not the world which thou hast made?
Bind us in thine own love for better seeing
thy Word made flesh, and in a manger laid:
thy kingdom come, O Lord, thy will be done.
---- Laurence Housman
Last Sunday afternoon I headed to the Bickford Theatre with my parents and husband for a showing of “A Pebble in My Shoe: The Life and Times of John Shelby Spong.” The lobby was teeming with Episcopalians who gathered for the production and I immediately ran into Drew students, friends from neighboring churches, and plenty of people from my home church, St. Peter’s in Morristown. The play, written by Colin Cox and based on Spong’s autobiography, offers a marvelous window into the political and religious changes in the US over the last 70 years through the personal narrative of Spong’s life. Since I’ve had the good fortune to know Jack and Christine Spong over the last thirty years, it also encouraged my own reflections on that journey.
Christine (not-yet-Spong) was one of the first and most important people that I met at St. Peter’s in 1977. She was in charge of the church school. It was to Christine that I entrusted each of my children when I took them to the nursery and headed off to sing in the choir each Sunday. Nothing ever fazed her – not even my son Jonathan who refused to walk on sand or snow until about age 4!
Jack became bishop in the year we moved to Morristown. My first real memory of him was a district service held at St. Peter’s. The choir sang and he preached. I knew we weren’t in Illinois any longer and rejoiced! He and Joan lived in the neighborhood and Jack was a frequent sight jogging by the house.
In the aftermath of the play, however, I’ve been thinking about the causes he has worked for so tirelessly – the eradication of racism, the ordination of women, the ordination of gay and lesbian people, I am inherently an optimist and I like to believe that we’ve made progress. But some days, when I look at the church, I have my real doubts. But I do believe, as Jack was quoted as saying in the play, that talking about something aloud is the first step to dismantling prejudices. So....
I’m going to suggest here that St. Peter’s Episcopal Church could honor Jack Spong’s legacy in a truly meaningful way by being open to the possibility of calling a rector who is not a heterosexual white male. Yes, yes – of course we want to choose the very best candidate. And we have had many excellent assistants who have been people of color or women or gay or some combination. But I don’t believe that we have been willing to confront our own mental images about “the rector.” So I call upon my comrades on the vestry to have a truly open discussion about this issue. I don’t want to be part of a body that still posts signs, even if they are in invisible ink, that say “whites only” or “men only” or “straights only.”
Naming our library the Jack and Christine Spong Library is a tribute to two people who have done much to shape St. Peter’s Church and the Diocese of Newark. Holding a truly open search for rector would honor that legacy in a faithful and meaningful way.
1 comment | Leave a comment