The Archbishop of Canterbury is on the wrong side of history and ignorant of the scientific and social realities of homosexuality, retired Bishop Jack Spong has declared.Writing in the Aug 8 on-line issue of Newsweek’s “On Faith” section the controversial former Bishop of Newark has also rejected US Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s contention that nothing had changed as a result of the 76th General Convention’s votes on gay bishops and blessings.
“The battle over homosexuality in the Episcopal Church is over,” Bishop Spong wrote.
“The vote at the last General Convention was overwhelming. The sacred unions of gay and lesbian people are to be blessed and enfolded into liturgical patterns in the same way that the sacred unions of heterosexual people have been honoured for centuries. The ministry of this church is to be open to gay and lesbian people who are qualified and chosen in the process by which this church makes such decisions,” he said.
Bishop Spong rejected Dr Williams’ contention that acting upon same-sex attractions was a free-will decision, saying “homosexuality is not a choice” but a component of “human individual identity” akin to race or gender. The condemnation of homosexual behaviour was “discrimination” built upon “prejudice based on ignorance,” he said.
General Convention’s vote last month to permit gay bishops and blessings brought “honesty to this church,” as Episcopal clergy have been blessing same-sex unions “for decades, but only secretly.”
The church also had “countless gay clergy and gay bishops, but pretended that this was not so,” citing an unnamed “gay bishop” elected to serve as vice president of the church’s House of Bishops.
Some of the church’s hostility towards homosexuality came from self-hating gay clergy, Bishop Spong said. “Some of our bishops who were most hostile to homosexuality have themselves been gay and when they were discovered in "improper" relationships or with an HIV infection, it was hushed up.”
Those unable to accept this “reality, including the present Archbishop of Canterbury, will just have to become more and more irrelevant,” Bishop Spong said. Unless Dr Williams changed his views, he would find himself “on the backside of the tide of history and will be constantly compromised and embarrassed.”
The Episcopal Church’s decision to end the moratoria on gay bishops and blessings was prophetic, he said. Dr Williams’ argument that “this step is improper because the whole communion is not ready to move as a whole, is a tragic misreading of history,” he said, citing the support of some church leaders for slavery, apartheid or segregation.
Bishop Spong called upon Anglicans not to “postpone justice for homosexual persons until all of the homophobic and prejudiced-based ignorance is finally gone.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury has clashed with Bishop Spong over his controversial theological views before. Following the publication in 1998 of Bishop Spong’s 12 theses denying traditional theism, Dr Williams responded that they “represent a level of confusion and misinterpretation that I find astonishing.
“The implication of the theses is that the sort of questions that might be asked by a bright 20th century sixth-former would have been unintelligible or devastating for Augustine, Rahner or Teresa of Avila,” Dr Williams noted.
“The fact is that significant numbers of those who turn to Christian faith as educated adults find the doctrinal and spiritual tradition which Bishop Spong treats so dismissively a remarkably large room to live in.”
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to us or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.
The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that we agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
SIC: RI