Bishop Spong's Articles November 2009

From autobiographical notes found in his Epistles we get the picture of Paul as a religiously zealous student, devoted to the Torah and proud of his Jewish heritage. He calls himself "a Hebrew of the Hebrews" and a "son of Abraham." It was into this Jewish faith tradition that he was born and from which in his mind he never left since he saw Jesus as the fulfillment of both the law and the prophets. Paul says of himself, I was "circumcised on the eighth day." He identifies himself as "a member of the tribe of Benjamin" and as "a Pharisee." He calls himself "blameless under the law," and claims that he actually advanced far beyond his peers in the pursuit of holiness. He presents himself as the star pupil in the rabbinical school, so it should surprise no one that he came to understand Jesus by applying familiar Jewish symbols to him. By studying Paul carefully we can begin to regain the perspective that Paul had, namely that Jesus was a Jew, as were his disciples and all of the writers of the books that now constitute the New Testament. The followers of Jesus were at the time of Paul regular worshipers in the synagogue. That is indeed, as I have suggested in a previous column, the setting in which the oral tradition developed. Christianity did not become a religion separate from Judaism until the latter years of the ninth decade, by which time we need to understand that at least the gospels of Mark and Matthew were written, and perhaps even Luke. John is thus the only gospel clearly written after the synagogue and the church had split. So during the years in which Paul was writing, the disciples of Jesus, known then as the "Followers of the Way," were still members of the synagogue. Paul can thus only be properly understood when we hear his words in this Jew ish context.

In the epistle that we today call I Corinthians, Paul suggests that the two principle events in the life of Jesus, namely the crucifixion and the resurrection, happened "in accordance with the scriptures." The only scriptures that existed at that time and thus the only thing to which he could have been referring were the books of what we now call the Old Testament. Paul had obviously used the Jewish sacred writings to help him interpret Jesus. The first layer of interpretation that was laid on the memory of Jesus was to see him as the fulfillment of these scriptures. The earliest interpreters of the meaning of Jesus were Jewish people who saw him as their expected messiah who would bring about the Kingdom of God. That was why they wrapped the images found in the Old Testament around him. Separating the person of history named Jesus from the interpretations applied to him by zealous followers based on the scriptures is not now and never has been easy. The death of Jesus was given purpose primarily under the influence of the writings of a prophet we call II Isaiah (Is. 40-55). This unnamed person, whose words were attached to the scroll of Isaiah, thus giving us his name II Isaiah, wrote after the devastation of the Babylonian Exile, to paint a new vocation for the people of Israel in their defeat. They could no longer aspire to greatness. II Isaiah thus drew a portrait of one he called the "Servant" and called the Jews to emulate this figure. The "Servant" found the meaning of his life not in victory or glory, but by absorbing the world's pain, bearing the world's hostility and even by enduring death handed out by the world and transforming it into life-giving love. It was the "Servant" vocation to draw negativity from the people of the world and to leave them w hole. This understanding of the crucifixion to which Paul was alluding when he said that Jesus died "in accordance with the scriptures" was destined to grow and to find an even fuller expression by the time the gospels were written.

It was not just the scriptures but the worship life of the synagogue that also shaped Paul's understanding and interpretation of the life of Jesus. When Paul said that Jesus "died for our sins," he was quoting directly from the liturgical day in the Jewish liturgical year known as Yom Kippur or the Day of Atonement. In synagogue worship on that once-a-year holy day an innocent lamb, chosen for its physical perfection, was sacrificed "to atone for the sins of the people." The blood of the animal would then be smeared on the mercy seat of God in the Holy of Holies, that part of the Temple where God was believed to live. The blood of the sacrificed animal was supposed to make it possible for the people to enter God's presence for they traveled "through the blood of the Lamb" and thus had their sins covered by the lamb's innocence. So far as we know from the available written records it was with Paul that the death of Jesus came to be viewed through the lens of the sacrific e of Yom Kippur. When Catholic Christians say today that in the Eucharist "the sacrifice of the mass" is reenacted, or when Protestant Christians say, "Jesus died for my sins," they are both reflecting in a literalized form this early identification of Jesus with the sacrificial lamb of the Day of Atonement. Paul has clearly made this identification in his epistles.

By the time the gospels are composed, well after Paul's death, the crucifixion has also become located inside another Jewish liturgical celebration that we call the Passover. Mark, Matthew and Luke have identified the Last Supper as a Passover meal. That was a post-Pauline development of which Paul was certainly not aware. Paul dates the institution of the Last Supper only with the words that it occurred on "the night in which he was handed over." Later in I Corinthians (5:7) Paul calls Jesus the "new paschal lamb." The gospels exploited that identification to locate the crucifixion in the season of Passover.

Paul saw in the death of the Passover lamb as well as in the death of Jesus an action in which the power of death itself was broken. Recall that, according to the book of Exodus, it was when the people of Israel placed the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts of their homes that the angel of death "passed over" and death was banished from their households. Paul was suggesting that long before the crucifixion story was identified with the Passover, in the death of Jesus the cross had become the doorpost of the world and the blood of the new paschal lamb on that cross also broke the power of death for all who came to God through the life of this Jesus.

So in the writings of Paul we get the sense that the memory of Jesus was interpreted through the Jewish Scriptures and related to the synagogue's liturgical cycle with its holy days like Yom Kippur and Passover. That identification will expand greatly by the time the gospels are written. Paul is thus the first window into this Jewish interpretative clue, but it will grow and develop as the New Testament and the Christian creeds come into being, well after Paul's death.

There is one other detail in Paul that we need to examine before we begin to look at his writings in more detail. It is found in his constant denigration of himself found throughout his epistles. I refer to such words as "O, wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death (Rom, 7:24)," or "I am carnal, sold under sin. I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate (Rom. 7:14-15)." "I can will what is right but I cannot do it (Rom. 7:18)."

Do these words fit a pattern? If so, what do they reveal? We will look at that next week.

Dear Randy,

Mysticism is a powerful movement, which fascinates and attracts me. I do not, however, believe everything that goes under the general banner of mysticism. There is sometimes a fine line drawn between what some people call "spiritual experiences" and what others might call "mental illness." The claim that one can "channel for another," gain a pathway into the future or even to receive a concrete answer from the realm of the dead is to me bizarre to say the least.

I am attracted to the Unity Movement on many levels and have found wholeness of both body and mind in their congregations. Their quest for knowledge is impressive. Their joy in life aids wholeness. Their concentration on what Matthew Fox called "original blessing" rather than on original sin is a welcome relief. I think their emphasis on the enhancement of life rather than the denigration of life must be found in the Christianity of the future. I call Unity my second spiritual home. So I am delighted that you have found a place within that tradition.

Unity is just now beginning to deal with issues of biblical scholarship and it has not yet begun to look at the meaning of the sacraments. Both of those things will, I believe come with time. My sense is that Unity often reaches those who have been hurt by or wounded in traditional Christian churches, so I am grateful for the ministry they do for all of us. They offer love and healing with no strings attached. That is a terrific gift. My life has been deeply enriched by Unity and I treasure my relationship with them.

In other parts of Paul's epistles he says, "What return did you get for the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death." Paul seems to feel that his life is lived under the sentence of death. He has a deep-seated sense of shame. Paul also reveals that he has a hidden aspect to his life. He calls himself "an imposter who yearns to be true," one who is unknown "who yearns to be known and one who "though dying yearns to be alive."

Paul is also a religious zealot, perhaps a fanatic. He was a strict adherent of the Torah in which he had obviously bound himself tightly. He describes himself as one who obeyed every requirement of the law. I was, he says, "Circumcised on the 8th day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless!" He even says of himself, "I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age���.so extremely zealous was I for the tradition of my fathers."

Given that self-description, one must ask what was there about the Jesus movement that threatened Paul so deeply that he was moved to try to stamp it out. Religious zealotry always says more about the zealot than it does about the cause. Again, he says of himself, "I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it." One does not attack Muslims in the Crusades unless something about Islam itself is seen as an imminent danger to the Christian claims that are being made. One does not burn heretics at the stake unless the lives of the heretics threaten something deep within their persecutors. One does not oppress and murder Jews, as Christians have done through the centuries, unless the very existence of the Jews caused that which was basic to Christianity to collapse. One does not fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to "kill the infidels" unless those infidels call into question the truth by which Islamic fundamentalists live. That is the nature of religious persecution. Paul was a persecutor of the Christians, so we need to ask what there was about the Christian movement that caused him to believe that if the Christian movement survived, he would not. That is the question that fanaticism in any form asks. So our search continues.

Another autobiographical detail appears in his epistles when Paul counsels those who are not married "to remain as I am," that is, single. So we know that Paul was not married. He also counseled those who could not control their sexual desires to marry, since as he stated, "it is better to marry than to burn with passion." Paul, however, never sought to alleviate his internal pressures by following his own advice. Paul actually seemed to have negativity toward women. Women do not like him to this day, especially women priests. He warned his readers against even touching a woman, yet he seemed to have a peculiar attraction for a woman's hair, about which he made overt references.

Paul also shared with his readers that he possessed a "thorn in his flesh," which he never defines, but which he had prayed for God to take away. It appears that the removal of this thorn was beyond God's power. There is finally one other revealing passage in the Pauline corpus that for me pulls this investigation together. In the first chapter of Romans, a text frequently cited to uphold the deep prejudice in the Christian Church against homosexuality, Paul suggests that homosexuality is actually a punishment inflicted by God on those who do not worship God properly. That is, Paul argues, that God, in punishment for not paying attention to the intimate details of worship, confuses human sexuality so that men are attracted to men and women to women. It was and is a strange argument, but one perhaps understandable to a religious person who feels driven to obey every jot and tittle of the law.

Some years ago, while studying at Yale Divinity School, I came across a 1930's book written by Arthur Nock in which this author raised for me for the first time the possibility that Paul might have been a deeply repressed gay man. As such he would have been taught by his religion that being homosexual placed him under a death sentence according to the law of God as recorded in Leviticus 18 and 20. Paul would also have been aware of the books of the Maccabees, which were very popular among Jews in Paul's time. IV Maccabees stated that if one worshiped God properly and with consuming intensity "all desire can be overcome."

When I put all of these things together a pattern appears. Paul was a zealot who tried with all his might to worship God properly. He bound his unacceptable (to him) desires so tightly within the law of the Jews that he was able at least partially to suppress the desires that he found natural within him but deeply troubling and intensely negative.

This was the internal pressure that caused Paul to view his body quite negatively. The promise of death, said the Torah, was the end result of the sin, which he felt sure lived in his uncontrollable "member." He experienced the Christian movement to be one that relativized the power of the law to control evil desires in the name of something the Christians called "grace," which they defined as the infinite and undeserved gift of love. He heard Christians telling people that they did not have to struggle as he had struggled to be righteous, but they had only to trust this divine love that accepted them "just as I am," or as each person was. Freedom always frightens people who are hiding from themselves inside a rigid religious practice. So it was that Paul appears to have determined that if Christianity succeeded, his security system built on years of binding repression would fall apart. That is what led to him to persecute. That is also what led Paul to exclaim after h is conversion that now I know that "nothing can separate me from the love of God," not even, as he said, "my own nakedness."

Was his thorn in the flesh his deeply repressed homosexuality? Other theories have been offered: epilepsy, a chronic eye disease, perhaps even an abusive and distorting childhood sexual experience. None, however, fit the details we know of Paul's life so totally as the suggestion that he was a gay man. Christians could not listen to this possibility so long as they were in the power of a definition of homosexuality as something evil. That definition, however, has died under the influence of modern science and medicine. So the idea of Paul gay and a good Jew are not now incompatible. Imagine rather the power of the realization that we Christians have received our primary definition of grace from a gay man who accepted his world's judgment and condemnation until he was embraced by the Jesus experience and came to the realization that nothing any of us can say, do or be can place us outside the love of God. Paul, a deeply repressed gay man, is the one who made that message clear.

How do you interpret the episode of Jesus and the money lenders in the synagogue? Taken literally, was his anger out of step with his message of tolerance and forgiveness? Or do you believe the story was devised by later generations with an anti-Jewish message?

Dear Rob,

Neither!

I do not believe it was devised to carry an anti-Jewish message and I do not believe it was an expression of anger that violated the message. My take on this passage, which was introduced into the tradition by Mark, is that it was a messianic sign drawn from the writings of the prophet Zechariah and wrapped around Jesus to proclaim that he was indeed the messiah.

When the book of Zechariah describes the "Day of the Lord," a Jewish term for the coming of the Kingdom of God that would be inaugurated by the messiah, he writes "On that day there will no longer be traders in the house of the Lord." Earlier the hero in Zechariah, known as the Shepherd King of Israel, was removed from his leadership role by those who buy and sell animals. The price of this removal was thirty pieces of silver which were then hurled by the Shepherd King back into the Temple. Matthew, building on Mark, placed those extra details from Zechariah into the passion story in which the Temple authorities, following Jesus' act of disrupting the traders, paid Judas Iscariot thirty pieces of silver to betray the messiah. Judas then hurled the silver back into the Temple.

This passage reveals more than most the necessity of understanding that the gospel writers are not writing history or biography, they are painting interpretive portraits. The first three gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke, are clearly products of the synagogue and reflect the fact that in their interpretation of Jesus, they are literally wrapping him in the Jewish Scriptures. The original Jewish leaders of the synagogue understood this. By the first quarter of the second century there were few Jews left in the Christian movement, and Gentile believers, ignorant of what were obvious symbols to the Jews, began to treat the gospels as history and to literalize these accounts. That is what led us to creeds, doctrines and dogmas that served to institutionalize Christianity, but distorted the Jesus experience dramatically.

I hope this opens for you a new way to read the gospel narrations. I spelled this out in much greater detail in two my books, Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible with Jewish Eyes and Jesus for the Non-Religious.

It seemed to the Pope a perfect solution, since many of these traditionalists have long suffered from "Roman fever" and seemed to yearn for a church in which their prejudices would not be challenged. Like the Pope they are really bothered by such ideas as the suggestion that women might be full human beings, perhaps even created in "the image of God." They are upset at the thought that women might actually achieve power after gaining admission to heretofore all-male universities. That "fatal mistake" has encouraged women to press the boundaries of sexism that has limited women's place in society quite severely. These educated women are today aspiring to positions once judged to be beyond their competence, like serving as the Prime Minister of Great Britain, as Secretary of State in both Republican and Democratic administrations in America and even as judges in the highest courts of our respective lands. Then, horror of horrors, these women even began to aspire to the pri esthood. This practice has now "corrupted" Anglican orders by introducing, as the Vatican has stated, "a peculiar distortion" into the priesthood, since this profession was "ordained by God to be an all-male enclave." Now in England these recently ordained women even think they can be bishops. Actually, the Anglican Churches in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand already have women bishops, but there is a certain English mentality that suggests that nothing is real until it happens in England. To have English women bishops, these traditionalist argue, would give women not only authority over men, in clear violation of the teaching of St. Paul, but also since bishops ordain priests, this abnormality would spread like a cancer throughout the whole communion.

The second difficulty these traditionalists have that warms the Pope's heart is with homosexual persons, who are now actually showing up in the ranks of the ordained. Their presence is not new, but their unwillingness to hide or to act ashamed is. One of them has been elected and consecrated to be an Anglican bishop in New Hampshire. Others will surely follow.

The issue of homosexuality is even more frightening to these traditionalists because its acceptance would blow open the priestly closet in which gay men have hidden in the Church for centuries. In a clear twist of both rationality and morality, the Church has always assumed that homosexuality is not a sin so long as it is both hidden and denied by the Church. To admit that many might choose the priesthood because they did not want to be married destroys the propaganda of sacrifice!

Traditionalist Anglican and main line Roman churches have long ago learned how to survive in this overt dishonesty. In Rome, coupled gay priests frequently serve on the same parish staffs and share the same rectories. In Anglicanism gay clergy couples have, with their homophobic bishop's consent, maneuvered to serve adjacent churches. In both churches gay clergy have learned to confess only to homosexual confessors. Still the hostile rhetoric goes on. Benedict XVI calls homosexuality a "deviant lifestyle" and the Archbishop of Canterbury calls it "an impediment to Anglican unity." They still pretend that they can cure what is not a sickness and they can condemn what we now know is a natural part of the spectrum of human sexuality.

Since sunshine is not welcomed in this dishonest world of ecclesiastical repression, when the Anglican Church began to challenge its prejudices against gay men and lesbians, and to ordain them openly, these traditionalist Anglican priests began to threaten to form a separate church. Rome saw this as the opening for which they have waited since the Reformation and issued an official invitation to these priests and their congregations to become Roman Catholics. A few more sexist, homophobic priests and lay people would hardly be noticed in that church. That decision set the stage for an unusual press conference held in London in late October.

Called by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, who heads the Roman Catholic Church in England, this press conference needed a bit of perfume so the Archbishop of Canterbury, who heads the Church of England, was invited to attend. The Vatican's pre-emptive strike was explained as a response to the Pope's pastoral concern for these traditionalists, yet the Archbishop of Canterbury had been informed of this "deep concern" just hours earlier.

In his formal proposal, the Pope invited these Anglicans to become Roman Catholics under the terms of a special concordat. Married Anglican priests could retain their wives and would be allowed to function as Roman priests, but only after being "re-trained and re-ordained" since Anglican orders are "null and void." They must, of course, subscribe to all Catholic doctrine from the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin, which became dogma only in 1854, to the Bodily Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, which became dogma only in 1950. They would have to recognize and accept papal infallibility, which became dogma in 1870 and which is of course the glue that keeps the authority lines of this church clear, firm and even despotic. These former Anglicans would have to teach the Catholic position on birth control, abortion and end of life issues, and would be required to tell their former colleagues that there was only one true church and Anglicans were at best schismatics a nd at worst heretics. As a sweetener, Rome would allow the use of liturgies that had an Anglican aura. Not only did the Pope encourage these priests to become Roman Catholics, but he also invited them to bring their entire congregations and all their church property with them, as if these clergy owned their churches.

The Archbishop of Canterbury sat beside his Catholic colleague in pained silence. No matter what happens in the Anglican Communion, he seems to respond with the sympathy-seeking rhetoric about how much harder this will make his job, as if that had anything to do with anything. One wonders if the Archbishop would regard it as pastorally sensitive if these traditionalists were racists whose consciences were offended by the end of slavery, segregation and apartheid. This press conference reminded me of little boys playing the game, "My heavenly daddy is stronger than your heavenly daddy!" Only the religiously naïve and the immature play this kind of ecclesiastical game, but here it was in full display being played by the spiritual heads of the first and third largest body of Christians in the world.

If Anglicans really want to be part of this kindergarten theater of the absurd, I suggest that we match arrogance with arrogance and be equally as insensitive as the Pope has been. This is what I think the Archbishop of Canterbury should have said:

"Your Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, we are very pleased to transfer to you these fringe members of our church who still define women as subhuman and who regard homosexual persons as deviant and abnormal. We hope they will be happy in a church like yours. We Anglicans, however, must move on to engage our modern world. In the spirit of our new relationship, in which each church is free to offer solace through an invitation to those in our respective communions whose consciences are disturbed, we offer this new ecumenical initiative. We invite all gay Roman Catholic clergy who are tired of hiding in dishonesty to become Anglicans. To ease their transition we will allow some Roman liturgies to be used. We also invite all those alienated Roman Catholic lay people who can no longer twist their minds into first-century pretzels in order to assent to dogmas that the intellectual revolution of the past 500 years has rendered unbelievable to come now into a Church where they can ex plore truth with minds not fettered by the myth of "divine revelation." We invite those lay people who believe in sexual equality and who have long favored both the marriage of clergy and the ordination of women to the priesthood to come to us so that they will no longer have to live with spiritual schizophrenia. We invite those Roman Catholics who choose to practice birth control as a moral choice in an overpopulated world and who can no longer tolerate being told that family planning is evil and therefore condemned by God, especially since they have no intention of refraining from doing it, to consider becoming Anglicans, which would mean that they could stop living a lie. We will also receive your clergy without the indignity of re-training or re-ordaining them. We might require them to undergo some classes in thinking for themselves, since they have had little experience in that, and we might ask them to undergo sensitivity training in human relations. In the western world we have learned that this kind of training is necessary both in business and in such things as police instruction to deal with entrenched prejudices."

Such a speech would make it clear that two can play this childish game. Activity like that displayed at this press conference is deeply embarrassing to those of us who still claim the title of Christian and who seek to walk with integrity into the mystery of God. I stand aghast at the level to which religious dialogue has now descended. How lonely and depressed the Carpenter of Galilee must be as he sees what is done in his name. Christianity can do better than this. Christianity must do better than this.

I have long been an ardent admirer of your wonderful work to return Christianity to the root values of love, empowerment and healing of the body, mind and spirit. Anger and condemnation have no place in any church or group calling itself Christian. My question is, do you feel Paul and John, in particular, are responsible for much of the twisted doctrines of male domination, exclusion and hatred that are found particularly in Evangelical Protestantism? They did, as you point out, write nearly 80 percent of the New Testament, and Paul virtually invented Christianity as a religion.

Dear Dore',

I think you have collapsed a number of things into your final paragraph. Paul and John reflected the male chauvinist attitudes that were prevalent the world over at that time. As a matter of fact, I think the case could be made that Jesus was a radical feminist in the context of the first-century world. He clearly had female disciples who, according to Mark, Matthew and Luke "followed" him all the way from Galilee. John suggests that he violated religious custom by speaking to the Samaritan woman by the well. The other gospels tell of Jesus allowing the touch of the woman with a chronic menstrual flow. Jesus stood against the law when he supported the woman caught in the act of adultery. Even John portrays Magdalene as the first witness to the resurrection, which was clearly the early church's standard for apostleship. That being said, there is no doubt that in the early church dispute between those who came to be called the "Orthodox Party" and those who were called the Gnostics that the prejudice against women rose significantly when "Orthodoxy" won and when the Gnostics were defeated.

In some ways the Reformation of the 16th century was a reassertion of some Gnostic principles, and in the radical new Christianity being born today, other Gnostic understandings are being reasserted.

If we literalize the scriptures, as Christians have tended to do and which fundamentalists do without apology or hesitancy, we also literalize the prejudices of that era, which were against democracy, against people of color, against women and against homosexual persons. If on the other hand, we see the Bible as one stage of our development that is ongoing as we walk deeper and deeper into the mystery of God, we greet our emancipation from each of these prejudices with a sense of relief and joy.

That journey into the mystery of God captures the deepest essence of both Paul and John. Paul asks us to seek the full stature of Christ Jesus that is within us, and John has Jesus define his purpose as giving us life abundantly. Neither of these goals is possible if we are hardened by debilitating prejudices that violate the dignity of any child of God.

I always enjoy letters from you.

The PCN has formed some 35-plus study cells in various towns and cities throughout the UK that meet regularly, mostly monthly, but a few weekly. Attendance at each group averages between 20 and 25 people, drawn from current and lapsed Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Methodists and the United Reformed Church, a combination of Presbyterians and Congregationalists.

In Colchester, the lecture was held in the Lion's Walk United Reformed Church. This church was originally a large stone structure near the center of the city. As the city grew it became surrounded by a variety of shops, but very few homes, and slowly the value of the property rose as a commercial site. When the repairs on the old structure began to drain the church of its life and assets, a decision was made to tear it down and to take advantage of its value by allowing the site to be developed for commercial purposes. The congregation, however, saw the value of continuing to worship in that same location and the shopping center also wanted the church to be part of its new venture. This mutual desire produced a remarkable new thing.

The church building was razed to the ground except for the proud tower, its primary identifying mark. The tower was then restored and it stands today in the middle of the site, rising high above the shops as this center's most recognizable feature. This ecclesiastical landmark, drawing people to it, provides the shopping center with a sign of permanence. At the eye level of shoppers is a glass case in the tower that enumerates the continuing Sunday and weekly activities of this URC congregation. Hundreds of people pass these announcements each day. Near this tower are large glass doors directing people to the church. Inside, potential worshippers have the choice of navigating two flights of stairs or of entering an elevator. Both lead to the church itself, which is now located above the shops. The new worship space is large and octagonal, with the familiar stained glass windows from the old church setting a tone of reverence and continuity in this new environment. It seats perhaps three hundred, yet it still projects a sense of intimacy. Offices, washrooms, Sunday school rooms, activity rooms and a kitchen complete the church's "upper room" facilities, providing far more modern and usable space than this congregation had ever previously enjoyed. Parking is no problem for the members of this congregation on Sunday or for those attending evening activities, for adequate parking is provided by the shopping center. Today this congregation is vital, alive, engaged and led by a newly installed pastor who is a Scottish Presbyterian. Included in the congregation are people of remarkable ability. There is Norman Hart, a retired journalist, who has spent a good part of his life working in various countries in Africa training young African journalists to take their places in the Africa of the future; his wife, Linda Hart, sings with the London Choral Society, for which she takes the train up to London once a week to attend rehearsals. Togethe r she and Norman anchor the church choir. Then there is Linda Harrison, who is the congregation's liaison to the national Progressive Christian Network and the organizer of the nationwide study cells.

The benefits of the new arrangement with the shopping center have placed this congregation on a firm financial footing, and it is now busy about the task of transforming its life and doing its ministry. The members of this congregation are eager to engage the contemporary world in all of its complexity, not to hide from it or to become a ghetto of irrelevant evangelical fervor within it. I was deeply impressed with their vision.

Two other churches on the tour have long been the power centers of a progressive Christianity in England. One is St. James' in Piccadilly Circus in London, which from the days of its former rectors, Donald Reeves and Charles Headley, has become a major place of interfaith activity in Great Britain. The other was St. Mark's in the Broomhill section of Sheffield, which is the center of England's steel industry some three hours north of London in the Midlands. This church was served for over 20 years by Adrian Alker, an incredibly gifted priest. As part of his ministry he started an organization called "The Center for Radical Christianity." Through the years he nurtured this congregation into a new understanding of Christianity, regularly introducing the members to frontier scholars of the Christian faith and so building this church into a center of intellectual exploration. Naturally, he frightened local ecclesiastical authorities, which seems to have been the response of religious leaders from the time of Jesus on, when anyone dares to step outside the box of conventional thinking. While the authorities quaked in their boots and sought to marginalize this priest, his congregation grew and thrived. English bishops seem content to watch churches in their dioceses die of boredom all the while fearing that they might be disturbed by controversy. I was fascinated to learn on this tour that the authorities in several of the dioceses near the locations of the various lectures had refused to publish notices of the PCN-sponsored lecture tour for fear that some of "the faithful" might come and be upset by ideas about which they had never heard, even though these ideas have been abroad in academic Christian circles for at least the last two hundred years!

St. John's Episcopal Church in downtown Edinburgh with its rector, John Ames, was another remarkable church on this tour. It was packed for the lecture and had to close its doors and allow no more people to attend under the fire code of the city that limits the number of people that can safely be in each public building at any one time. I had the honor of being introduced on this stop by a man I regard as the most creative bishop in the Anglican Communion today. His name is Richard Holloway, the former Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Referring to my book Eternal Life: A New Vision, Bishop Holloway announced that they had worked out a special price with the publisher Harper/Collins to make this book available at the price of ten pounds, "a price below that of Amazon," he said Then he asked, "Where else can you buy Eternal Life for ten quid?" If that were literally true it would indeed be a bargain, well below the cost of indulgences once sold to gain the same end.

When I got to St. Luke's, Holloway, in North London, I discovered that this church had turned its worship space into a series of candlelit tables and chairs around which the people drank wine as they listened to the lecture. Their priest is Dave Tomlinson, whose book describing new understandings of Christianity has been a topic of much conversation in the Anglican Communion. Moving on to St. Faith's Church, Dulwich, in South London, I looked out on a rainbow congregation of multiple ethnicities. There were also in the congregation on that Sunday a number of retired priests; a young Scottish infectious-disease doctor and his social worker wife who hailed from California; a Harvard Divinity School graduate who chose not to be ordained; and many other fascinating people. The Sunday school was made up of primarily African, Indian and Asian children who reflected the mix of the neighborhood. Hugh Dawes, the head of PCN, was the vicar here and he has led this church in his gentle but stretching style for well over twenty years. The hymns that Sunday were contemporary, not the dirges of the English hymnal whose title is "Hymns: Ancient and Modern" but which seems really to mean "ancient hymns and not-quite-so-ancient hymns." They used a contemporary creed that was not bound to the three-tiered universe of a pre-Galileo mentality, but still touched the essentials of the Christian story. Hugh also included those traditions that longtime Anglicans would feel related them to their past: familiar vestments, incense and other trappings of English Christianity.

The lecture tour then moved west to another refurbished United Reformed Church adjacent to another shopping center in Exeter that is served by a gay pastor, Iain McDonald, who lives openly with his partner of some years. This congregation's enthusiastic embrace of the gifts of this pastor demonstrates new levels of consciousness. Then we moved on to Hereford, where the lecture tour concluded in a downtown, liturgically conservative Anglican Church named All Saints. This church had earlier been marked by its bishop for closure since there were no longer any people living near its commercial location. Instead, however, a creative rector named Andrew Mottim decided to turn half of this church's building, including the balcony, into a vegetarian restaurant that today serves mid-morning coffee and "biscuits" and afternoon tea and "sponge" to shoppers. In addition it serves an average of four hundred vegetarian lunches each day. This vegetarian restaurant is set in ful l view of the church's altar and chapel where the Eucharist is celebrated regularly. Both kinds of eating, lunch and the Eucharist, are in this place deemed to be holy.

These were some of the signs of hope, creativity and new life that I saw everywhere I went. These churches formed the background against which a new Christianity for a new world is emerging in secular Great Britain. I have renewed hope.

If we are to presume that being gay is just a personality trait of a minority of people and that gay people should be welcomed into the Christian community as "equals" (whatever that means in this context), how do we consider pedophilia as a perversion of the human condition to be segregated and punished if the source has similar roots in the mind? If this is so, why do we as a society feel that pedophilia can and should be treated and homosexuality should be considered a normal variation? (This is an academic question and does not reflect my own feelings in this matter.)

Dear A. Wiant,

I hope that your last sentence is correct, but by repeating some of those outrageous charges you appear to give credibility to them.

There is an overwhelming difference. Pedophilia has a victim and is an act carried out by heterosexual people far more frequently than by homosexual people. Pedophilia is a strong person exercising his or her will against a vulnerable person. For any person to act in such a way as to violate the dignity and will of another person is always wrong. Pedophilia is thus always wrong just as rape and child abuse are always wrong, for all these have a victim.

Both homosexual and heterosexual people can violate their partners. Prostitution is the mutual using of two people and is practiced among homosexual and heterosexual people. These are acts, however, that people do in their insecurity to meet their emotional needs. The proper response is to condemn any victimization, but then to work to address the insecurities out of which these distortions flow.

There is nothing about heterosexuality or homosexuality per se that necessitates a victim. Homosexual love and heterosexual love are both based on mutual giving and receiving. Both create wholeness and holiness in life.

Your suggestion (whether academic or personal) that to accept homosexual persons as equal to pedophiles is simply an uninformed opinion arising out of a deep-seated homophobia. Prejudices always thrive on ignorance. I hope you will examine this attitude and if this question reflects your attitude, rid yourself of it.