Bishop John Shelby Spong -- His last public lecture

[Music] [Music] and i'm pleased to thank the eileen and warren martin lectureship for emerging studies in bible and theology endowment for providing funding for this week's interfaith lectures i've got a whole bunch of stuff here about jack spang you've heard it and if even if you're watching the dvd you've heard it on the former three lectures i'm going to take a point of personal privilege here if i can get through it it's not often that you get to thank publicly someone on whose shoulders you stand jack and i were talking earlier we've both been in the public eye we've we've both had a very public ministry and we were talking about how how amazing it is to go somewhere and find out that you've affected someone's life without even knowing them this is a man who has affected countless lives who have who has kept so many people who have been hurt by the church at least somewhere near the church and with a language that allows them to participate but most especially he was out in front on two issues long before it became admirable to do so one was the ordination of women and one was the ordination of gay and lesbian people it is because yeah [Applause] and it is because of that early work that he did and all of the work that built on it uh that lets me wear a purple shirt today there is um no one who has been braver and ready to take whatever came his way for saying the truth and so literally i stand on his shoulders as do so so many of us would you join me in thanking bishop jack spong [Applause] you're freaking me out you get this yeah every time i think i'm doing well somebody makes me cry well today's the day the final address of this week the final address at chautauqua the final address of my life it all began on june the 12th 7th 1976 when i was made a bishop of the episcopal church i served for 21 years as a priest 24 years as a bishop in the last 18 to 20 years doing lectures on my books around the world i've been to every continent in the world except antarctica and i wanted to go there but chris wouldn't go and i'd rather not be anywhere she's not present but it's been a wonderful trip and i do i'm not sad that it's coming to an end the host at the house of missions told me last night about the time they had an elderly man down down here and they had to tend to his needs all the time i don't want to be here when somebody's mopping my brow it's drooling out both sides of my mouth and so i'm looking forward to retiring with most of my faculties intact let me say that if this church that i love is to live into the future it must recover its original meaning and identity it must shed those aspects that are divisive condemning and authoritarian they must abandon creeds that are tribal in favor of universal inclusiveness you must use formulas to include never to ban short to have a future the christian church must become a universal community the challenges are great can christian theology once again be enabled to interact with contemporary knowledge can christian creeds and liberties be made to reflect reality rather than nostalgia can christianity affirm human oneness while still embracing its traditional diversity can this faith create a new institutional form that fosters a truth-seeking universal community are the questions i've tried to raise in my books in my lectures and in my career and i now bring this work to a conclusion with the hope that a resounding yes will be heard from this newly enlightened faith tradition i don't expect it all at once but if a few hear it it will grow ants of this kind of purpose have always been present in christianity we do not have to create them out of nothing perhaps g.k chesterton was correct when he said that christianity has been tried and found warning has not been tried and found warning it simply has been found difficult and hadn't been tried i'd like to start today with matthew who is the most jewish of all the gospels when matthew brought his gospel to a conclusion somewhere about 85 of this common era he placed words to the effect into the mouth of the risen jesus and these are the words go into all the world and make disciples of all nations we have tended to hear these words as an institutional charge calling the church's members to go convert the heathen i don't think they had any meaning like that when matthew wrote however there wasn't even a christian church christianity was part of judaism there's no institutional church seeking to grow so these words must have meant something quite different to the first leaders indeed they did matthew was i believe sounding the call to a universal humanity go make disciples of all nations meant to matthew go beyond the boundaries of your religion go beyond your security system go beyond your fears it meant go to those whom your religious tradition has defined as unclean uncircumcised unsaved unbaptized and unbelieving go to those that you renounce as infidels or heretics or agnostics or atheists it may go beyond the boundaries that you have erected in your biologically driven search for survival what then are we to do matthew jesus was quite clear if we did not know how to translate the meaning of those early words you are to proclaim the gospel said matthew to matthew that did not mean that we are to provide our converts with a set of formulaic christian answers it may rather we are to make all persons aware that they are included within the infinite love of god that's what the gospel means matthew's words which we have called the great commission were first attributed to jesus it was not a call to missionaries the world it was called to build a world in which human oneness can flourish it was a call to universalism this essential aspect of the jesus message was not struck in matthew alone when the gospel of luke was being written pentecost an event in which the holy spirit fell upon the disciples of jesus and all the world the author made sure that it was understood as a universal happening those present at pentecost luke said included the people from all over the known world as he understood it it's a rather remarkable list and paul tried to describe to the galatians what was involved in what he called put on christ he said that it meant that human divisions must disappear christ must be served in every person there is no longer jew nor greek there is no longer male nor female there is no longer bond or free that's what jesus meant and that's what the original christ experience was before we began became scriptures defenders and before the creeds became the essence of our faith it was also before any form of liturgy became the only way to worship from its very inception christianity has kept this sense of human oneness but has been buried under layers of ecclesiastical power expressions the original vision of christ was not captured within the church's power needs but in such things as universal hymns like in christ there is no east or west in him no north or south the more modern hymns to universalism such as all are welcome and for everyone there's a place at the table the christian invitation to the world has always been come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and i will give you rest it was never meant to have a limit it was never meant for some of ye but for all of ye with these words attributed to jesus intended to be a call for us to rest from our human labor i do not think so the passage was called to rest from the eternal human struggle to become by accepting what you are it was an invitation for all to dwell in the joy of a capital b being christianity had never been about believing correctly it was never meant to provide a basis on which believers would separate heresy from truth it was always a call to practice the task of living and loving and being in the words of the new baptism formula in my church it was a time we are to seek christ and all he means in every human being when charting a new reformation however we must engage in the task of getting even deeper into the vision of universalism it has to do only with erasing not only with erasing human divisions with such relevant relativizing of our most cherished beliefs creeds can no longer bring us together doctrines such as the incarnation and the trinity can never again pretend that we have defined either god or jesus can the church set these things aside without cutting all ties to what is called tradition historical christianity i think we can and i think we must the christianity of the future cannot live inside the doctrines of the past doctrines are always a description or a definition of our god experience they are never our god experience my experience is my ability to perceive god but the nature of god is beyond my ability to describe same thing is true of the fundamental doctrine of christianity known as the incarnation that doctrine makes jesus not unlike the comic ship character clark kent who turned out to be superman in disguise we must move beyond the now irrelevant dualistic patterns to discover the holy at the heart of the human a doctrine called the incarnation will never get us that when i contemplate the meaning of jesus i come back again and again to his image as the ultimate boundary breaker boundary breaker in whom what it means to be human is constantly being expanded the meaning of the incarnation to me is that the life of god is always met inside the human christianity is not about religion it's about life god is not an external being god is being itself manifested in all that is so we look at you at the biblical portrait of jesus and we see it in terms of being not doing in the new testament who is it that comes to jesus look and see they're samaritans they're gentiles they're lepers they're adulterers they're thieves they're broken the warped the damage and each finds in him the love and acceptance of god that's what it's about that's what christianity has always been about and that's what the christianity of tomorrow must reflect if we will continue to live the language that refers to jesus as the son of god i am now convinced has nothing to do with some literalized version of its mythology it has everything to do with the fact that god was experienced as the source of life in the life of jesus as a source of love in the love of jesus and as the ground of being in the being of jesus so in jesus the human and the divine flow together for they are one they flow together in you and me too the dualism of the past simply fades away the doorway into the divine is to become deeply and fully human and everyone is invited to that that leads me to express my deepest convictions i call this statement my mantra but it's not designed to be an incipient form of a new christian creed which might be imposed on tomorrow's christians the days for believing that anyone can ever reduce the experience of the holy to a set of propositions that can be recited and believed are frankly over i do not want to go back to the world of traditional religion i live rather in a time in the space where there's not now or ever can be something that might be called a timeless creed a set of beliefs that might endure forever so my mantra is intended only to be my statement at this time of where i am today the place at which i've arrived on what might be the last day of my journey i want to say something positively something about the conclusion that i presently hold and bear witness to why i continue to be a member of this christian community and to see the christian story is something that compels me into discipleship i long ago walk beyond a literal interpretation of the bible how anybody can read that book and treat it literally is beyond me i journey deeply into the biblical biblical content i move far beyond the literal surface and i discover in its depths both meaning and insights to which i continue to feel a deep allegiance almost every book i've written has been a bible book but it's not a bible that jerry falwell would recognize how long ago moved beyond what i call creedal theology which is a product of the 4th century wonder why that was so holy but i've not moved beyond the hope that i can place the insights of christianity into a coherent form at least for my generation i long ago moved from the worship patterns of the 13th century which tend to portray god as a parent figure who needs to be flattered that's why we call him almighty god that's flattery we say flattering words to god all the time we call them praise but they're flattery or god is perceived as a judge before i am compelled to grovel in my knees in a penitence well i beg this god to have mercy on me i don't ever want to see a human being do that it might be okay to pray for mercy if you're standing before an abusive parent and you're a quivering child that might be a place where you could say have mercy you might find having mercy a prayer for mercy to be make sense if you are a convicted criminal hanging before or standing for a hanging judge you might want to ask for mercy but for the life of me i can't understand why a child of god would stand before god and never utter that prayer i'm standing for what i call the infinite other human language is woefully inadequate when one seeks to speak of that which cannot be embraced inside the human therefore i have to use human words since there are no others but i have to know what i'm using and why i'm using these words and i do use them but i use them as a caveat that words can only point to they can never capture or hold the truth that i'm seeking to speak with that warning clearly stated i'll bring this work to a close by sharing my mantra my current statement of belief i cannot tell you who god is or what god is no one can do that why don't we understand that that's not within the capacity of the human mind to embrace the nature of god i might be just i might be delusional a lot of people had visions in their delusions and that may be one of them you have to be the judge of that i don't think so but i think we have to look at that in the name of truth in packaging i believe i've experienced god as the source of life life was born on this planet about 3.7 billion years ago life was born as a single cell and as such began its journey in time until it arrived at its present stage which includes self-conscious complexity of creatures like you and me so far as we know a creature who can define life contemplate its beginning anticipated determination and raise the question of its meaning is a rare thing now if god is a source of life then the only way i can appropriately worship god is by living fully in the process of embracing the fullness of life i bear witness to the reality of the god who is the source of life why is that so difficult i believe i've experienced god as a source of love love is a power that embraces life love throws flows through the whole universe in the care of nature in all its living forms gives church young the love of god is present in the mama cat taking care of its kittens well the cow licking the newborn calf but they don't know it they have to have consciousness to know it a human consciousness but if god is a source of love then the only way i can worship god is by loving loving wastefully a phrase that i like but so many puritans don't by wasteful love i mean the kind of love that never stops to calculate never stops to wonder whether the object of its love is worthy to be its recipient wasteful love is love that never stops to calculate deserving it is love that loves not because love has been earned it is an act of loving wastefully that's where i think god is made visible finally i believe i experienced god in the words of my great theologian momentum my greatest theological mentor reformed german theologian paul tilik who lived from 1886 to 1965 and he defined god as the ground of all being that was a difficult series of words it was barred and refined by tilik from a philosopher named plutanos in the third century of the common era who was not a christian he was a greek philosopher but if god is a ground of being then the only way i can worship god is by having the courage to be all that i can be and the more deeply i can be all that i can be the more i can do and make god visible so the reality of god to me is discovered in the experience which compels me to live fully to love wastefully and to be all that i can be the mission to which this understanding of god drives me is not to build a religious institution or to help people become religious people i've said here this week that i'm more repelled by those who are attracted to what people call religion than i am drawn to them they're so so little minded religious people just don't embrace the big questions of life so the mission to which my mantra calls me is the task of building or transforming the world so that every person living will have a better opportunity to live fully to love wastefully and to be all that each of them was created to be then the church has a purpose a universal purpose in the widest variety of our humanity and our deepest set of beliefs there is no outcast in this community there can be no one who is regarded as unclean there can be no prejudice that are allowed to operate inside this vision of christianity the essence of christianity as i now understand it is that everyone is to be accepted quote just as i am without one plea or maybe just as you are without one plea and that everyone is called in the task of growing into all that each of us can be to this mantra i add one thing i'm a christian i can't remember the day when i wasn't a christian i don't think that makes me superior to anybody that's just a fact of my upbringing i'm a disciple of jesus but why is that important to me because when i look at the life of jesus as that life has been reflected to me through scripture and the tradition i see a person who is so fully alive that i perceive him as the infinite source of life i see one who loves so totally so wastefully and i perceive him as the infinite source of love i see one who is profoundly capable of being all that he could be whether it was on palm sunday as i mentioned yesterday when he was hailed as a king there's nothing quite so seductive as the sweet narcotic of human praise or whether it was on good friday when he was being put to death when even the threat of non-being did not alter his humanity in both experiences jesus was and is what he said he was he was not changed by flattery nor was this being diminished by the imminence of death so i joined with saint paul in the affirmation of faith god was somehow in this christ bringing oneness out of diversity wholeness out of brokenness eternity out of time this is the god whom i am drawn in worship this is the christ that points me toward the fullness of god this is the faith i seek to share with the world to embrace life to increase love and have the courage to be these for me are the doorways through which i walk into the mystery of god jesus is still my doorway he doesn't have to be yours he's my doorway into this reality in this jesus the future of christianity becomes visible once again and i walk eagerly into this life experience i welcome the christianity to which this vision calls me i bear witness to a faith that leads me and the whole world to learn the three principles of religion to live fully to love wastefully and to be all that you can be good luck amen [Applause] thank you bishop spunk's new book is called unbelievable why neither ancient creeds nor the reformation can produce a living faith today we will begin our question and answer period and we already have a line over here let me just remind you this is a time to answer questions not to make speeches yes sir go ahead jack let me say i'm going to take the questions male female male female so you'll reorganize your line to be that if we're not going to use this one go ahead sir no i appreciate your many lectures over the years and you always said when someone asked you for a reconstruction you'd say well i'll get to that on friday i think this is your friday yeah you have gotten a reconstruction today my question is from john coltrane the great musician jazz artist who became a muslim if this might not be a good mantra i love supreme i love supreme i hoped it would be right there but it's not right there his song i love supreme and he says over and over and then he says it with the music i love supreme i love supreme i think it might be a mantra for you and the rest of us to meditate with all our lives it's from john coltrane i love supreme well i'm always working with me it works for me instead of almighty god which never worked because if god is not almighty after parkland schools or 9 11 or any other reason and it isn't even a good translation of el shaddai i love supreme that's meditation yes what i love is chautauqua's willingness to take a chance on the stroke victim i think that's a pretty powerful dream and i thank you for that a lady are you a lady yes i had the opportunity to speak with you this morning but i'm going to repeat this part i am so grateful that they invited you here because you were the avenue by which 10 of us from lawton oklahoma came and discovered chautauqua and oh my goodness what a gift this has been we are going back to a united methodist church most of you know the the challenge that is happening wondering how to stay faithful but also honest how to be present uh but not silent we are the pastor and i and i do have a question um is is afraid and of of talking having conversations among the congregation about the issues before us um and and that's a huge huge challenge but this is the question that that rose for me and you can address both of them but this is the one that arose as i was sitting back there you have repeated several times the hymn just as i am without one plea the next line is that bad blood was shed for me i didn't believe that part i don't need it so what's our second line you have to be very selective you have to be very selective when you're quoting evangelical hymns so just quit there let me say that i visited this lady's church in norton oklahoma we had the services in the museum of natural history at the university of oklahoma there was a giant dinosaur right behind me while i was speaking it's really really a fascinating time and oklahoma is one of the difficult states for regular christians they don't have many people out there that are not pretty fundamentalist when i was writing my column i had a black editor who was a graduate of oklahoma bible college and he said to me you don't know what prejudice is so you're a black homosexual from oklahoma that church in norman was a church that was trying hard to get born it's a united uh it's it's a congregational church the united church of christ and practice this kind of religion a kind that was open and it was at the university the one man i know in oklahoma is robin myers in oklahoma city who's a pastor and he's a national treasure he's he's an outstanding person and he came to that that uh series of lectures i did there and it was a really marvelous time i like to be in a situation where people are having to define their faith against the background the fundamentalism because it's pretty cruel and uh i think you did it well thank you yes sir dr spong i'm honored to be able to ask you a question i'd like to know your response to a biblical translation and theology that came from my late father-in-law edward henemann who was a theologian for the northern presbyterian church most of his career in the great commission he made the claim that the greek of that verse is so ambiguous in different places that it could be translated differently than king james basically authorized uh in that day of the of the british uh you know conquering he said it could be translated go out and live among the peoples of the world and love them and if they want to be baptized then baptize them it's a very ironic passive way of witnessing to the the love of god in in jesus what's your opinion about that well i think he's near to the kingdom of heaven uh and and when i was working on that passage i don't remember who it was it that took me into it but i see people it's so tribal you know if you don't aren't my tribe you don't speak my language you don't worship the way i worship and there's something wrong with you and i'm gonna kill you that's that's our mentality and this this going to all the world that meant you go beyond those prejudices and those biases and make a difference and i think your father-in-law was on the path to the kingdom i thank him for that uh a lady thank you bishop sponge for all that you've done i will be forever grateful for your writings maybe a week maybe forever's an awful long time all right well i will be grateful for your writings your lectures here and the few words we've exchanged when you've signed my books i you have done so much to uh show us how important moving forward to a more universalist way of opening the door to god is and my question is i love the church and i understand that you do too when i bring people to my church i find my church home at the united church of christ they are put off by the words those of us who already love the church can sort of skip over those even here at chautauqua our newly printed worship bulletin or a book contains a lot of words that i think ought to be updated how do you point us sort of as foot soldiers on our way i can't do that no i just sort of skip over them too yeah i i don't cross my fingers but i don't take them literally and i don't know how you have to constantly be doing that but i come out of a tradition where the words were important to me when i was 12 years old and were important to me when i was a high school senior and i can remember those those times that those words carried me if they don't carry me today they carried me in a per certain period of their history and i keep knowing that those words aren't eternal i had to learn to do new words the hymns are particularly awful the hymns here use old tunes which is what most people like they like to sing the old tunes they don't give a damn what the words are and no they're paying attention to them but they like the old tunes and uh i can't stand amazing grace because it says that you're a wretch like me i don't think i'm a wretch i don't think you're a wretch and and i just don't think that hymn's very very attractive george beverly shea used to get out and start the billy graham whatever they were to warm up the crowd and his favorite hymn was how great thou art but you don't realize how great god is in that hymn until he reaches down and god stoops down and lifts up a worm like you it's a pretty pretty desperate hymn but i i'm not going to give it up but i'm going to vote against it every time we we used to do that in the diocese of newark we'd periodically pass a resolution calling on the church to drop a hymn out of the hymnbook they never did but it was really fun to say so and we had a hymn that was an absolute sado-masochistic beauty it was before thy throne oh god we kneel give us a conscience quick to feel a ready mind to understand the meaning of your chastening hand wean us and train us with your rod teach us to know our faults oh god we ought to stop singing that hymn that's a terrible hymn and uh and so i make this conscious you know i constantly make things like this make people think by bringing up an illustration like that sure thank you thank you okay i personally want to thank you again for the deep and broad scholarly knowledge that you provide i'm grateful thank you my question is will the universal faith that you and we hope for face not only a challenge from the institutional and theist church but also from the financial economic world that so dominates us yes i think he will it's hard to make change it's hard to change institutions because everything affirms something in the society so you just do that but i think it'll pass it's not going to happen immediately what's going on is is going on in the consciousness of people we have churches where two or three people just can't stand the liturgy and they make a real difference in time you know some sometimes they they give up and leave the church sometimes they get a get a group together that wants to read a book and they go to the church and they say can we have a book study and that's fairly innocuous most the time they get through that but after a while when they discover the books you're reading the church slams the door i had a good friend in louisville kentucky uh this group of people wanted to have a book study group and they picked some some authors i was one of them and i felt good about that but so was the archbishop of canterbury rowan williams and several other people but the local director of that church heard about it he went to him he said if you don't let me pick the book for you to study you've got to get out of this church so they did they went to saint matthews where an alumnus of my diocese was the rector and i was really happy about that but that that kind of irritation does cause growth i went to we had a methodist church somewhere either in texas or i think it was in texas well they went and the minister said no we're not going to have any any discussion on anything that causes anybody to be upset i thought that's really wonderful i just suggest what you got to do there is leave and you got to find another place where you can worship but uh the churches that that emphasis is present uh right now and and some of the some of the clergy that are being open they get reactions when they do something that's a little bit different and if they if you don't support them by standing firm then they cave so i would suggest you you stand firm and be as uncomfortable as you can uh it's good for clergy have uncomfortable lay people and i think the lay people are far ahead of the clergy today they live in a broader world and that's not true of all clergy but it's true of most clergy thank you very much thank you bishop spong for sharing your gifts with us this week my name is devin horn and i'm from albany new york and i'm a member of a community that's associated with the association of roman catholic women priests and we are blessed in our community to have have ordained six women priests so within our liturgies we have six women that are serving us and two men as priests every week so my question comes from my own beliefs about the human need for rituals and words that resonate with our innermost yearnings and beliefs and i think you are alluding to this a little bit but i just want to pin you down a little bit i wonder if you believe it is important for us to create or to recreate and reimagine the words and rituals that speak to our 21st century knowledge or do we think do you think we're just wasting our time given our demise as a christian community no i don't think you're doing that we've got a group of i don't know how to describe them they were they're very loyal roman catholics but they're outside the church and they meet regularly in their homes and they celebrate the eucharist when women celebrate the eucharist and that upsets a lot of people because they don't have apostolic succession i think apostolic succession and down and a half will buy you a good cup of coffee at walmart but uh but what episodic succession was for the benefit of order they had to have order and you had to have some credibility of saying this man is qualified to be a priest in this one but we've lost that and i think it's a impediment we had a a visitor from the congregational church in my church the other day his name was fred plumer he uh is head of something called progressive christianity and uh he was he was the preacher of that day and he was you know he's also in the sanctuary because you can't get rid of him if he's just in in the pulpit you know you suddenly got to take care of it and so my director did and had him administering communion i was glad the bishop wasn't there because that would have probably created a problem but fred without investments he didn't wear vestments he had a t-shirt on it's a everybody else was in very elaborate vestments and he was having more fun giving communion out he didn't know how to do it took a whole handful did it poke chip style [Laughter] but uh but it had this beam on his face and it to me it was just a wonderful moment when our wreck that turned a moment that could have been difficult into something special she's a special creature and i really enjoy her and i'm delighted to be a member of our congregation thank you very much i think we need rituals yes sir hello it's a pleasure sir um this is our second conversation over the years um my name is anthony agnello i'm a former football coach get a little closer i'm not hearing it i'm a former football coach former track coach at orchard park high school just up the up the highway a little bit and i'm currently the co-founder of the peace corps alliance for intercultural understanding what i heard you say during the course of this and previous discussions is something that sounded very universally true to me and and you might have seen this passage before abu kassem ferdoci the author of the persian classic sean nama wrote that our purpose is to live to love to learn and to leave a lasting legacy your legacy with your works is well intact what do we do going forward to promote this legacy specifically in light of the peace corps alliance for intercultural understanding how do i get my former peace corps associates and colleagues to pick up that baton and run forward well that's a good question if if you want to know how you keep my legacy going you probably can't i might last my books might last two or three years after i die that's to be about all i used to think they were long give you a whole well i remember my first book it's 120 pages it's so little one reviewer referred to it as a track or a book review pamphlet or something but i thought i thought it was as big as a british encyclopedia uh because i'd worked so hard on it and when it came out if they didn't have white pages in it they wouldn't have gotten a hundred pages and it had a lot of white pages in it they were divided between chapters uh i think i think my heritage will be maybe five years at most and i've sold a lot of books they'll be in some libraries somebody pick them up and say well what weirdo was uh but i don't think it's going to be a long jeopardy and i don't worry about that the world moves in cycles and you add to your cycle and then you pass out of existence and you and then another cycle of places then somebody picks up and you come back and uh we have all sorts of cycles in our life i told somebody the other day that i was born when herbert hoover was president and i uh going to die when donald trump's president and that's not progress [Applause] that's just that's but in the cycles of politics and the rest of life we always are doubling back and i i think mr trump represents a a racist revulsion to eight brilliant years of barack obama i think he really did but we've got to live through the reaction and i think we can live through the reaction and we will live through that i just hope it doesn't take long you know as john irvin said i got to the place where i missed george w bush he hadn't been around for a while and i thought he was probably the worst president we ever had but now he's that's progress so but you the cycles of life are always going and you just participate in them in your child in your time and don't worry about the future i don't thank you sir be a good coach yes sir i've got a question there's many of us that are no longer millennials or young people but we have a little closer we have living wills we have durable powers of health care but the end of life we have funerals and in the back of our book there's always a order of funeral do you have an order a funeral for you yeah i've already written it that's what i want to hear yeah i had some wonderful times right in my funeral it took although i heard from the diocese where you were something that i hadn't thought about before the bishop died and recorded his own sermon it was prayed at his funeral that's a real that's a real first for me i don't believe i'll do that but uh yeah i i had to borrow from hymns from other other books besides the episcopal hymn book some some hymns that i really enjoy and i've had an opportunity in my life to to be singing out of other hymn books because we i do i don't do very many episcopal things it's per se but uh yeah it was fun and i picked the people i wanted to speak and mostly it's my lawyer and my director i can't tell you how much i love my lawyer because i conferred with him five days a week for 24 years over something going on in that diocese and he was a wonderful asset to me and if anybody knows me it's my record and my lawyer and uh i hope he'll have a good time you know i had a cousin who left in his will enough money to pitch a party after the funeral in charlottesville so we had a great time having a party on my bro my cousin uh and and i'd like to like do that too i you know i'm not i don't want to say to anybody that i'm looking forward to dying i'm not but i can manage it i don't i don't think i'd enjoy not seeing chris anymore but other than that i don't know anything that's particularly horrible about that and well you all come that's all i can say it'll be a learning experience for you yes sir thank you for the invite i appreciate that and i've appreciated every minute that i've been able to spend here with you just a few and it's made a big impact my life yesterday you spoke quite a bit about examples in nature that you've used to recast and in some ways deconstruct get a little closer i'm having a hard time hearing as is that okay uh yesterday you were speaking a great deal about nature and the divine within nature and the intelligence within nature and you used um that framework in some ways to reorient or and deconstruct or challenge um the sin and salvation paradigm in christianity i wondered if kind of like joseph campbell did many years ago if you see nature yeah the divine in nature the gaia principle the mother principle as a framework that christians can adopt in an effective way in the new church well to me you can't be a member of everything you've got to be a member of something and what you've got to do is to go beyond that something i i don't i don't ever mind suggesting that i'm a christian but i don't want people to draw implications for that that i look down on somebody who isn't and that's part of the christian tradition and i don't think i can name my successor i think those are pitiful people who sort of want to groom somebody to succeed them in in their particular role in the church the church will produce another jack swan very soon probably won't be in the diocese of newark because it doesn't work that way but uh the last one was in california his name was jim pike and i get compared to him from time to time i liked him but he was really weird uh toward the end of his life he became an alcoholic he started talking to his toothbrush because it was his son had committed suicide and he had a he had a really tough time now in england i like it better when i get compared to john robinson now he's not somebody everybody here knows but he was a great human being that the church didn't care for he was a bishop of suffolk and woolwich in southwark and the church when he wrote his book honest to god in 1963 the church recoiled but the people of england ate it up and suddenly this book was a topic of conversation every pub in england and the taxi drivers in london i'd get in they say do you know that bishop robinson it was just amazing to me but the archbishop of canterbury said some pompous thing and uh he said well i remember saying that he was he was offending little people's faith and he said archbishop you need to realize that little people are growing up i thought that was a pretty good answer to to that sort of thing but that's just the way that's just the way it is and uh i don't i don't worry about legacies yes ma'am you mentioned your first book and the work that went into it i was wondering if you could remind us what your first book was and if there's anything you would revise now at this point i'm having a hard time hearing it remind you of me of what the name of your first book oh yeah it was honest prayer i can remember that far back and that was in 1972 i believe of 71. and it's called honest prayer i think it may still be in print but not from harper and it's a little publisher in new jersey brings out my books when harper drops them it's uh it was a play on john robinson john robinson wrote a book called honest to god and he had a chapter ended on prayer and i named this honest spread right to play on john robinson am i really had just a great great affection for and uh it did very well uh i say that it was the first book of an unknown author but so about 12 000 copies and that's a success a book makes profit at about 3 500 copies that is the publisher gets all the their costs out of a book at about 3 500 copies and after that it's gravy for the publisher and uh the book is still that is sold over a thousand copies in this new version the new publisher in hall with new jersey i think it's called saint john's press but uh i wouldn't recommend it too many too many years part of the question was anything you would revise from your early works no i don't think that works i i wrote another book i've written on prayer several more times in the course of my life and always from a different perspective but if you if you want to see closer to where i would be today on prayer this last book has three chapters on prayer and a book called the new christianity of a new world has two chapters on prayer that are better than honest prayer last question you've referred today a couple of times to not liking words and hymns i'm a lifelong episcopalian married to a clergy person clergyman who struggles with that at his liberal church in buffalo and i'd love to hear if you would care to reveal them the names of the hymns you've chosen for your funeral and any sources you might want to recommend for someone who struggles with finding hymns that really speak to 21st century culture yeah well i try to remember them they're not fresh in my mind uh the first one is a non-episcopal hymn what's it called chris you don't know she knows everything i don't understand why she didn't know that she said she hadn't attended my funeral yet but it's uh it's written by methodist in the 1990s and uh and it's about about movement into the future and it has verses that go into all the controversies of the church there's a great one in the book by god i can't remember anything right now what's uh is him 590 what is it uh it's uh first the the riverside church richter the great guy from the early 20s no that's right god of grace and god of glory to that great great tune but uh and let me tell you just about one hymn writer we sang a hymn of his i believe yesterday here his name is fred khan he's a dutchman who was a member of the congregational church of england and he moved to england and he used to write his sermons and then go through the hymn book looking for hymns that would support his sermon never could find one so he wrote one every week he wrote to him every week to go with his sermon he didn't he didn't know a word of music and so he turned over to a guy who was a musician he attached them to a tune and now you get the books of fred khan's hymns and uh you might look them up they're pretty popular here not one of them is an episcopal hymnal but i i just are very fond of fred and his wife too and but we don't have hymns like that anymore my mentor here said we would have no more questions i don't know what we're going to do okay i just wonder if my name is lisa mcallister and i'm a lifelong minister's daughter presbyterian minister's daughter and while we've been here this week this is a certain age demographic i've heard a lot about end of life discussions i wonder if you might just take us back in the other direction as a minister's daughter i no longer go to church i didn't raise my children going to church because i didn't think that what they were getting was the truth and i have been out there like a boat without a rudder and i want to say thank you for throwing a life preserver because you have given me a door back into re-examining christianity from a position of truth but i'd like to know your thoughts on how your the daughter that said dad none of that is pertinent anymore your stanford phd and your grandchildren how are they moving forward and how do i take my children forward well i wish i could tell you uh i've got six grandchildren and three of them have never been baptized three of them have been one of the three who's never been baptized is going to church in atlanta my oldest granddaughter is a doctor in richmond and she's pretty active in the church at least she was when i was remember her and spent time with her she's got a brother who goes to church once in a while but he's uh he's really more interested in making money he's he's a money-making man there's no doubt about that and he's going to be a rich man someday and i hope i hope he's 27 i hope he'll find something that'll enrich his life uh i've got another grandson who i thought might be a priest he's a law student at harvard at this moment and uh i've said to him johnny i'd like for you to think about being a priest he said i'd be a funny priest and i don't believe in god but he's the most compassionate person i've ever met uh his compassion for the underdog the underprivileged uh and he's he's harvard university howard law school's primary student on the democratic party platform in massachusetts now that may cause cheers from some place in booths from others but he's all his life he's been way out there on issues of compassion and equality and i think he's a wonderful human being and then we've got two little twins in vermont and their parents don't go to church but whenever we go to vermont to see them we go by and we go to church and they decide they don't go with us just a month ago they were both with us and the mother came she was raised a roman catholic and had a pretty terrible experience was abused and uh yeah everything that you think of it's bad but she's now coming back and she's making inquiries about singing in the choir now there's only one church in peacham that's a town of about 51 people you know in vermont and it's a you know they got a rector who's 85 years old that's rather interesting but he's a wonderful guy he's a real life-affirming guy happy guy and he's been an active united church of christ pastor all his life served some great big churches and now he's having a wonderful time serving this church in peachum it's got maybe a hundred members i'd guess but it's the kind of church that is a community affair you go into that church and he has an opening prayer and then he gives you the news the news is who's out of town who's in the hospital what's been operated on which which organ is this that's hurting and uh and it just tells you the whole town news you i don't see how you can live in that community and not know the town news if you go to that church and then he gets into the sermon and at 85 years old he does a really good job anyway i've loved my experiences in the church there have been some bad times i know i'm being goosed down but having a parish church where i belong has been a very important lesson for me and uh having i have had a time i didn't care for the director of any one of my churches and that's kind of tough but i'm i i get back after a while because rectors don't last forever thank you all wait wait wait before we before we thank bishop spong uh you cannot have been here for four days and not believe that his love for christine and her devotion to him is something to be admired and would you join me in welcoming and saying goodbye to christine [Applause] [Music] thank you bishop spong you have enriched our lives so much you

Channel: Chautauqua Institution

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Length: 68min 1sec (4081 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 15 2021