A Manifesto! The Time Has Come!

Bishop Spong’s powerful statement on LGBTQ acceptance and the Christian right

I have made a decision. I will no longer debate the issue of homosexuality in the church with anyone.

I will no longer engage the biblical ignorance that emanates from so many right-wing Christians about how the Bible condemns homosexuality, as if that point of view still has any credibility. I will no longer discuss with them or listen to them tell me how homosexuality is "an abomination to God," about how homosexuality is a "chosen lifestyle," or about how through prayer and "spiritual counseling" homosexual persons can be "cured."

Those arguments are no longer worthy of my time or energy.

Listen No Longer to False Statements

I will no longer listen to the thoughts of those who advocate "reparative therapy," as if homosexual persons are somehow broken and need to be repaired.

I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of gay and lesbian people. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undocumentable claims of certain world religious leaders who call homosexuality "deviant."

I will no longer listen to the pious sentimentality that certain Christian leaders continue to employ that suggests some version of that strange and overtly dishonest phrase "we love the sinner but hate the sin."

That statement is, I have concluded, nothing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these people hate homosexual persons and fear homosexuality itself, but somehow know that hatred is incompatible with the Christ they claim to profess. Thus, they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement.

I will no longer temper my understanding of truth in order to pretend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling negativity that continues to emanate from religious circles where the church has for centuries conveniently perfumed its ongoing prejudices against blacks, Jews, women, and homosexual persons with high-sounding, pious rhetoric.

The day for that mentality has quite simply come to an end for me. I will personally neither tolerate it nor listen to it any longer.

I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by rejecting the presence of gay and lesbian people.

A Time for Justice and Inclusion

The world has moved on, leaving these elements of the Christian Church that cannot adjust to new knowledge or a new consciousness lost in a sea of their own irrelevance. They no longer talk to anyone but themselves.

I will no longer seek to slow down the witness to inclusiveness by pretending that there is some middle ground between prejudice and oppression. There isn't. Justice postponed is justice denied.

That can be a resting place no longer for anyone. An old civil rights song proclaimed that the only choice awaiting those who cannot adjust to a new understanding is to "Roll on over or we'll roll on over you!" Time waits for no one.

This article originally appeared in Unity Magazine®.