Article Spong

Canon Law Institute^sm

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. (Rev.2:3)

Episcopal Justice and Mr. Spong: There IS a Way!

An abbreviated version of this article appears in the September 1999 issue of The Christian Challenge.

John Shelby Spong’s appearance on ABC television’s Politically Incorrect during the early hours of July 20, 1999, has renewed the hue and cry urging the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church to act with dispatch in bringing ecclesiastic charges against Mr. Spong for heresy, apostasy, and a variety of other transgressions. Clad in the uniform of an Episcopal bishop and legitimized as a direct heir of Christ’s apostles by the beleaguered Episcopal Church, Mr. Spong was just being himself on the show. Although at times he did seem to become a little testy, apparently because the "Fundamental" Christian on the same program was not permitting Mr. Spong sufficient time to repeat his oft announced platitudes.

Yet these lamentations directed to the House of Bishops and individual Episcopal bishops are misplaced. For, the reality of the Episcopal justice system is that the locus of power for addressing the perceived heretical embarrassment Mr. Spong is inflicting upon the Episcopal Church and Christendom at large rests with the Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev’d Frank T. Griswold, not with the House of Bishops or individual bishops.

This reality is the result of recent amendments to the Canons of the Episcopal Church specifically aimed at making heresy charges against a bishop all but impossible, and requiring a several year process. Only Presiding Bishop Griswold has the option to expedite the process. Of course, that requires the will to act, and the conviction that such action is required to guard and protect the Faith, as well as the doctrine of the Episcopal Church. The road for the Presiding Bishop is short and straight; the road for bishops is long and convoluted.

The Episcopal justice system includes a Review Committee consisting of five bishops appointed by Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold, as well as two priests and two confirmed adult lay communicants appointed by the President of the House of Deputies. "It shall be the duty of the Review Committee" to certify to the Presiding Bishop when a bishop has abandoned communion with the Episcopal Church "by an open renunciation of the Doctrine" of the Episcopal Church. Once Presiding Bishop Griswold receives this certificate he, with the consent of the three senior bishops having jurisdiction, "SHALL then inhibit the said bishop until such time as the House of Bishops shall investigate the matter and act thereon." So, for swift action, Bishop Griswold need merely request his Review Committee to ascertain whether Mr. Spong has renounced the Doctrine of the Episcopal Church. As will be shown, such does not appear to be a difficult inquiry. Once completed, Bishop Griswold merely follows the canonical mandate, with the required consents, to inhibit Mr. Spong until further action by the House of Bishops.

This canonical process to inhibition could be completed in weeks. The heretical charging process, as we shall see, would take several years. Why must the Episcopal Church become the mockery of the world, when a simple, timely solution is anticipated by the canons? Could it be that Mr. Spong speaks the doctrine of the Presiding Bishop? Let us pray not!

Episcopal Bishops and Scholars Comment on Mr. Spong’s Doctrine

First, as to Mr. Spong, in addition to his television appearances – primarily on talk shows where he uses his position as a bishop not to save souls or bring unbelievers the good news of our Lord and Savior and His life, death, resurrection, and ultimate return in glory, but to provide ecclesiastic legitimacy to views that coincide with current secular views and assure him media attention and audience - he is a published author and a consecrated bishop in the Episcopal Church where he leads the Diocese of Newark. The theology of his writings leaves little apparent doubt that Mr. Spong’s "doctrine" is quite contrary to the official doctrine of the Episcopal Church. And, his recently published Twelve Theses leave little run for discussion even among his supporters.

Oxford theologian Alister McGrath has summarized Mr. Spong’s published theology thusly: "Spong constructs a fantasy world, in which his own vision of a politically correct culture leads him to impose stereotypes upon the New Testament with a fierce and uncritical dogmatism and a lack of scholarly insight" (A Passion for Truth, InterVarsity Press 1996, p.65). Similarly, ten distinguished Episcopal scholars have recently critiqued Mr. Spong’s writings and debunked them from the point of view of Christian theology. Dean Peter C. Moore of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, edited the 1998 work entitled Can a Bishop be Wrong? Ten Scholars Challenge John Shelby Spong (Moorehouse Publishing 1998) [Scholars]. In that work, Bishop James M. Stanton characterizes Mr. Spong as a Gnostic (Scholars at pp.8-9). Dr. William G. Witt notes that "Far from believing in a transcendent deity, Spong has now clearly embraced a position in which God is in some sense identical with the world. The transcendence of God has been lost in a kind of radical immanentism (or monism): …" (Scholars at p. 28). Bishop C. FitzSimons Allison opines that Mr. Spong has abandoned the doctrine of the Trinity (Scholars at p. 51). The Rev’d Dr. Ephraim Radner examines the rhetorical style of Mr. Spong in a paragraph from Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture (Harper San Francisco 1995), and states:

"This paragraph is typical Spong-speak. It plays with a number of key abstractions that are never analyzed elsewhere, are lifted up as if they themselves somehow clarify an otherwise misconstrued object, and are, when pressed, proved to be self-referring and hence literal nonsense (Scholars at p. 58)."

Dr. Radner concludes this discussion thus: "The point to be emphasized here is that the kind of God Spong affirms is a semantically nonsensical abstraction. Therefore, anything Spong has to say about Scripture is, religiously speaking, bound up with nonsense" (emphasis in original, Scholars at p.59).

In expounding on Mr. Spong’s inversion of faith and sin, Dr. Russell R. Reno states:

"For Bishop Spong, we might submit to a text, a tradition, a creed, an institution, a school of thought, or an ascetic discipline because we think it empowers us or because it serves our experience. However, we are absolutely forbidden to submit because we think that it bears the authority of God rather than that of ourselves. A submission born of the conviction that I enter into fellowship with God by disciplining myself to listen to the words he has chosen to speak or by following a pattern of life he has commanded is what Bishop Spong calls sin. Just such an approach to discipleship involves the betrayal of self, which he diagnosis as the cause of our fear of change, of our ethnocentrism and sexism, of our racism and homophobia. Thus, when we take a considered view of Bishop Spong’s jeremiads against scriptural faith and traditional moral teaching, we see that, for him, sin is what Ireneaus and Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin, Cranmer and Newman called faith (Scholars at pp. 86-87)."

Dr. David A. Scott writes: "In terms that recall Karl Marx, he insists that the church must adjust and accommodate – or be destroyed. In Spong’s universe, the most powerful force does not seem to be God or the church, but social and cultural change" (Scholars at p. 132). The Rev’d Dr. Daniel A. Westberg concludes the collection by describing the incongruity between deference to God’s will, and Mr. Spong’s support for euthanasia and assisted suicide (Scholars at pp. 169-184).

Each of the articles in its own way demonstrates that publicly held views taught by Mr. Spong are contrary to one or more of the basic Christian doctrines held by the historic Episcopal Church. Bishop Stanton laments:

"First, Spong styles himself a judge of the church, but that is not his actual role. Rather, his continued presence as a bishop in this church constitutes a judgment upon us. While Spong’s published positions are well outside any meaningful definition of the Christian faith, this has not taken him outside the church. By retaining his office while making a travesty of the faith he was ordained to guard, he has dragged much of the church into darkness with him" (Scholars at p. 13).

That is quite an indictment of the Episcopal Church and its bishops!

So, if an ordained Christian bishop espouses such views as Jesus was a man who felt close to God, but was not himself God, disavows the Trinity, and ascribes the bodily resurrection of Jesus to a mystical reflection rather than an actual occurrence, removal from that office would seem a certainty. Yet such is not the case with Mr. John Shelby Spong and the Episcopal Church. It is up to Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold to act, for the process available to bishops is heretically accommodating and may practically immunize Mr. Spong from discipline.

You can’t get there from here.

That process was established for hearing matters related to the alleged heresy of bishops and is contained in the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church. Those canons were amended at the 1997 triennial general convention of the Episcopal Church resulting in a process which makes it virtually impossible to administer discipline to a heretical bishop, regardless of the breadth and depth of the negative witness emanating from the Episcopal Church as part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church of Jesus Christ by virtue of such heresy. As we keep in mind the short and simple process available to Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold via his Review Committee, let us consider this canonical process which must be followed by lesser bishops.

If the Episcopal scholars are correct in their analysis of Mr. Spong’s writings, it would appear that he has publicly and advisedly held doctrine contrary to that of the Episcopal Church by, inter alia, abandoning the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the physical resurrection of Christ, and the Virgin birth. What is the process for action by bishops of the Episcopal Church?

1. Ten brave diocesan bishops of the Episcopal Church file a written Request for a Statement of Disassociation from the alleged heretical statements of Mr. Spong, a proposed Statement of Disassociation, and a brief in support of these materials.

2. Once the Presiding Bishop receives these materials, he transmits a copy of them to Mr. Spong, giving him three to five months to file a written response.

3. When the Presiding Bishop receives Mr. Spong’s response and supporting brief, he transmits all of the materials to each member of the House of Bishops.

4. The Statement of Disassociation will then be considered at the next regularly scheduled House of Bishops meeting, which, allowing the three to five months for Mr. Spong to respond, would be March 2000 at the earliest.

5. At this March 2000 meeting, the assembled bishops may issue the proposed Statement of Disassociation, may amend the proposed Statement of Disassociation and issue the amended Statement, or may decline to issue any such Statement. If a Statement of Disassociation is not issued at the House of Bishops meeting, no further disciplinary proceedings may be brought against Mr. Spong.

But what does issuing a Statement of Disassociation mean? The Episcopal canons provide little guidance. The term "disassociation" is not defined. The three permitted sentences that may be imposed upon a bishop are Admonition, Suspension, and Deposition. Disassociation is not a proscribed sentence. But then the House of Bishops is issuing a Statement of Disassociation from the doctrine, not from the bishop charged. It appears that the intent of the amended canons was to establish a process for a determination by the House of Bishops that the alleged heretical statement was in fact heretical, and contrary to the doctrine of the Episcopal Church.

The resulting scenario is that a bishop of the Episcopal Church allegedly holds and teaches, publicly or privately, and advisedly, a doctrine contrary to that held by the Episcopal Church. The House of Bishops then determines, by a majority vote, that the doctrine held and taught advisedly by the bishop is in fact contrary to the doctrine of the Episcopal Church. The bishop charged need not disavow or disassociate himself from any such heretical holding and teaching, even though the House of Bishops disassociates itself from such holding and teaching of the bishop. It is the holding and teaching that has been disciplined, not the bishop within the Episcopal Church who has held and taught heresy.

After disciplining the heretical doctrine, step-two of the pre-trial process may be commenced by ten diocesan bishops. These ten bishops need not be the same brave ten who initiated the Request for a Statement of Disassociation.

6. This "second ten" begin their process by filing a written Presentment based upon the heretical statement which was the subject of the Statement of Disassociation issued by the House of Bishops. Such written Presentment is filed with the Presiding Bishop and must be accompanied by a supporting brief as well as "a statement why the issuance of a Statement of Disassociation was not a sufficient response to the acts alleged." This filing must be made within six months of the issuance of the Statement of Disassociation, or no later than September 2000 if the Statement is issued in March 2000.

7. These materials are then transmitted by the Presiding Bishop to the bishop charged, who has three to five months within which to file his response, or no later than February 2001.

8. At the end of this response period, the Presiding Bishop then transmits copies of all the materials to each member of the House of Bishops. In order for the charges to proceed to trial, one-third of the voting members of the House of Bishops must, within sixty days of notification from the Presiding Bishop, send him their written consent that the Presentment proceed to trial, or by April 2001.

9. If the Presiding Bishop receives the requisite number of consents in the time prescribed, the Presentment and other materials are sent to the Presiding Judge of the Court for the Trial of a Bishop.

Then, and only then, may the trial process begin to determine whether the bishop charged is guilty of "holding and teaching publicly or privately, and advisedly, any doctrine contrary to that held by this Church." Presumably at this point the issue of whether the doctrine at issue is "contrary to that held by this Church" has been decided by virtue of the Statement of Disassociation issued by the House of Bishops. However, the Episcopal canons do not preclude the responding bishop from contesting whether the statements or other acts alleged were contrary to the doctrine held by the Episcopal church. In fact, it is necessary for the presenting bishops through the Church Attorney to prove this element by "clear and convincing proof". And of course, if the Court for the Trial of a Bishop convicts the alleged heretical bishop, that bishop may appeal to the Court of Review for the Trial of a Bishop.

In reality, if the "first ten" brave bishops began the first step today, and were successful at each stage, the earliest that a trial could commence is May 2001. Assuming that Mr. Spong was convicted and unsuccessful during appeal, it is unlikely that sentencing could occur prior to 2003. Swift and sure justice is anathema to the Episcopal justice system. Unless, of course, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold has the will to do his duty via his Review Committee.

So what?

Yet the minutia of the Episcopal justice system is only relevant as it relates to the obvious inquiry: How can a Christian confession which proclaims "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!" during its Eucharistic celebration adopt the Ostrich approach in dealing with the apparently apostate and heretical public witness of one of its bishops? This seeming incongruity becomes more paradoxical when viewed through the filter of Mr. Spong’s impact on his own diocese, and the Episcopal Church in general.

According to official Episcopal Church records, Mr. Spong’s leadership in the Diocese of Newark has resulted in a decline in the number of confirmed communicants from 44,423 in 1978, to 23,073 in 1996, or a 48% decline in membership during his tenure. As to the Episcopal Church itself, the oft-quoted media figure of membership in excess of 2 million, usually reported as 2.1 or 2.5 million, is simply an illusion. Again according to official Episcopal Church records, the number of confirmed communicants declined from 1.7 million in 1988 to 1.6 million in 1996. While one may not necessarily attribute Mr. Spong’s public pronouncements with the national church decline, he must accept responsibility for the 48% membership decline in his own diocese. Is it possible that many of those who left the Episcopal Church did so because they sought to remain members of a Christian church?

So for all the apparent flamboyance and New Age Gnosticism of Mr. Spong, he has not helped the Episcopal Church grow in members. Although he certainly may have assisted the growth of other Christian denominations.

Perhaps Presiding Bishop Griswold and other lesser Episcopal bishops view Mr. Spong as marginalized and prefer to relegate him to a position outside of the mainstream of Episcopal Church authority and shine the spotlight elsewhere. Even if true, this approach is itself very problematic. Practically, Mr. Spong’s audience is much wider than the Episcopal Church itself. While the audience within the Diocese of Newark continues to shrink, the reach of his heretical ideas is repeated throughout Christendom and beyond, for the Episcopal Church is merely a single facet of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, and Mr. Spong is a self-proclaimed apologist for its replacement with a shallow form of New Age Gnosticism. If he did not bear the mantle of "A Bishop", his polemics would be of no moment to the Christian community. For, when the mantle of bishop is removed, his arguments fall by their own infirmities. These arguments are viewed as credible only because the Episcopal Church permits him to continue his non-Christian witness from the pulpit of public opinion as a consecrated bishop of the Episcopal Church. The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has an affirmative duty to protect the Gospel. The doctrine of the Episcopal Church as a Christian church must be upheld, defended and safeguarded by its bishops. To ignore the pronouncements of Mr. Spong is a sub silentio acceptance of them.

Are the Episcopal bishops declining to act because Mr. Spong has repented of his views? The previously discussed work edited by Dean Moore does not support that thesis, nor does Mr. Spong’s most recent publication, Why Christianity Must Change or Die: A Bishop Speaks to Believers in Exile (Harper San Francisco 1998), wherein he writes at page four, in typical Spong-speak:

"The words of the Apostles’ Creed, and its later expansion known as the Nicene Creed, were fashioned inside a worldview that no longer exists. Indeed, it is quite alien to the world in which I live. The way reality was perceived when the Christian creeds were formulated has been obliterated by the expansion of knowledge. That fact is so obvious that it hardly needs to be spoken. If the God I worship must be identified with these ancient creedal words in any literal sense, God would become for me not just unbelievable, but in fact no longer worthy of being the subject of my devotion."

In 1998 this ordained Episcopal bishop is stating in his most recent book that God must be worthy of Mr. Spong’s devotion, and that Mr. Spong does not believe in the God of the creeds of Christendom, and specifically that the God of the creeds of the Episcopal Church is not worthy of Mr. Spong’s devotion. Days ago he appeared on a nationally televised talk show and continued enunciated the same theme. Mr. Spong certainly does not sound repentant.

Dare we say the unthinkable? Is it possible that Mr. Spong’s apparent New Age Gnosticism has corrupted the institution? Is the Episcopal Church still a Christian church? Other than the lack of will of its Presiding Bishop and bishops to discipline one of their own for apparent heresy, is there other evidence of the corruption of the institution? Making any such disciplinary attempt a multi-year process under its amended canons may certainly have been motivated by other concerns. Self-preservation is one that certainly comes to mind. Protecting the witness and integrity of Christ’s church fails to make the list of possible reasons. But, the canons do permit an expedited process for Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold via his Review Committee.

But why has Presiding Bishop Griswold failed to act? Does he disagree with the writings of the ten Episcopal scholars? Does Presiding Bishop Griswold agree with Mr. Spong and his New Age Gnosticism? Does he simply hope the problem will end without intervention? Is the damage done by Mr. Spong’s seemingly heretical pronouncements acceptable in order to avoid confrontation? What of the bishops generally, have any broken communion with Mr. Spong?

In 1978 John Warwick Montgomery authored one of his 40 or so books, Faith Founded on Fact: Essays in Evidential Apologetics (Trinity Press 1978). In one such essay, Dr. Montgomery reflected on his attendance at the Inaugural Symposium of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in 1973. His concluding comments (at p. 165) included the following observation:

"That once noble church [The Episcopal Church] has so weakened that it could not even discipline Bishop Pike, who denied the Incarnation and the Trinity; a death-of-God theologian is still considered one of its luminaries; and it can hold a symposium on the future without once mentioning the return of our Lord Jesus Christ to judge the quick and the dead. The Episcopal liturgies remain magnificent, but, to use Pike’s famous line, they are sung, not said – regarded aesthetically rather than as affirmations of factual truth."

Unfortunately, it appears that this 1978 comment is still valid. A less noble Episcopal Church has no bishop who has broken communion with Mr. Spong. There are not ten brave bishops who will begin the long and arduous process of seeking a Statement of Disassociation and ultimate Deposition. And, probably the saddest of all indictments, Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold will not save the faithful and the Episcopal Church from this anti-Christian witness by availing himself of the only expedited process available within the Episcopal Church.

Perhaps the glue that binds is a magnificent liturgy - sung not said. Are aesthetics all that the Episcopal Church really has to offer as a facet of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church? The Episcopal Church awaits the decision of its Presiding Bishop – the good shepherd of Christ Jesus, while the worldwide Christian community watches.

END

NOTE: Kenneth E. North, JD Duke Law School, is the Executive Director of the Canon Law Institute and a former law professor. He has been involved in Episcopal Church ecclesiastic law matters for the past five years as canon law counsel and the author of articles on various canon law topics. He may be contacted at knorth@canonlaw.org, or PO Box 3047, Chesapeake, VA 23327.

The 12 Theses Of John Shelby Spong

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.

2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.

3. The biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.

4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ's divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.

5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.

6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.

7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.

8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.

9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard writ in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.

10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.

11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.

12. All human beings bear God's image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one's being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

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