Subject: Bishop's Crusade: Rev. Spong's Support Of Homosexual Priests Divides Episcopalians Date: Published: 2/20/91 (249 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Bishop's Crusade: Rev. Spong's Support Of Homosexual Priests Divides Episcopalians --- They Head for a Critical Vote On Allowing Ordination; Other Churches Also Split --- Shattering Tales at `the Oasis' ---- By R. Gustav Niebuhr Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal RIDGEWOOD, N. J. -- On a recent Tuesday morning at staid Christ Church here, the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, the Episcopal Church's bishop of Newark, has little trouble getting parishioners' attention. He has come to talk about the positive influence homosexuals have had on Christianity. His example: none other than the Apostle Paul. For four hours, the bishop quotes from Paul's letters -- passages in which the Apostle frets over his self-control, voices ambivalence toward women and applauds celibacy -- gradually building a case that Paul, who never married, was a "deeply repressed, self-loathing gay male." When the lecture ends, one woman charges in a trembling voice that the bishop has misunderstood Paul. Hugh Greene, a deacon at an Apostolic Church in Queens, N. Y., wants to know how homosexuality differs from "other sins ...like murder, theft and adultery." But, after the questions, most of the 100 or so people rise to their feet in a standing ovation. The question of homosexuality -- and, more specifically, whether homosexuals can be clergy -- is roiling America's Protestant churches. The Old Testament Book of Leviticus is quite clear on the subject. It labels homosexuality an "abomination" and lists it in a series of crimes, including adultery, incest and bestiality, it says should be punished by death. Traditionally, homosexuals were hardly welcome as parishioners, let alone pastors. A majority of all churchgoers, polls indicate, believe homosexuality is sinful. "If one looks at Holy Scripture in the Old and New Testament, there are seven specific places in which homosexuality is dealt with," says the Rt. Rev. William Wantland, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Eau Claire, Wis. "In all seven instances, the way homosexuality is dealt with is entirely negative." Last year, two Lutheran churches were suspended from their denomination after ordaining homosexual associate pastors. In November, a Presbyterian minister was defrocked the day after he declared from the pulpit of his Richmond, Va., church that he was a homosexual. That same month, M. Elisabet Hannon was fired as pastor of a Quaker church after she disclosed she was a lesbian. Members of the Friends Meeting in West Branch, Iowa, said that they regretted the dismissal, but that state church officials had warned that the church could face suspension. But some attitudes seem to be softening. About one in six ministers surveyed by the Presbyterian Church (USA) last year said they didn't oppose ordaining homosexuals. Reform Jews voted to admit homosexuals as clergy last summer. This month, in a preliminary opinion, a special committee appointed by the United Methodist Church to study the issue suggested abolishing the official stance that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching." Nowhere is the issue as divisive as it is currently in the Episcopal Church. And that is largely because of Bishop Spong, a heterosexual family man, and the Rev. David Norgard, the openly homosexual Episcopal priest he has appointed to head the Oasis, a special ministry for homosexuals in Hoboken, N. J. Bishop Spong, who is 59 years old, is hardly representative of mainstream Episcopal thought. His opinions, some of them considered radical, are included in a controversial book published this month called "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism," a theological work he says he wrote to give moderate and liberal Christians a way to reply to the fundamentalist argument that the Bible must be taken literally. Bishop Wantland says of him: "It seems whenever a controversial issue is disposed, he moves on to the next one." But even many of Bishop Spong's detractors respect the quality of his research and his thought. Many of his unconventional opinions were well-known in 1976, when he was made bishop of Newark; now he is in charge of 160 priests and 132 parishes in northern New Jersey. And it is Bishop Spong's outspokenness on the issue of homosexual priests that has brought the issue to open debate. "What I'm engaged in is raising the consciousness of the Christian Church," he says. "I've got to absorb a lot of negativity." No one disputes that some of the Episcopal Church's 11,368 active priests are homosexual. Indeed, although church officials passed a resolution against ordaining homosexuals in 1979, many were ordained since then anyway by bishops who either ignored the resolution or didn't ask questions. Bishop Spong says that isn't good enough. He talks of ordaining homosexuals as the "third revolution," following civil rights in the 1960s and women's ordination in the 1970s. Homosexuals have been badly mistreated by the church, he says. Many who visit the Oasis relate shattering stories about being turned away by their pastors at times when they were struggling to come to grips with their homosexuality. Last year, Bishop Spong says, he buried two priests who died of AIDS, neither of whom could tell his parish of his disease. Homosexuals would be more monogamous, and life in the gay community would be more stable, if homosexuals were accepted by the church, he believes. "You can't shred a human being the way we do gay and lesbian people and then expect them to have anything to give in a committed relationship," he says. The Episcopal Church -- unlike, say, the Southern Baptist Convention -- is not usually given to such open and strident controversy. The 2.4 million-member body, an offshoot of the Anglican Church that was formed after King Henry VIII broke with the Roman Catholic Church in 1529, is defined more by its liturgy, its hymns, prayers and other rites of worship than by any particular creed. Episcopalians have a reputation for being less dogmatic and more tolerant than many other churches. Bishop Spong's questioning of concepts such as the Virgin Birth, which would be considered shocking in some churches, is by no means unprecedented among Episcopalians. But Bishop Spong's aggressive advocacy of homosexual clergy and his open sponsorship of Father Norgard have forced a bitter showdown. When officials of the Episcopal Church meet in Phoenix, Ariz., from July 11 to July 20, they will vote on conflicting motions: One proposed resolution would allow homosexual ordinations, while a proposed canon law would ban them. The church's ruling body is set up something like Congress, with the approximately 250-member House of Bishops and the approximately 850-member House of Deputies, which is divided equally between priests and lay persons. All church policy must receive majority approval by both houses. Even some church conservatives expect the votes to be very close. Whatever the outcome, the showdown could badly hurt the church. "I think the future of the church is at stake," says the Rev. Todd Wetzel, director of Episcopalians United for Revelation, Renewal and Reformation, a group of church conservatives. "The average Episcopalians could wake up on the 21st of July and find themselves participating in something they would find abominable." Approval of homosexual clergy could cost the church nearly half its already-declining membership over the next five years, he believes. His group is waging a nationwide telephone and direct-mail campaign to rally Episcopalians against ordaining homosexuals. Yet liberal Episcopalians are equally alarmed by the prospect that homosexual ordinations might be banned. The Rev. Karen Murphey, associate rector of Grace Church in Madison, N. J., says she "and a lot of other people" would face a hard decision whether to leave the church or "stay and fight," adding: "In terms of conscience, how could you continue to minister in a church that by canon law would exclude an entire body of people? " The unlikely center of this storm is Father Norgard, a genial, low-key 32-year-old, who sees his role not only as minister to homosexuals, but as an ambassador to those who don't know, understand or like homosexuals. While some of his views are controversial -- he supports homosexual marriages, for instance -- his style is anything but. He wears button-down shirts and banker's gray flannel. He discovered his sexual orientation in college and has been with the same companion ever since. He didn't wrestle with guilt, wasn't deeply estranged from his family and served a happy six years as associate rector at Holy Apostles Church in New York City before joining the Oasis. "I had a different experience than most {homosexual} folks do," he says. And his tendency is to defuse situations instead of igniting them. At a symposium last fall, he was confronted by a parishioner who, citing an article in a supermarket tabloid, wanted to know if it was true that lesbian coaches made passes at teen-age athletes. Father Norgard calmly suggested the story was sensationalized. The man "was asking it in a serious way, and he deserved a serious response," he recalls. Bishop Spong, by contrast, clearly enjoys controversy. Raised in a fundamentalist Baptist household in Charlotte, N. C., he plays the role of an erudite provocateur. As an Episcopal priest in Richmond, Va., in the 1960s, he spoke out strongly in favor of civil rights and improved relations between Christians and Jews. Later, he antagonized church conservatives by rejecting the Virgin Birth and questioning Jesus's physical resurrection. But none of his actions or views have been as controversial as those involving homosexual clergy. His effort to push the issue began in 1989, when he ordained J. Robert Williams, whose idea it was to create the Oasis. While Father Williams wasn't the first homosexual to be ordained in the Episcopal Church, he was the first openly homosexual person to be ordained in a ceremony that made a point of his sexual orientation. Bishop Spong explained his reasons for the pending ordination in a long letter to other bishops. The ordination at All Saints Church in Hoboken, N. J., drew picketers carrying signs that read: "Homosexuality -- Just Say No." Inside the church, two people read statements denouncing the proceedings. One enraged minister was escorted out by ushers after he shouted over and over that the service was an "abomination." The situation grew even more heated just a month later, when Father Williams lost his temper at a church conference in Detroit. Confronted by an angry monk, he declared that monogamy was merely "an option" in any relationship -- a view Bishop Spong rejects. Chagrined, Bishop Spong forced Father Williams to resign and was himself rebuked for the ordination at a meeting of the church's bishops last September. Bishop Spong's choice of David Norgard to replace Father Williams in September 1990 was more calculated. Father Norgard, he says, is in a role like that of Jackie Robinson, the Brooklyn Dodger who was the first black in the major leagues. The Dodgers' owner, Branch Rickey, "laid down the law to Jackie Robinson," he says. The law: Lead by example and don't lash out at your enemies. At the Oasis, Father Norgard's presence has been like a salve. He leads discussions on spiritual matters and the difficulties of publicly declaring homosexuality. At Tuesday night worship services, he delivers the message that "God really does love gay people," which has a powerful impact among men and women who feel the church has been a font of hostility rather than grace. William H. Lorentz, a lawyer, says he had been a committed Roman Catholic until a priest refused to grant him absolution unless he would agree to break off his long-term relationship that afternoon. "For eight years, I would have nothing to do with church or religion," he says. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale had wanted to be a priest so badly she hid her lesbianism all through seminary. She sat silently through class lectures in which homosexuality was described as a perversion and a sin. After she graduated, she was denied ordination. "You don't expect things to be fair in the workplace or at the grocery store. You don't expect those places to be a home for you," she says. But "you expect the church to have superior moral ethics." She now works for the church, researching social issues that particularly concern women, and also serves as president of the Oasis board. One recent Tuesday evening at Oasis, Barry Adkins, an advertising agency employee, lingers with others, who munch on cheese and crackers after the service. "David is able to bring the Christian message to a lot of people who have never heard it," he says. [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]