From: lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew)
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Subject: Re: Bishop Spong
Date: 15 Sep 92 16:24:05 GMT
Reply-To: <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.


 7-Apr-92 11:06:36-GMT,925;000000000011

In article <01GOM6UO8A40002F5C@CC.OWU.EDU>,         
"Lauren H. Arango" <LHARANGO@OWUCOMCN.BITNET> writes:

|> Louie Crew writes:
|> >It is one thing to disagree with him [Bishop Spong], but quite another to 
|> >hold him up to crude ridicule on terms that he has done nothing whatsoever 
|> >to deserve.
|> 
|> If you will read my message again, you will see that I was not the one who
|> made the joke.  I simply repeated it in my message as an example of what
|> Spong's reputation has done to him.  I don't see how I "held him up to
|> crude ridicule", but I apologize if I offended you.
 
Gossips repeat stories.  They always claim not to be responsible for 
initiating them.  And they always claim an innocent motive as a mere 
informer or explainer.  'IF I offended you.'  Your condition is a thin, thin
veil for your insincerity.  Of course you offended me.  

Worse still, you sinned against your brother The Rt. Rev. John S. Spong.  
A credible apology is to say, "Dear Bishop Spong, I heard a crude joke about 
you and I repeated it in a public forum with no regard to whether it was fair.  
I disagree with you on many issues, but I am profoundly sorry that I used my 
disagreement with you to justify repeating this malice.  Please forgive me and 
pray for me as I do for you.  I apologize to you in private, but I also post 
this publicly to the same forum where I wronged you."

Your insincerity is obvious later when you ask me to 'chill
out.'  Why should I chill?  So that your crude humor can remain unspoiled?
The joke you re-told was not funny.  It attacked the personhood of my close 
personal friend and my bishop.  I asked you to stop.  Instead, you told me 
to shut up.

|> >Three weeks ago I went to the
|> >wedding of a much respected and venerable bishop who was marrying for the
|> >third time..... with both other wives still alive and well.
|> 
|> Was he married in the Episcopal Church?  Our bishop of Southern Ohio flatly
|> refuses to give permission to *anyone* to marry in the Episcopal Church who
|> has been married twice before.  He generally grants permission to those who
|> have been married once before (everyone is human, and anyone can make a
|> mistake once), but if you've been married twice or more, you'll have to
|> get married somewhere else.
|> 
|> In addition, just yesterday our rector said, "You won't find an Episcopal
|> bishop who has been married more than once."  According to her, the Episcopal
|> Church holds with the statement in 1 Timothy about bishops being "the
|> husband of not more than one wife".
|> 
|> Apparently in the case of the bishop you cite, this is not so.  I suspect
|> that this would greatly surprise her.
|> 

Your rector is wrong.

The particular bishop whose wedding I attended was married in an Episcopal 
church with the permission of the Presiding Bishop and with the permission of 
the diocesan bishop in his bride's diocese where the wedding occurred.

I know personally at least four other divorced bishops who have remarried
in Episcopal Churches with the permission of local and national hierarchy.
For obvious reasons, they do not advertise these weddings except to invite
a narrow circle of friends.  They are not saying, "Woopie, we love divorce.
Let's try for it again."  They are saying, we want to begin again to live in
a life-long committed relationship, till death parts us; pray for us; nurture 
our love in community.

Jesus addresses this issue, as manifest in this loose translation from The 
Lutibelle Bible:

Stones for sale!  Great big whopping stones for sale!  Right here.  Two bits.
Righteous people, come get your great big wholloping stones while they last!
Only two bits!   [beware: LUTIBELLE's BIBLE is not for the Humor Impaired, 
nor is Quean James's version either.]

|>>If you did not know that about Bishop Spong's extremely conservative personal
|>>life style, you might ask yourself why you did not.
|> 
|> Quite frankly, I have no desire to find out more about him.  No offense,
|> but I have other things to spend my time on.
|> 

If you have closed your mind to evidence, that is your privilege.  But do not 
open it briefly for gossip such as you have posted here.

I am late posting this because I was away for a weekend with the Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Presiding Bishop at a conference for invited lay leaders of
the Episcopal Church.  If your parish and mine work harder to love the world
as God loves the world, we won't have time to become experts in bishops'
sins but in God's forgiveness.  God died for the sins of everyone, bishops [and 
queans] included. 

Hallelujah!  Hallelujah!  Hallelujah! 

Louie/Quean Lutibelle

-- 
  ==========================================================================
  Louie Crew, Assoc. Prof., Academic Foundations Dept., Rutgers U./NWK 07102
  lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu                                   201-485-4503
                    Heteroprivilege is against New Jersey law!
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