Bishop Spong recently shared how one of his best-seller books was almost a United Methodist book, unveiling a pivotal moment in the UMC when honest conversations about human sexuality began to be systematically ground into dust.
Bishop Shelby Spong is a retired Bishop in The Episcopal Church, an author, and a relentless punching bag by “orthodox” and traditionalist folks. He was an early religious voice for LGBT inclusion.
He recently shared a story of a United Methodist connection with one of his books. After reading it, I could not help but wonder about what alternative history might have taken place had things been different.
Here’s Bishop Spong in his own words:
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Living In Sin? Story
Note: This is part of Bishop Spong’s response to a reader letter about his book called Living in Sin? Here’s the full post.
Living in Sin? came out in 1988, almost 27 years ago now. It is still in print, a rather remarkable record since five years is about the maximum for the life of a religious book.
That book also had its own interesting history. It was commissioned by the Abingdon Press of Nashville, Tennessee, the official publishing house of the United Methodist Church. They, literally, came to me to request that I write it for them after some studies on the subject of homosexuality in the Diocese of Newark had received national attention. They wanted this book to be out by April 1988 in time for the National General Conference of the United Methodist Church. I met all of their deadlines, flew to Nashville to plan its launch and arranged my calendar with their publicity people in order to accommodate the media appearances that they were lining up. They clearly thought that this book was going to be a big book for them.
Abingdon Press even began pre-publication advertisements of this “coming book.” Some of those ads were placed in an in-house publication for Methodist clergy called “The Circuit Rider.” Much to their surprise they suddenly began to get negative reactions from conservative church sources, primarily in Texas. Threats were issued against Abingdon Press, stating that if they continued their plans to publish this book, an effort would be made at the upcoming General Conference to censure this Methodist publishing house and to have the General Conference place editorial controls on what Abingdon could publish in the future.
The furor grew and Abingdon’s leaders collapsed under this pressure and agreed to cancel the publication of my book. By this time, the cover had been designed, the page layouts completed and the presses were ready to run. My editor at Abingdon, Michael Lawrence, called to tell that my book would not be published and to apologize. I was devastated. They had asked me to write it, they had approved the text, set the type and designed the launch. They had even paid me a modest advance. Now they were canceling the book and my work for the past year had been done in vain. I felt totally defeated.
I was such a rookie author in those years that I did not embrace the fact that “being banned by the United Methodists” was almost as good as “being banned in Boston.” When the news broke on the wire services that “The Methodist Publishing House was cancelling an Episcopal bishop’s book on sex,” within a week I had seven publishers bidding for the rights to publish this manuscript. One of the seven was my regular publisher Harper Collins, from whom I had gotten leave to write this book for Abingdon Press, one of their minor competitors. It was a simple choice for me to give them the book. So Living in Sin? came out, not in April of 1988, but in the fall of 1988. Harper deleted from the text only one line and that was in the preface, where I gave thanks to my editor, Michael Lawrence, at Abingdon Press. It now read that I gave thanks to my editor Michael Lawrence. It no longer designate the publishing house for which he worked. Nothing else was changed except the Harper Collins imprint replaced the Abingdon imprint.
In six months’ time, that book sold more copies than all the books I had written up to that point put together. I was suddenly in a very different category as an author. I went on my first media book tour. I would never again be a private person or an unknown bishop in my church. It was not always comfortable for me, but the chance to move my church along in that struggle for justice was worth all the tension, the hate mail and even the death threats with which I lived. A letter like yours affirms again the rightness of this cause.
The world has moved rapidly on this issue since 1988. The struggle is over, the battle has been won. Thirty-seven states in America now have legalized gay marriage. The Supreme Court will pronounce in June definitively, and if positive, as I anticipate, the issue will be settled politically once and for all. I am grateful that I had a chance to be a part of this great struggle in the cause of humanity and justice.
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Commentary: The Origins of a Culture of Intimidation
To me, the most illuminating aspect of this story is the date.
This happened in 1988. One year earlier, Bristol House Books began in 1987 as a traditionalist parallel to Abingdon, taking some authors and business away from the denominational publishing house. Little wonder the Abingdon executives caved to the Texas church pressure as the threats likely would have become very real: restrictions on anything “promoting” homosexuality had been applied to the General Agencies since 1976 and could easily be extended to the Publishing House.
We see that traditionalists began creating their parallel reality within the UMC long ago. Along with the Mission Society (1984 parallel to the General Board of Global Missions) and the RENEW network (1989 parallel to UM Women), these conservative evangelicals seem to want both freedom and conformity. They wanted freedom to have their own parallel world where they make the rules with no accountability, but they also wielded their apportionments as a club to force the same denomination that they had broken up to conform to their values.
Today it is popular to point to Bishop Talbert and The Rev. Frank Schaefer as sowers of seeds of distrust and schism, but to do so is ignore that these emotions already went to seed in five years of 1984-1989–and have grown ever since. This book, the GBOD Human Sexuality forums in the late 1970s, and many other initiatives in the United Methodist Church to study human sexuality in a holistic way were silenced by churches allergic to the conversation and to other interpretations of Scripture, demanding the entire UMC avoid the conversation altogether.
Who knows what kind of holistic sexuality and spirituality might have transformed the UMC if things had gone a different way…
Thoughts?
Over the last few years and the celebration and talking about all the civil rights issues within the church. I have just finished reading “When the Church Bells rang Racist.” Plus all the mentioning by the POTUS of Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall that these are all civil right issues that the conservatives which generally are the southern and mega churches like to put a political spin on things instead of the teachings of Jesus and John Wesley which were all about peace and grace. I believe that the UMC should split and it should become the Progressive (to get away from civil war references) Methodist Church and what ever the apostate conservatives want to name their church. I just believe that we should keep these two approaches separate as the UMC has become nothing but a political football of faithful Methodists saying, writing and speaking hurtful things that basically going back and forth in the conflict of conservatives and progressives within the church. Lets just settle for peace and get back to the real work of the UMC. Oh as far as things go to settle up the split we need to sell off all of the non-church universities, hospitals and other property etc. Then allow each church to pick which approach they wish to go. Then transfer the church property to the choice at the time of the vote to the correct denomination. Then give all the proceeds to feed the poor, treat the sick and solve Malaria and HIV all over the world through UMCOR. Simple then all the hate can stop.
You lost me at “apostate conservatives”. We really are two churches under one organization. Maybe we should go our separate ways.
I have never heard of this book; I think I will read it. It’s a shame that our publishing house did not publish it and that it was not widely read and discussed in our church; things may well be quite different with the UMC now.
I just want to address Mark McRoberts’s comment now. I feel that the UMC splitting would be a most bad thing. What happens to progressives who live in an area where there is really only one UMC to go to and that chooses to go conservative after a split? What happens to youth who end up in a conservative church with their parents but they are gay? I know that staying one church while becoming truly inclusive is and will be difficult but I don’t see how splitting will really be any easier.
Thank you for publishing this. I wasn’t aware of this sad tale in our history, but it doesn’t surprise me at all, since my career in ordained UMC ministry spanned 1974 – 2014 and I did my best to keep informed. You may also know that a similar backlash occurred about when the UMC Hymnal Revision Committee tried to remove “Onward Christian Soldiers”. There was a furious hue and cry from the traditionalist thinkers, and the whole tenor of worship discussions went decidedly conservative very quickly. So if we couldn’t get “Like a mighty army, moves the church of God” out of our hymn book, there’s no way Shelby Spong’s book was going to get past the “Thought Police” !
This story is no surprise to me, but it extends what I have known for a long time about the power of the conservative/traditionalist bloc within the denomination. As an extension of this story, in 1988 – and I would have to do some research to find out if it had any connection with the rejection of Bishop Spong’s book – the General Conference voted – against the wishes of the conservatives in the GC – to establish the Committee to Study Homosexuality, which was to hold “listening sessions” around the country during which a whole panoply of witnesses would be given a hearing, including LGBTQ persons, their family members and friends, their pastors, so-called “ex-gay” persons and their families, friends and pastors, scholars of the Bible, theology, psychology, and other relevant areas, and many other persons who were pro- or con- on the subject of same-sex sexuality. Out of these listening sessions and their own discussions and deliberations, they were to make a report in 1992 to the General Council on Ministries as well as to deliver a report of their conclusions to the General Conference that year. They did so. The report to the GC included a legislative proposal from 17 members of the Committee that the negative language regarding homosexuality be taken out of the Book of Discipline as well as a legislative proposal from 5 members of the Committee that it be left in. The GC had the options of “accepting” the report, which would include an acceptance of the majority legislative proposal; “rejecting” the report, which would have left the BoD as it was and would not make the report of any value to anyone in the UMC; or “receiving” the proposal without “accepting” the majority’s recommendation. The GC “received” the report (with thanks, I assume, to the committee for their hard work). A legislative proposal was put forward that the report be remanded to the care of the General Council on Ministries, which was instructed to have study materials prepared that included the major content of the Committee’s report for use in local churches. The UM Publishing House published those materials in 1994 under the title “The Church Studies Homosexuality.” The materials included a student book that contained the Committee’s report and majority and minority recommendations; a leader’s guide that recommended that the materials be covered in 6 to 10 sessions; and an audio cassette that included portions of the testimony of several Committee members before the GCoM. On the tape one can hear the testimony of two of the members, one being David Seamands, who had been a missionary to India for 16 years and served as pastor of the Wilmore (KY) UMC for 22 years; I don’t have the name of the other – female – member of the committee, though it is listed in the published report. However, in their testimony before the GCoM, they talk about the way the woman had come out as a lesbian during the Committee’s conversations and about the collegiality that had developed between the two of them, even though Seamands was opposed to changing the gay-negative language in the BoD. (It is still a scandal that none of the Committee members was chosen specifically because they were gay, even if it would have required there to be an “avowed ex-gay” person also on the Committee. It’s akin to the historical practice of having all-male deliberative bodies determine what public policy should be with regard to women.) In any case, this ended up being an effective way for the conservatives to bury the report, since as of today, fewer than 50,000 student books have been sold in a denomination of nearly 8 million members in the US and 12 million members worldwide. In 2005 the General Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns compiled a range of materials on DVDs and CD for sale on their website entitled “Can We Talk…? Christian Conversation About Homosexuality,” but as of today not even 1,000 of this item has been purchased. The reality is, the conservatives are unwilling to engage in any further discussion of the issue (as if they ever engaged in any along the way) and want the issue to go away, and the progressives can’t force the conservatives to do something they don’t want to do. The conservatives seem to know that the more their constituency discusses the issue and gets exposed to other ways of viewing it, the less control they will have of the conclusions those who are currently their supporters will draw, and the more they will lose control of the policy and the polity of the UMC. It’s no different from the strategy the Republicans in Congress have used against President Obama’s agenda over the past four years since they gained the majority in the House. I believe that following Bishop Talbert’s lead of practicing “Biblical Obedience” and bearing whatever consequences come from doing so is the best way to be faithful in these distressing times.
Conservatives have been constantly with us and constantly wrong in the face of our ever expanding understanding of God’s love that extends to ALL people. They split over the idea that Blacks could be of equal worth with themselves. They delayed the rightful place of women to hold all positions in the Church from the early 1920’s up until the 1970’s. Now they are fighting one more losing battle over the human worth of LGBT people. Those who wish to, again, split the church as was done from 1860 to 1939 over racism should have learned from that experience. Individual members may chose to leave the church, but every community deserves to have a United Methodist Church that has “open doors, open minds and open hearts”. In 20 years the “splitters” will be coming back once they recognize what we have in common is far more important than what divides us.
In this case, censorship by the conservative united methodist worked against them for the act of forcing the cancellation of the book pushe its sales when rinted by another printer. That must be the reasons why United Methodist left the denomination in droves. Rey Lopez,Christian Peaceaker Team Manila. reylpezpeacemaker@yahoo.com
Why do the revenue numbers for Cokesbury continue to decline? Would that possibly have anything to do with the widening disconnect between what our “leaders” recommend and what the people in the pews will accept?
Why did Cokesbury deny that they were losing money while using reserves to send the “Cokesbury checks”? Yet, there is no accountability there.
If GCCUIC published “Can We Talk?” and it only sold 1,000 copies, what message should that send? Possibly that changing our ordination standards simply isn’t a majority position in The UMC and isn’t going to be?
Bishop Spong presided over a melting of the Newark Diocese. The Western Jurisdiction bishops are presiding over a melting of the Western Jurisdiction. Is it just possible that focusing on issues of division and distraction does not have a positive impact on bringing people to Christ? Is it just possible that focusing on enabling people to continue in pulpits who lied during their ordination vows and have been in violation of the Discipline every day since is not a way to grow the church?
I doubt if you will get Spongophiles to consider those possibilities. Good try. I like what you say here.
A couple of notes–Jeanne Barnett was the lesbian who came out; and behind the scenes she was selected partially because of her sexual orientation. She was a very active UMC member on all levels, and she later served as spokesperson for National Affirmation. (She and her partner Ellie Charlton later married in Sacramento with over 100 clergy presiding at the wedding.) After the study committee had started meeting, it was decided to add and “out” gay person, a man named Bill ____.
The General Conference certainly missed the point of the Committee’s report.
(I observed all of their meetings except the first, and attended two of the Listening Posts.)
Similarly, the, then, editor of Abingdon Press in 2009 (before my book was written) told me that they wouldn’t publish my book “Kissing Fish: christianity for people who don’t like christianity” (an introduction to progressive Christianity) as they were “reducing the books aimed at the un-churched, and that the books they will publish need to appeal to their primary market; i.e., the Bible Belt states. John Wesley would have spun in his grave to hear those remarks. Happily, they are now under new leadership and are more open to progressive books – so I’ve been told.
Considering the thrust of this site, I would be interested in a meta-discussion about this. What would have happened if Abingdon had published this book? What would have been the impact of the book if there had been no “wire services” publishing the story?