Episcopal Press and News
Spong and Wantland Tackle Differences
Episcopal News Service. April 2, 1987 [87077]
Jean Caffey Lyles, Religious News Service
ENGLEWOOD, N.J. (DPS, April 2) -- Bishop John S. Spong of Newark and Bishop William C. Wantland of Eau Claire, Wis. were a well-matched pair when they hit the speaking circuit in early March.
The purple-shirted duo wore almost identical black lace-up shoes and dark suits. Each had casually stuck into a shirt pocket a pectoral cross on a neck chain.
The two men are members of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops and each is regarded as an articulate spokesman in the 2.8-million-member denomination for his point of view.
But most of the time, the viewpoints of Spong and Wantland are at opposite ends of the theological spectrum.
The two men say they are close friends. But some Episcopalians who have heard them debate marvel that a friendship can survive such radical disagreement.
"In the House of Bishops, the only time Bill and I vote together is on a motion to adjourn," quipped Spong at one of the northern New Jersey parishes where he and his colleague debated in March.
Spong had invited Wantland to come and spend a few weeks in the Newark diocese as guest bishop -- to confirm new members at several parishes where he and his views were sure to find a warm welcome, to debate his colleague publicly on sexuality and the Scriptures and to demonstrate that the Episcopal Church is the kind of open place where people who are worlds apart can share a spiritual home and a congenial fellowship.
On William F. Buckley's "Firing Line" on public television, the two men aired their very different views on whether the Episcopal Church should admit women to the episcopate.
Wantland is a conservative, traditionalist churchman who doesn't ordain women priests or allow their to perform priestly ministries in his largely rural, upper midwestern diocese.
Spong, well known for his liberal -- some would say radical -- writings on theology and social ethics, has welcomed 28 women priests into his urban eastern diocese, and it is no secret that he hopes the Episcopal Church will soon have its first woman bishop.
Wantland is aligned with "high-church" Episcopalians, who call themselves "Anglo-Catholics." Spong leads a more "low-church" diocese, where most (but not all) parishes are "protestant" in outlook and where most male priests would rather be called "Mr." than "Father."
Wantland staunchly defends the traditional church teaching that sexual activity belongs only within marriage. Spong, who says the church can't afford to ignore social changes if it is to minister to people in need, recently led his diocese to produce a document proposing that the church should consider giving its blessing to pre-marital, post-marital and homosexuals unions.
Both men have more than a hint of the south in their speech. Spong, 55, a lanky North Carolinian with a shock of light brown hair falling over his forehead, has an accent that reflects his years as a rector in Virginia. While he speaks of the liberal views he holds today, he often alludes to the strict Calvinist upbringing that shaped his early years.
Wantland, 52, a blue-eyed man with steel-rimmed glasses and neatly slicked-down hair, retains the twang of his native Oklahoma. He is half-Seminole, and he frequently criticizes the majority white American tendency to assume the superiority of western European civilization. He is also a lawyer, and was a judge and the attorney general of the Seminole Nation before he entered the priesthood. His conservative views on sex and marriage accord with the pain and anguish of broken families he saw in his years in tribal administration, he says.
At their debate at St. Paul's Episcopal Church here, Spong proposed that the church consider reviving "betrothals as a kind of trial marriage" for young people "who are in that period of life where bodies are mature but marriage is not yet either wise or appropriate."
For mature people -- single, widowed or divorced -- the church should, said the Newark bishop, "step away from its traditional either/or standard of Judgment and entertain a both/and standard." He said the presence or absence of marriage vows is "not the proper battle line." More important, he said, is whether a relationship is "predatory, manipulative and diminishing of the human spirit" or "faithful and life-enhancing."
Spong argued that a large body of data indicates that homosexuality is not a perversion but "a normal but minority position, like being left-handed." He criticized churches for acting "as if gay people have some built-in ability to deny their sexual energy that heterosexual people do not have."
Wantland argued that "human beings haven't changed one iota" and that the church would be making a mistake to embrace Western culture's changing values. "All cultures are equal under the Judgment of God. They are sinful and incomplete," he said. Christians should adhere "to the standard to which God calls us, the standard of purity."
That standard, he said, is found in the Bible and has been affirmed by the "charter deeds" and canon law of Anglicanism.
The Rev. Donald Shearer of Orange, N.J., who moderated one of the bishops' debates, said it was Anglicanism's and the Episcopal Church's "unity in diversity" that made such exchanges possible.
At debates in both Englewood and Madison, N.J., each bishop had a cheering section for his point of view. Despite the explosive nature of the issues, the bishops carried it off with courtesy, effusive words of mutual appreciation -- and a bit of wit. Spong affectionately referred to his colleague as "St. William of Eau Claire." Wantland insisted, however, he was no candidate for sainthood but "just a poor southern boy come to bring Christianity to the Yankees."