Anglican Church must embrace the modern world and reject discrimination in all its manifestations

It was the Episcopal (Anglican) bishop John Shelby Spong who, in his seminal 1991 book, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, forcefully argued that the biblical Saint Paul, plagued by an “unnamed secret weakness”, was in fact a secret homosexual, and that homosexuality should be embraced by the church.

More than 30 years after the book was first published, the controversy continues to rage. On a recent Sunday, the prescribed epistle of the day ascribed to Paul, 2 Corinthians 12:1-10, continued to cause a silent storm in many churches when it was read.

Part of the text reads: “(T)here was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’”

For centuries, this passage has been questioned, with many demanding of theologians and priests and exegetes to provide answers to a difficult and obscure passage.

What was the intention of Paul when he wrote the passage? What was he trying to convey to the world as he wrestled many centuries ago with a tormented soul?

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Spong, after many years of deep study and reflection and intellectual enquiry, concludes there could not be a plausible explanation to account for Paul’s internal torment other than that he was struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality.

But sadly, as Spong asserts, the “Bible is being neglected in mainstream Christianity because of the intellectual difficulties it poses for today’s churchgoers”.

He writes that “the war going on inside of (Paul) is a fairly classic description of what I have come to understand in repressed gay males”. Spong has been provocative in the eyes of conservative hierarchy in the Anglican Church worldwide. This was seen when he ordained an openly gay man to the priesthood – an act that resulted in his being roundly condemned by his conservative fellow bishops.

Many conservative theologians, scholars and bishops of the church hide behind the notion that there is no scholarly opinion that Paul was a homosexual, and others argue that the personal life of Paul is always going to remain in the realm of speculation.

Unwilling to engage intellectually