The Bishop's Voice
On Tour with Liberating the Gospels

by Bishop John S. Spong

When I complete a new book, I am obligated to give my publisher, HarperCollins, a certain number of days for the book's national publicity launch. Agreeing on the details is an interesting process.

Harper has the idea that I am an author who just happens to be a bishop. My firm conviction and sense of identity is that I am a bishop who just happens to be an author. That is a clear and distinct difference. They prefer for me to do a large number of days in a row. I insist that two days out of any week is all that normally I can be away. This means that inevitably there is some disarray in planning on the part of the publicity department at HarperCollins. They will arrange a major media event, but on a day that I cannot be present because they do not understand my priorities. We negotiate a compromise. The publicity trip will be done in two-day jaunts, except for the West Coast. On that tour I will be away for several days in a row. My staff works with me to plan that time so that it does not disrupt the smooth operation of this diocese. I give up any idea of a day off during this period. Once the schedule has been arranged, Harper begins "to pitch" me at the media in the agreed upon cities. Then they wait to see which takers will nibble at their bait. In Harper's publicity they will deliberately portray me as controversial based on my willingness to embrace tension-filled topics. They will rehearse my attack on biblical literalism, my support of women, my desire to keep abortion both safe and legal, and my stand on behalf of justice for gay and lesbian people. Then they will project the new book, Liberating the Gospels into the advertisement by saying, "Now, in his boldest book yet......!" In this way they seek to induce the largest possible response. I do not believe these tactics are still necessary. I have now done five book tours for HarperCollins. I am well known to the media around the country. For once I would like to test whether or not my message, without this hype, is exciting enough to command its own attention. I will probably never get that opportunity.

This recent tour for Liberating the Gospels is now all but over. Only a visit to our nation's capitol in December remains on the schedule. It has been the busiest three-month period of my life. At this moment I have engaged in over 90 publicity events, ranging from public lectures on the book, to radio, print and television interviews from Houston to Toronto, from Boston to Los Angeles, from Atlanta to Seattle. Many of the radio interviews took place from my home or office. I have been a guest by telephone hookup on radio talk shows in places as diverse as Edmonton, Alberta and Dallas, Texas. They usually involve listener call-ins. Sometimes the host is positive, sometimes uninvolved, sometimes hostile. Those who call in range from screaming fundamentalists who want to challenge me on the literalness of a seven-day creation story, to old friends who will use the radio hook-up simply to chat. Gay and lesbian people will call, expressing appreciation for what my public stand on their behalf has meant to them. My critics will call to suggest rather strongly that I am killing the Church and may well be the devil himself. Unchurched people will say that I am "the first preacher to make any sense" to them. I try to deal with each set of circumstances with respect and caring. I can hardly advocate an inclusion into the Church's life for all people and reject those who are in deep disagreement with me. If I did that, I would no longer have credibility.

I must confess that those who literalize the scriptures and then use the Bible as a club to beat on non-literalists, feminists and homosexuals are the most difficult people I know to love. They are usually hostile and almost always judgmental. Their ability to tolerate any new truth that might threaten their security system is limited. Yet, I pause to remember that they, too, are God's children, probably living in fear, and they must be given the respect due every child of God. A publicity tour is cumulative in its effects, and its success depends normally on receiving a communications breakthrough. One never knows when or if that breakthrough will occur. For me on this tour, I think it came in both Los Angeles and in Toronto. The Los Angeles Times, arguably America's second or third most influential newspaper, decided to do a feature story on the book. The religion editor had called me to get background material for an article he wrote during the Righter trial, so I knew him slightly. I did not know, however, that he had been positively touched by my book and that he was quite enthusiastic about it. I learned this in the interview during which he revealed that he had read four of my other books with equal enthusiasm. He scheduled a photography session at The Times, a sure sign that it will be a significant story that will not only enter the homes of 1.5 million people in the Los Angeles area, but will also drift across the country via The L. A. Times news service to smaller newspapers.

A second Los Angeles event that I considered major was an interview by the Jewish Television Network News channel. This cable station is relatively small. It is seen only in Los Angeles, San Diego and Washington, D.C., but in this tiny niche market it has demonstrated its ability to elicit the attention of America's Jewish population. My great desire for this book is that it will challenge the anti-semitism so deep in Christian history, and that it will open doors through which Jews and Christians can walk into meaningful dialogue. To have the help of this station was for me almost a godsend.

My third appearance on Bill Maher's popular national cable television program "Politically Incorrect" was one more major event in Los Angeles. In previous appearances I had been part of a panel of four that included the likes of Tammy Faye Bakker, Joyce Brothers, David Brenner and Ian Richardson of Jethro Tull. This time Bill Maher had invited me to be his only guest for a rare one-on-one interview. It was an incredible opportunity. His audience is predominantly a 35 and under crowd generally not invested in religion. Yet I find this age group spiritually hungry, though without a sense of where to turn to have that hunger fed. I covet and seek any opportunity to reach out to them. Bill Maher has given me that opportunity. A half-hour one-on-one interview on a national cable channel is high risk for the producer. It could bomb. Religion is not a universally popular topic, but the interview went well. The audience responded with both laughter and applause. Bill hurled some highly irreverent comments in my direction and I trust I fielded them with grace and good humor while never forgetting my message. "Politically Incorrect" moves to ABC on January 1st and will play after Ted Koppel's "Nightline." It is a tremendous opportunity for this gifted comedian in whose debt I now stand.

The Toronto trip resulted in major interviews by Canada's two largest newspapers, The Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. I also had three television opportunities. Two were national and one covered the province of Ontario. That represented enormous exposure in this lovely nation to our north which has always been the most responsive in the world to my books on a per capita basis. The United Church of Canada has all but adopted me as one of its own.

When a national publicity breakthrough occurs, like the Los Angeles visit in the United States or the Toronto visit in Canada, it feeds other opportunities. In Denver for a book signing at The Tattered Cover Book Store more than 160 people crowded in to hear me discuss the book. That is about four times the normal audience for a bookstore event. What made this one especially unusual was that at least fifteen people made references to the "Politically Incorrect" interview. Later in lectures at a Presbyterian Church in San Jose a similar response from that program was obvious. Television, even cable television, is enormously powerful.

In this modern world I can reach unique audiences through these public opportunities that cannot be reached in any other way. I receive much criticism for doing this kind of media tour from certain segments of our Church. The criticism arises at least in part out of jealousy and chagrin that I can bring my point of view to public attention when they cannot. I will not decline these opportunities when they are presented to me. Nor will I, so long as I have the ability to do so, ever allow the Christian faith to be defined exclusively in the public arena by the likes of Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell or John Cardinal O'Connor. I will not remain silent when a woman's right to a safe and legal abortion is threatened by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, or when the civil rights of gay and lesbian people are attacked by evangelical Christians. I will not stand by idly when religious leaders turn their idolatrous, literalized Bible into a weapon of oppression to be used against any of God's people in the name of the God of love. I will not allow the Christ I worship or the Bible I treasure, to be defined exclusively in the pre-modern categories of traditional Christian thought so that each becomes irrelevant in my post-modern world. My call is to find a way to rescue the essence of Christianity from the distortions of its history and to call those who are alienated from the faith of their childhood to look once more through different lenses at the message of the Christ.

All of this is involved, I believe, in the apologetic task that confronts the Christian faith at the dawn of the third millennium. My life as an author, in combination with the life of this Diocese, has presented me with the rare opportunity and the obvious privilege of being a Christian apologist through the media to the secularized world. It is a vocation I accept and I will try to live it out with grace and power.