Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Truth and Love. That is the title Harper Collins has given to my newest book which will be out in January 2000. This book is an autobiography and so it is different from anything else I have ever written. I try to tell the story of how one born into a racially segregated world, informed by a literalistic biblical fundamentalism, inside a traditional, male-dominant family, and infected with deep stains of anti-Semitism and homophobia, grew up to be the person I am. When my publisher proposed such a volume several years ago, my first response was a deep reluctance. The idea of writing an autobiography may be the greatest ego trip imaginable, reaching the edges of megalomania itself. It demands both radical honesty and radical vulnerability. It is one thing to place my ideas into the public arena to be debated by those of varying levels of expertise, but it is quite another to place the story of my life into that same arena and to absorb the negativity of those who will inevitably justify their hostility to my ideas by attacking my very being. There are other problems that an autobiography creates. Where is the boundary between honesty and exhibitionism? How does one decide whether an episode should be included or left out? What does one do with the other lives that are part of the story, but who never imagined that their actions would be made public and who will surely resent being lifted out of their anonymity? What do you do with intensely personal episodes that are painful to share? They can be omitted if they are not crucial to the story, but what if they are crucial? Can I really tell the story of my life and omit the reality of my alcoholic father whose presence was a major shaping trauma in my upbringing? Is my view of my father to be made public if it affects my brother and my sister whose father he was also? Those who know me well are certainly aware that my public ministry was lived out for years against the background of my very sick wife. It was cancer, discovered in 1981, that finally brought her life to an end in 1988; but her mental illness, officially diagnosed as acute paranoia, predated her cancer by more than ten years, reducing her to an almost hermit-like existence. So much of who I am, including my career as an author, was developed as a way of compensating for that reality. Is it a violation of her dignity to make that story public in a book? Is it fair to our daughters for me to talk about their mother in a way that might impact or even embarrass them? All of these were issues that had to be faced and that meant that the decision to write this book was a difficult one to make. I decided to write the narrative first and then make the decision in consultation with my daughters as to whether or not to publish it later. I was surprised at how quickly the difficulty of making the decision disappeared in that exercise. The experience of writing this personal history also opened me to deepening insights. To roam over almost forgotten memories and seek to recreate them was both fulfilling and healing. To interview others who had been part of the episodes I was describing was to challenge my own perception of reality, to say nothing of my faulty memory. To relive the experience of a confrontation with the Ku Klux Klan in Eastern North Carolina in the sixties was to recreate the anxiety of those dark days. The KKK burned a cross in a field outside Tarboro at a rally and proclaimed me public enemy number one in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. They harassed the members of my black congregation in Tarboro and threatened to do them harm. They made the acceptance of my ministry to that congregation emotionally expensive for the members. I shudder to this day at the memory of harassing calls that I received from members of the Klan in the middle of the night threatening to "rape your daughters if you do not cease your race-mixing activities." I began the actual writing of this manuscript on the South Island of New Zealand in October of 1997 when Chris and I were sharing a week of rest and relaxation with two very close personal friends, Liz and Geoff Robinson of Wellington. We had just completed a strenuous lecture tour in that part of the world that had involved over 200 public appearances in Australia and New Zealand. The four of us had been offered the use of a vacation cottage near one of the South Island's most beautiful parks before our trip home. There we hiked, read, ate and laughed, and for several hours each day while others were napping, I sat on a deck and wrote page after page after page. I also reveled in this opportunity to live "among my souvenirs." I called into a kind of eternal now some people who had been quite determinative in my life : a Sunday school teacher, an organist and choirmaster, a young rector just out of the navy at the end of World War II. I also relived shaping moments: the death of my father when I was twelve, the poverty that engulfed our family, the bill collectors who verbally abused my weeping mother at the door of our home, my first serious romance at age seventeen, my academic awakening at the university. In my theological training I journeyed from the intense biblical fundamentalism of my childhood to the equally intense Anglo-Catholicism of my teenage years, to my spiritual destiny as a questioning, challenging, uncomfortable disciple of Christ. In this book I did detours just for the joy of it into such things as my 4-year career moonlighting as a play-by-play sports announcer for high school football, basketball and baseball games on WCPS-FM in Tarboro and later at WLVA in Lynchburg. I was sponsored by "Wink, that sassy drink" and "Happy Dan, the TV Man." I went into the story of how my homophobia was challenged and rooted out and how my subsequent dedication to be part of an all-out campaign for the full inclusion of God's gay and lesbian children in the life of our church, both here and abroad, was born. I told the story of how our Task Force on Changing Patterns in Family Life, chaired by the Rev. Dr. Nelson Thayer, transformed both my life and the life of our diocese. I relived the ordination of Robert Williams, an openly gay priest, living in a partnered relationship. It was done quite deliberately as a prophetic act designed to force the church to face its deep and hidden prejudices against homosexual people who were asking nothing except the right to be themselves and with their partners to be a part of the Body of Christ. In this volume I also had the chance to salute those who were my mentors, especially the big three of my life: John Elbridge Hines, John A. T. Robinson and Michael D. Goulder. I have related what can only be called an enchanting love story as I came to recognize that Christine Barney was more precious to me than life itself and then the absolute grace of our marriage that continues to deepen our lives to this day. While these personal stories were being relived, I discovered that I was also writing, admittedly from the perspective of my own life, a history of the Episcopal Church in this country. I journeyed from the depression of the thirties to the war of the forties, to the expansion of the fifties, to the turbulence of the sixties, to the withdrawal in the seventies, and the retreat of the eighties, all of which culminated in the battle for the soul and the future of the church in the nineties. In many of these struggles I found myself at the epicenter of the church's conflict, sometimes by accident, sometimes by design, challenging, demanding, rethinking, interpreting and writing, and at every step helping to create the debate that was destined to redefine the church in our generation. There is a sense in which retirement is supposed to bring such a career to an end, and certainly there is the expectation that an autobiography is the last book an author will write. Anything written after an autobiography ought be entitled "P.S." But my sense is that new doors are opening. I have been appointed the William Belden Noble lecturer at Harvard University and Chris and I will move to Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 1st. Harvard requires the publication of those lectures so another book will appear sometime in 2001. Invitations to speak at colleges and universities, theological seminaries and conference centers around this nation, Canada and in various parts of the world from England, Wales and Scotland, to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand are now on our calendar into the year 2002. I have also been offered the position of being a regular columnist on a new Internet venture called "Beliefnet.com," so while my Voice columns will cease in our diocesan paper, on the Internet I will now prepare twenty-six columns a year that will undoubtedly reach an audience far beyond the limits of the readers of this journal. Someday I may even learn to type. I will watch this diocese from our home in Morris Plains with both pride and affection and I will give thanks every day that I have been part of this community of faith. If you read Here I Stand, I hope you will be proud of what we have done together for twenty-four years. I hope you will think that I have described our time together accurately, passionately and well. Above all, I hope that you will recognize that we have been about a vitally important task, namely that of calling the Body of Christ to be all that the church was originally created to be, a community where truth is sought, where love is shared and where integrity is obvious.   --Return to Contents |