`DENTON ALIVE!'--AN AUSTRALIAN ODYSSEY

by John S. Spong

Andrew Denton is not a household name in the United States. Yet in Australia there would be few citizens who had never heard of him. On late-night television Andrew Denton entertains the people of his country with comedy routines, monologues, pungent comments on politicians and political issues, and interviews with various personalities across the Australian social spectrum. He is to Australia what David Letterman is to the American consciousness.

Andrew Denton is young, slight in build, and irreverent. His rimmed glasses punctuate his face, which can contort into a variety of poses not unlike Robin Williams. His program entitled, "Denton Live!", aims at the under-40 audience, and plays from 11:00 p.m. twice a week.

Australian leaders are both flattered by his attention and leery of his razor sharp tongue. No subject is too sacred, no topic too sensitive to escape his penetrating wit. Denton has been known to embarrass his guests, leaving them both fuming and at a loss for words. It is not a medium on which to showcase serious religious ideas so it had not occurred to me or to HarperCollins to seek booking on this TV program.

Imagine the surprise when midway through my lecture tour of Australia last summer a call came to HarperCollins from Andrew Denton's producer, inviting me to appear on "Denton Live!" I was both pleased and apprehensive. So before accepting, I did some quick background research.

I discovered that the only other "religious" person who had ever appeared on "Denton Live!" was Terry Waite. I learned that religion was talked about on this show from time to time, but not in flattering terms. It was usually to point out bizarre contradictions between the words and the behavior of religious people. I had my agent seek Denton's assurance that this was to be a serious interview, that I was not supposed to be funny and that he really wanted to explore the issues that my tour of Australia had been raising. These assurances were given and I agreed to be his guest.

There is no way to prepare for such an encounter. I did watch the program once that week. Denton was good. He worked his audience well. He skirted on that fine line between hilarity and embarrassment. Above all he communicated with his audience using his eyes, his facial expressions and even the tilt of his head. The day of this appearance was a busy one. I had six radio, television, press and magazine interviews before delivering a major lecture that evening. Finally, at about 9:30 p.m., we took a cab to the TV studio. First stop was the make-up room, where I was given a healthy-looking artificial tan. Then to the Green Room where the participants and some of the program personnel were gathered. Aside from Chris and me, they all seemed to be no older than 30. Andrew Denton came into the Green Room before the show and began to greet his guests. In mock questioning, he surveyed the room of perhaps 12 people. "Ah, let me see, which one of you is the bishop?" Since I was old enough to be the father of most of those in the room and was wearing a clerical collar and purple vest, his question was greeted with laughter. Nonetheless, he went up to a bearded young man in jeans and T-shirt and said, "You must be the bishop. How are you, your Grace?" When he finally came to greet me, he first told me that a friend of his had heard a lecture that I had given in Melbourne in 1991. That was the connection that had caused him personally to ask his producer to invite me to his show. Then, as if he could not drop his comic facade lest he lose his edge for the night, he launched into a routine for the benefit of his Green Room audience on the name Spong. "Bong, Gong, ding, dong, ping pong, Hong Kong, wrong song," and then as if to allow the name to vibrate, he chanted "Spoing, oing, oing, oing." The room erupted in laughter. Then, he said quietly "thanks for coming," and disappeared.

In a moment he was out warming up members of his audience who were sitting in rows of seats banking the stage. In that routine he referred to me as "a rather unusual bishop." Then after a pause, the live show began.

There was the opening monologue. Next came a comedy routine on a new game that was being introduced in Asia. It was a dice and board game based upon the process of human digestion. When members of the team, who had assisted in this segment, returned to the Green Room, they groaned about how thin that material was. They were correct. Next came an interview with a recently retired national politician. Then after the inevitable commercial, Andrew Denton invited his audience to "greet the bishop." I stepped through the curtain acknowledging the applause of the crowd with a wave.

Andrew Denton and I shook hands and I sat down. His opening line was a shot at "the Australian Pat Robertson," a fundamentalist preacher turned politician named Fred Niles who was one of his favorite targets. Then we moved on to religion in general. Sometimes, he observed, the most religious people are also the most judgmental, the most righteous and the least loving. "I really don't like religious people," I volunteered, "and that's an occupational hazard in my profession!" The audience roared, I suspect responding to the unanticipated words that challenged their stereotype of what a bishop is supposed to say. I continued taking my cue from the audience's response. "I see nowhere in the Bible where Jesus said, `I have come that you might be religious!' He said, `I have come that you might have life, abundant life, full life.' So it is not religious people who attract me, but whole people, real people, alive people. Those are the marks of a Christian to me!" The audience applauded. I noted that Jesus and Christians are not accustomed to applause on late-night comedy television. We went on to discuss the effect the Christian church has had on women. "What is so evil about the humanity or the sexuality of a woman," I asked, "that before the church can call a woman ideal or holy, she must be desexed and dehumanized?" Again there was applause. We touched on birth control and abortion before moving on to discuss homosexuality. It was not in depth for no television interview is in depth. But I stated the overwhelming conclusion of the scientific world today that homosexuality is a given, not a chosen, and that there is no valid evidence that homosexuality is amenable to real change. These facts raise questions today about the morality of that cultural and religious condemnation of homosexual persons who have been fired, rejected, ostracized, bashed and killed for no reason other than that they were born with a minority sexual orientation. In the light of this I argued that the behavior of the church toward gay and lesbian people must now be seen as immoral and the public repentance by the church for this behavior is in order, I concluded. There was applause again.

We touched other themes lightly, even spending some time again on my name, which clearly fascinated Andrew Denton. "It derives, we believe, from those who farmed the spongy bottom land of County Norfolk in the United Kingdom," I stated, adding "when people address me as Bishop Sponge, they are closer than they know to its origins."

Denton made wrap-up sounds. I rose to leave. Pausing at the curtain which separated me from the stage, I turned to acknowledge the audience and the applause heightened. Denton, seeking to respond to this unexpected applause, said as I disappeared from view, "Man, that's one groovy bishop!" Somehow that line stuck. I was never again introduced on my tour of Australia without the host or hostess saying, "In the words of Andrew Denton, this is one groovy bishop." When I returned home, I wrote Andrew to thank him for having me on his show. He wrote back saying: "Your letter is the most gratifying I have received during eight years making television....To hear the audience listen and respond to you as they did gave me enormous satisfaction. To learn later of the reaction you got from appearing on the show is even more pleasing."

The things I said on the Andrew Denton show permeate my speaking and my writing. They were not unusual. What was unusual was the medium. Late-night standup comedians attract a different audience--non-churchgoing, young, aggressive. This audience tends to dismiss religion as pious God talk, something in which their grandparents might engage. Religion in the public arena today tends to be limited either to the moralistic and political pronouncements of Protestant fundamentalists or to Roman Catholic issues such as the Vatican's sabotage of the world population conference in Cairo, the rejection of gays by the St. Patrick's Day parade, or a sexual scandal involving child abuse. That is the substance of religion that permeates the consciousness of the secularized under-40 generation. That, in my opinion, is what elicited the applause from the audience when something so different was heard from a Christian voice. In Australia, as well as the United States, I have discovered both a genuine spiritual hunger and a spiritual vacuum at the heart of all secular life. The church, as it is presently organized, does not touch that hunger or fill that vacuum. It is to that hunger and within that vacuum that I speak and for which I write. The religious right seems incapable of understanding this. So certain are they that the pious and irrelevent platitudes of the pre-modern Christian world are unchangeable that they spend their energy attacking not the problem but those of us who seek to address that problem.

In Australia on a program called "Denton Live!" I was given this rare opportunity in the name of Christ to invade the consciousness of a secular Australian audience. And I was able to cause them to hear a different kind of Christian voice than they had ever heard before. It was an incredible moment as well as a brief moment. Yet it just may have been the most important and powerful moment in my life for the proclamation of this gospel to which I am so deeply committed. I can only hope that is true.

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