Life-Changing Moments in Duluth, Minnesota

Duluth, Minnesota, is a small city of less than 100,000 people at the southwestern corner of Lake Superior. It is known as one of the colder parts of America, receiving as it does those massive flows of Arctic air that sweep upon this nation out of Canada. Duluth is inhabited by hardy souls who are used to long winters where temperatures well below zero are common.  A native described Duluth as a two-season town: snow season and road repair season.  One does not usually think of visiting Duluth in the winter months. Yet that is what Christine and I did this year in order to lead a conference entitled: "Opening Our Doors, Opening Our Hearts."  This conference was both an ecumenical effort and an interfaith effort put on by ten communities of faith, led by a United Church of Christ, an Episcopal Church, a Methodist Church and a Synagogue.  It was one of the most encouraging, and exciting, conferences of which I have ever been a part and it left both of us with a great affection for Duluth, so great that I can honestly recommend that you visit Duluth in the winter!

Lake Superior was still frozen when we arrived.  From our hotel window we looked out on waves that actually appeared to have turned to ice while rolling toward the shore.  People have been known to ice fish in this lake safely until the middle of May.

The focus of this particular conference was "Welcoming the Marginalized," including particularly the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender members of this community.  This concern had moved front and center recently when Duluth was rocked with an overt hate crime.  The home of a lesbian leader, the headmistress of a local private school, had been vandalized twice with anti-homosexual slogans spray painted on the walls.  The religious leaders felt that this issue must be addressed head-on.  Sharing in the leadership of the conference were creative and well known regional songwriters and recording artists Peter Provost and Sara Thomsen, whose music constantly expressed not only a welcome to the outcast, but a corporate call to justice.

On one of the panels were Randi and Phil Reitan.  Phil is a highly respected attorney in Minneapolis who, along with his wife, Randi, had been called into political activism to support their gay son, Jake.  Today Jake is a student at Harvard Divinity School, but prior to that he had become a nationally known gay activist when he forced his high school to confront its homophobia, and who then organized a campaign to expose homophobic prejudices in colleges and universities across the land.  Both the Reitans and Jake were featured in the video entitled "The Bible Tells Me So," which focused specifically on the destructive homophobic behavior exhibited in the Christian Church.  This film also featured former House Majority leader Richard Gephart and his lesbian daughter, and told the story of the struggles of V. Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire and the first honest gay bishop of any church in America.  Many people from Mel White's grass-roots movement known as "Soul Force" were also present.

Another panelist was Barbara Brueggeman, a small in stature but big in courage woman who heads the Marshall School, a private Grade 5 through 12 institution dedicated to classical education.  It was Barb, the niece and goddaughter of the well known biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman, who occupied the vandalized house which was spray-painted with the words "Leave Dyke."  This attack on her person and property carried with it the threat that if this directive were not obeyed, more hostility would surely follow.  Barb is a quiet person, bright, competent and intelligent, who made no attempt to hide her identity as a lesbian either before or after being hired for this critically important position.  Her partner, Jackie, because of her job, now lives in New England, so Barb was alone when the bias crimes were committed against her.

The business, civic and political leadership of Duluth did not appear to know how to respond to this behavior and no response followed these acts except for the filing of a police report.  They had never had to deal with this kind of activity in their town before and seemed unaware of the fact that their inaction gave the impression that hate crimes were acceptable behavior in Duluth.  If a town puts out that impression, they can almost guarantee that this dark reality will in time come to define the whole area.  Into this vacuum of leadership stepped the ten faith communities led by four of their incredibly gifted clergy leaders, making this conference the united response of the religious community to this crime of bias.  It was both powerful and effective.

Quarterbacking this effort was the Reverend Kathryn Nelson.  Kathy has for the past 18 years been the senior pastor of the Peace United Church of Christ.  A figure clearly loved and respected throughout the area, she was, to use her favorite word, an "amazing" leader.  Working with her were three other ordained leaders.  The Rev. Bill Van Oss is the rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church.  He left the Catholic priesthood to get married and later became an Episcopalian and eventually a priest.  He was an effective leader and a secure, whole person, the kind I was always eager to recruit.  On the Sunday morning following the conference, I spoke at his church and was deeply impressed with the sensitive liturgy, the role of children in the life of that congregation, and the fact that women were obvious leaders in their worship.  In this church it was also clear that a significant number of gay and lesbian couples have found a warm welcome.  Next in this leadership group was Rabbi Amy Bernstein, the public face of the Jewish community in Duluth, whose single synagogue was the worship center for Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews.  Rabbi Amy, as she was universally known, is a beautifully articulate and stylish young woman, who is deeply invested in Judaism and is moving her congregation to the theological edges where they might embrace the world as it is, not as so many people seem to pretend it is.  She opened the conference with a prayer of blessing that was stunningly compelling.  The last member of this powerful quartet was the Rev. Dr. David Bard, the senior minister of the very large First United Methodist Church of Duluth.  David got his Master's degree from United Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. from Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University of Dallas, where he studied social ethics with the world renowned scholar Dr. Schubert Ogden.  I found it almost inconceivable that a town the size of Duluth, and regarded as somewhat outside the mainstream of American life in its remote and rural setting, had nonetheless attracted to itself these four outstanding clergy who could stand shoulder to shoulder with the top one percent of the ordained clergy of this nation.  That was an impression confirmed again and again over the weekend.  Duluth is a very special place.

Seldom have I addressed an audience that was more open, more engaging and more involved than I did at this conference. The conference's attendance surpassed all expectations at each of its public sessions.  The questions emerging from the audience to both the speakers and the panelists were never defensive, seeking more clarification and insight.  The appreciation and support shown both to the Reitans and to Barb Brueggeman was genuine and real.

Perhaps the best feature of all was that this conference, designed to expel bigotry from their midst, smoked out a local pocket of bigots in Duluth, who struck back with pickets and demonstrators.  Perhaps this was the same group that twice vandalized Barb Brueggeman's home, but that connection has yet to be established.  What was clear is that the picketers reflected the same mentality that had carried out the bias crimes.  Several picketers showed up at each of the conference's three venues with crude hand-painted signs spewing forth their hate message on the assembling and departing crowd.  Their signs proclaimed homosexuality a sin.  They warned those attending that "Spong will lead you to hell."  They quoted the Bible in the style of Rev. Fred Phelps, the Baptist minister from Topeka, Kansas, who believes that male homosexuals should be publicly castrated with rusty barbed wire and whose website is godhatesfags.com.  So this religiously sponsored conference confronted Bible-quoting venom.  Whenever a church and synagogue event can confront pious, prejudiced protesters, you may be sure the message being sent is a powerful one. To my knowledge these protesters deterred no one from entering the picketed building, but many of the delegates to the conference did stop to lecture the picketers on Jesus' admonition to love your enemies and to bless those who hate you.  The best line of the weekend was delivered by a young lad, less than 12 years old.  The picketers shouted at him as he passed them to enter the conference building: "Listen to God not to man."  He turned and calmly responded, "Then why should I listen to you?"  It was a telling moment in which one sees that human consciousness is expanding and that the younger generation has and will continue to shed the prejudices of their seniors.

In my closing lecture, taking my cue from that young lad, I suggested that young people need to confront their elders and point out that the world is moving to a new place on the issue of homosexuality and to warn those adults still trapped in the prejudices of yesterday to move away from their now quite dated and even offensive mentality lest they become an embarrassment to their grandchildren.  The world does not stop for prejudiced people to get off nor will the world make it easy for them to cling to their dying hatreds.  Those homophobic Christians who seek to splinter their churches in order to create a church in which they might continue to live comfortably with their prejudices will find that even those ghettos will not survive long.

I hope that Pope Benedict XVI, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and televangelist Pat Robertson are listening. Perhaps they too should go to Duluth, Minnesota, in the winter to have their minds cleared, their prejudices flushed, their ignorance challenged and their spirits renewed.

– John Shelby Spong

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