Polarizations and Organic Intellectuals

So--to pick up from yesterday's theme--Bishop Spong recently released a manifesto in which he resolves not to debate any more on the issue of GLBT inclusion in church and society. He considers that battle won (i.e., that GLBT people should enjoy the same rights and opportunities as straight people) and further debate counterproductive.

The problem is, first, that debates of that sort aren't won simply by one side's saying so. I can respect that Spong himself is weary of fighting; he has, after all, invested much of his time, energy, and reputation over the years into advocating for GLBT rights. But regardless of the weariness of the participants, the debate about GLBT people in the church continues (should they be members? should they be allowed to marry their same-sex partners? should they be ordained). Winning this argument--realizing a day in which GLBT members aren't categorically treated differently in terms of the life of the church--simply isn't up to the will of single person or a single side.

Another problem with the Spong manifesto tactic is that one could just as easily imagine a manifesto from a spokesperson from the "other side," a manifesto that declares the debate settled once and for all. Indeed, such statements are common in my own denomination's ongoing struggle over the status of GLBT people. Inevitably, after every General Conference in which some compromise or pro-GLBT resolution gets defeated, the more conservative partisans on the GLBT issue release a statement to the effect of "Well--now that that unpleasantness is over, we can finally move on. Case closed." But conservative "mission accomplished" manifestos don't end debate any more than progressive ones.

I'm sure that Spong himself is under no illusions that his statement actually reflects reality; the fact that the manifesto enumerates so many people and institutions (including the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury) who continue to support less-than-progressive stances belies Spong's claim that GLBT inclusion is fait accompli. Nor do I buy that Spong actually believes that his preemptive withdrawal from the fight will end the fight.

I remain curious, then, just what effect he's going for. If he's withdrawing due to purely for-my-own-sanity reasons, why release a public statement--more than that, a manifesto--about it? Why not simply withdraw and be done with it? What's the point, in other words, of a manifesto?

Manifestos summon an audience and aim for a particular rhetorical effect, generally either solidarity ("Yes, that's just what I believe, too!") or anger ("How dare he say that! What a rebel!"). Many of Spong's full-length studies (Why Christianity Must Change or Die, for example) could be considered manifestos, attracting the like-minded and repulsing the opposition. He's a polarizer.

Not that I'm knocking polarization per se. Sometimes it's valuable and necessary. In defining the "sides" of this debate, Spong, performs a function similar to what Antonio Gramsci calls an organic intellectual. In his explorations about about how and why certain political parties achieve dominance (hegemony) in particular states, Gramsci spends time discussing how parties form in the first place. They don't just spring into being ex nihilo. Most people--even those who would ostensibly be unified under a certain banner or issue--simply exist together without any political organization. They are a mass, not a party.

For a party to form, a organic (as in "organizing") intellectual must emerge--someone with the power to frame for the mass a new vision of themselves as unified by a commonality--generally some kind of shared injustice. Moreover, the organic intellectual gives to the people a vision of the state as it could be, a "concrete fantasy" or myth of the possible community (usually a situation in which the key injustice is rectified). Once a mass of people internalize this concrete fantasy, they can begin the logistical/educational processes necessary to reform themselves as a party.

Similarly, Spong's work has provided many in the progressive Christian church with an intellectual and moral support structure for pro-GLBT (and, more broadly anti-fundamentalist) reform movements. Like any organic intellectual, Spong defines an activated movement of progressive Christians by identifying both what the movement is for (a concrete fantasy of a church-that-can-be) and what the movement opposes.

Clarity, however, comes at the price of consensus. It's useful to remember that Gramsci formulated his theory keeping in mind the life-and-death struggle between Communists and Fascists in Italy during the 1920s. It was vital, in his view, to make neutrality an untenable position. Or, more precisely, Gramsci's analysis implies that Mussolini's party proved so successful not only through its bullying tactics but also through the concrete fantasy of a masculine, revived, respected/feard Italy--a fantasy that caught on with many Italians who had been disaffected since World War I. As this fantasy gained traction among more and more people, the Fascists ratcheted up the polarization, making those who felt ambivalent about or opposed to the fantasy of New Italy under Il Duce not only "people who hold a different opinion" but active traitors, agents of the foreign governments intent on keeping Italy firmly under Western Europe's thumb. Thus, the Fascists gained power by making "not being a Fascist" unthinkable and unattractive. For or against--you choose.

Beneath the ongoing disagreements about the proper status of GLBT people in the church is a deeper debate, a meta-disagreement, about how the church ought to frame and navigate its differences on this issue. To whit: is the GLBT issue an either/or question? Is polarization inevitable or necessary?

Or, as one study about the United Methodist Church's conflict put it, the GLBT question can be parsed not only into pro-inclusion and anti-inclusion sides but also into the side of those who see it possible for pro- and anti-GLBT folk to co-exist in the same denomination and the side of those who see pros and antis as so divergent that schism is the only logical or ethical solution.

In his manifesto, Spong adds little that is new to the pro/anti-GLBT debate. But to a greater degree than in previous work, Spong establishes himself as firmly on the "there's no way to agree to disagree" side.

More tomorrow,

JF