America has not yet escaped all of its prejudices against Mormonism expressed so openly in the 19th century. Most of that prejudice grew out of the controversy over polygamy.

When George Romney, the three times Republican Governor of Michigan, ran for the Republican nomination for President in 1968, he had to seek to blunt prejudice about his religion. It came primarily in the form of questions about the official Mormon policy about black people. He distanced himself from the offending words in the Book of Mormon, but he ultimately lost the nomination to Richard Nixon. His Mormon religion seemed to play little role in that defeat. His comment about having been “brainwashed” over the issue of Viet Nam was thought to be far more the issue than his religion. Perhaps the money and organization possessed by Richard Nixon was the real reason for his defeat.

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It is difficult for anyone to say with certainty what Jesus was. The portrait painted of him in the gospels was written forty to seventy years after his earthly life had come to an end. By that time Jesus had been wrapped inside both the Jewish Scriptures and the liturgy of the synagogue which meant they interpreted him in terms of Jewish images and Jewish expectations.

The clear impression conveyed by the gospel writers, however, is that Jesus, following in the prophetic tradition in which his life was rooted, took his stand alongside the poor, the marginalized and the dispossessed. He is portrayed as touching the leper, protecting the woman taken in adultery, talking to a woman by the well publicly, welcoming children, extolling the virtues of the Samaritans and as saying “Go into all the world,” thus sending his disciples beyond their tribal limits into a place inhabited by those who spoke differently, worshipped differently and were defined as unclean Gentiles. Jesus was remembered by the gospel writers as a barrier breaker.

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Yes, completely. If I had my life to live over again, I would choose the same career path, marry the same wife, have the same children and serve the same congregations and the same diocese.

I loved every phase of my professional life. I loved being a priest and pastor. I loved being a bishop and an author. I love being retired now with a still developing writing career.

Do I have worries and concerns. Of course!

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Of course religion is a human creation, man-made and woman-made. Who else is there to have constructed it?

The reason we human beings create religion is that we experience a depth to life, an otherness, a transcendence that we call God and we then begin to seek that which we believe this God can give us. That is where religion is born.

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