WESTERN SKIES - May 21, 2005

*** JIM WHITE RETIRES ***

ERIC WHITNEY: It's one of the oldest and most cherished buildings in downtown Colorado Springs, the First Congregational Church at the corner of Tejon and Saint Vrain Streets. For a hundred and seventeen years, longer than any other church in town, people have been meeting under its distinctive silver steeple, and entering between its massive stone columns.

In context of that history, the sixteen years that James White has been the senior minister at First Congregational doesn't seem like that long. But now that he's retiring, it's clear that it's been long enough for him to develop a deep bond with his flock.

[sound of speakers at Jim White's farewell ceremony]

WHITNEY: Last week, members of the church and prominent people in the community got together to honor White, who assumed the pulpit at First Congregational about the same time that Focus on the Family and dozens of other evangelical organizations started moving to town. The culture and spiritual life of Colorado Springs hasn't been the same since.
These days, White says, when Colorado Springs' reputation as a fundamentalist stronghold is well known, he gets a distinct reaction when traveling, and telling people where he's from.

REV. JIM WHITE: If they know that I'm a Christian and a minister, and then they learn that I'm working in Colorado Springs, they say, "Oh, I'm so sorry for you." And I say "No, it's been a great place for me to be." It's just been perfect for me, because all of the experience I have, I bring to this thing and articulate an alternative point of view toward the dominant religious point of view of Colorado Springs. But I have the same reaction that you get, as if it's a horrible place, and it's not a horrible place. We know that there are great people here who are not narrow, and that are open and loving and have the best thoughts for the community in mind in everything they do, and trying to improve this place.

WHITNEY: White is proud to call himself the minister of the most liberal church in Colorado Springs. His reputation as an activist for tolerance and acceptance got started not long after he arrived. In 1991, he recalls, the city held a meeting to discuss equal rights and benefits for city employees.

WHITE: The United Church has, for twenty years, said that you shouldn't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. Well, there must have been two hundred people there shouting otherwise, and carrying placards, and I just realized for the first time that there was really hatred for gay and lesbian persons in this community, and it really gave rise to Amendment 2.

WHITNEY: White worked hard to defeat Amendment 2, the 1992 law that made it legal to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation. It was subsequently struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Two years later, following a vote of the congregation in favor of it, White started performing same-sex unions in the church. That was in 1994. White says it was a tough time for the church.

WHITE: There were probably twenty, thirty or more families that left the church. And that was hard because these were dear people, wonderful people, but they just couldn't agree with that. They felt they needed to leave. But the surprising thing was, the number of people who came, not that were necessarily gay or lesbian persons. But, mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of non-straight people said "When my daughter comes to town, when my gay son is here, I want to have a place for them to worship." So these people came in greater numbers than those who left--that was a surprise to me--and they came with their active participation and their pocketbooks. And so the church became stronger because of the stance we took, rather than weaker.

WHITNEY: But despite political trends in which increasingly conservative candidates are being elected across the country, White says that in the last sixteen years he's seen what he calls a "seismic shift" in American culture, and thinks that Colorado Springs may actually be more tolerant now than it was when he arrived in 1989.

WHITE: I think in some ways its more tolerant, and that's because the Springs also takes part in the seismic shift in the culture. And so when you have television shows and awareness of famous people that are gay, on that issue there's more acceptance, and Colorado Springs is a beneficiary of what's happening in the culture generally. And then there's been a lot of concern, I mean, The Gill Foundation (the gay and lesbian foundation) has done a solid job of wining people over and gay and lesbian people have witnessed here and been more and more widely accepted, and so I think there's a better situation here. And it seems to me like last year, the year before, there was some acceptance on the city council of people on the basis of sexual orientation, so that's good. How it is for blacks, Hispanics, other minorities, I'm not as close to that, but by and large I think that Colorado Springs is participating in the greater acceptance of diversity, and that's been a good growing up. We're certainly not a white, Anglo Saxon Protestant world, straight world, anymore.

WHITNEY: White was born in Colorado Springs, and spent his childhood summers in Cascade. His career has taken him to positions in New Jersey, Milwaukee, and Denver and Parker, Colorado. He is a graduate of the Yale Divinity School, and for twenty-five years has taught courses on the history of Christianity. Which means that, between fly fishing trips to Eleven Mile Canyon, his retirement plans include finishing a book that examines the origins and history of Christian thought from four thousand years ago to the present. Taking the long view, White says, helps him put more recent trends in perspective.

WHITE: I think that's been part of the uniqueness of my ministry here. Is that I do have this wonderful opportunity through the years to have a sense of the great tradition of Christianity. And I have a feel for that, and I realize that what's happened in American Christianity in the way of the rise of fundamentalism and evangelicalism is a phenomenon of less than a hundred years. And these folks that are very dominant now, were not in the ascendancy for the two thousand years of Christian history.

WHITNEY: James White has been the senior minister at First Congregational Church in Colorado Springs since 1989. He's retiring this week.