New Methodist bishop seen as moderate

 

July 18, 2004

BY CATHLEEN FALSANI Religion Reporter , Chicago Sun Times

Thirty-three years ago, Bishop Hee-Soo Jung says he was introduced to Jesus on Kanghwa Island in the Yellow Sea off the coast of his native South Korea.

He was 16 at the time, the Buddhist grandson of a Confucian scholar, when a high school teacher told him Bible stories, and he converted to Christianity.

On Saturday, Jung, a pastor and church administrator from Appleton, Wis., became bishop of the United Methodist Church's Northern Illinois Conference, which includes Chicago.

Jung is the first nonwhite to hold the position and the third Korean to be named a bishop in the United Methodist Church in the United States.

"The gospel of Jesus Christ was really a light for me and gave me such a lifting up and hope for my future," said Jung, who immigrated to the United States in 1982 after completing his seminary and graduate school training in Seoul. "The gospel empowered me in a beautiful way."

Jung, 49, who is married with two teenage sons and has a reputation as a theological moderate committed to social activism, succeeds the colorful and controversial Bishop Joseph Sprague, who is retiring at the end of August after serving two four-year terms.

"He is a scholar, he has an evangelical heart and a social conscience and a justice passion," said Sprague, who was charged with heresy four times during his tenure as bishop because of his nontraditional beliefs. "I leave rejoicing. . . . The church is in very good hands."

Sprague, 65, who was arrested several times for disobedience -- most recently while protesting the war in Iraq -- does not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus Christ and says the virgin birth is "a myth."

Mark Tooley, director of the United Methodist committee of the conservative watchdog Institute for Religion and Democracy, who has said Sprague is "the most vocally prominent active liberal bishop in Protestantism today," welcomed Jung's election.

Jung "is theologically more moderate than Bishop Sprague and probably less controversial," Tooley said. "Bishop Sprague has been a very divisive and contentious bishop and has not served the church well with his pronouncements over the last eight years. I'm hoping his successor will devote himself to more traditional work that will be more unifying than divisive."

The new bishop said he "greatly admires" Sprague as a man of "integrity" and "gentle spirit."

"I think my calling today is in some ways bringing Christian unity as a gift, to create more understanding and grace, not polarity," Jung said. "At the same time, I hope the church is really focusing on how we can witness to unchurched people."

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Duke University Chapel Dean William Willimon, one of the nation's top Methodist theologians, a prolific author and internationally acclaimed preacher, was named Saturday as the new bishop of United Methodists in North Alabama.

In 1996, an international survey by Baylor University named Willimon one of the "Twelve Most Effective Preachers" in the English-speaking world, a list that included evangelist Billy Graham.

Willimon, 58, a reform advocate who has written more than 50 books on church practice that have often criticized liberal theology and decline in the second-largest U.S. Protestant denomination, said he never thought he'd be elected a bishop.

"I've been told by too many people you can't write what I've written and say what I say and be a bishop," said Willimon, a member of the Duke Divinity faculty since 1976, as professor of Christian ministry and dean of the chapel since 1984. Then he joked, "Very few people read my books; that's helpful."

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Scott Jones, 50, of Dallas, has been named the new bishop for the 206,000 United Methodists in Kansas. The announcement was made at the Kansas East Annual Conference Saturday.

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Jones will take over at a time when the two jurisdictional districts in the state -- the west and east conferences -- are renewing talks about merging.