Katharine Jefferts Schori spent much of her life with her head in the clouds or under water, but this week, “She’s got her boots on the ground in Mississippi.”
On Wednesday, the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi welcomed the oceanographer/pilot whose third and most important title is the 26th presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church in the United States.
Known formally as The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the 54-year-old Episcopal leader will tour the state through Monday. The visit marks her first official visit to meet members of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi but not her first state visit.
[blockquote]the office of presiding bishop – the bishops of bishops so to speak, like an archbishop – was an office only held by men until Schori’s election,” said the Rev. Scott Lenoir, vicar of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Lexington and editor of The Mississippi Episcopalian.[/blockquote]
Looks like more and more people (including this “Episcopal Communicator”) are buying into the idea that the Presiding Bishop somehow really is an archbishop, even though the constitution and canons make the office deliberately UNLIKE an archbishop! (Mrs Schori even has said so).
And, how about her “have you stopped beating your wife” question on why the school isn’t “integrated”. Does anyone really use that word anymore anywhere? What year is this?
Brien Koehler
Notice of Non-Discriminatory Policy Regarding Students
With reference to Mrs. Schori’s hate speak about an Episcopal School in the diocese she was visiting, here is the the non-discrimination policy posted on St Andrew’s School website. I don’t know anything about the school, but St. Andrew’s is a member of the National Association of Episcopal Schools, and all members of the Association have similar policies or they cannot be members. Mrs. Schori, call your office.
[blockquote]St. Andrew’s Episcopal School admits students of any race, gender, color, religion, and national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the school. St. Andrew’s does not discriminate in violation of the law on the basis of race, religion, creed, color, gender, age, physical challenge, or national origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship programs, and athletic or other school-administered programs.[/blockquote]
[blockquote] Being trained as a scientist means you are educated to look at the world closely and examine the data, and if it doesn’t fit the hypothesis, you try again. [/blockquote]
KJS has a lot of data about TEC. I wish she would examine it. It would tell her that certain slash and burn tactics, certain dismissals of the canons, certain unwillingnesses to negotiate with dissenters… that all these things are not working.
Can I hope that she will “try again”? Perhaps with something a little more… Christlike?
Please, Lord, have mercy on us. Help us all to strive to be tranformed into your image.
KjS’ mother was also a trained scientist. She closely examined ECUSA and finding it wanting, left it. It didn’t fir the hypothesis, so she tried again, becoming a layman in the Orthodox Church. Worked then, works now.
That does sound like a gratuitous slap at St. Andrew’s. Most private schools offer scholarships to students whose families can’t afford the tuition. Presumably St. Andrew’s does also. According to my reading, Mississippi continues to have a large population of rural poor, a great number of whom are black. Jefferts Shori’s comment makes it sound like she thinks St. Andrew’s is deliberately excluding minorities, which is an ugly charge to make if there’s no foundation for it.
Calling the PB’s question a ‘slap’ ignores the reality of much of the private school system in the South. Much of the private schools in the south were formed as a response to Brown vs. Board (massive resistance and segregation academies), and introducing nominal integration and declaring the problem solved isn’t really a Christian response the issue.
The reality of much of education in the deep south is a de facto segregation between public schools, which are largely poor and black, and private schools, which are largely rich and white. And saying, ‘oh, well, we give some scholarships for minority enrolment’ doesn’t really get the job done.
It’s not a Christian thing to do, IMO, to charge $12,000 a year for a high school education (more than my university tuition, it should be noted) and then claim that the reason there’s so few black students is because they can’t afford it. There seems a bit of a disconnect here.
To be fair to St. Andrew’s, it should be pointed out that it wa founded in 1947, before Brown, and so it isn’t a seg academy, and the PB should’ve been slightly more informed about that. However, the question itself is still legit.
My daughters attended a private school in Georgia for five years, Isaac, because we didn’t think the education at the local public schools would do what they needed. The school was not a segregation start-up, and yes, it did have black students, mostly scholarship but not entirely so. We would never have sent our kids to a deliberately segregated institution. What would you have parents do, Isaac? Put their kids in schools they know are substandard and won’t give them a top-quality preparation? I voted, every time I could, for improved facilities at the public schools and for improved public services in the poor neighborhoods. But, like the Obamas going to Washington, and the Clintons before them, we decided that we owed our children the best we could do for them.
Examine the data! Apparently it is other the scipture, tradition and reason. What about trust in things unseen? Since when does science have the answer to the problem of sin and separation from God. God can not be proved by science and the data does not support belief. This truly is a new teligion.
RE: “The reality of much of education in the deep south is a de facto segregation between public schools, which are largely poor and black, and private schools, which are largely rich and white.”
Actually this is true of “much of education” in all of the US — “a de facto segregation” between the poor and the rich, with the poor increasingly residing in public schools and the rich in private schools.
This trend will only continue and grow, since the teachers unions and liberal administrators, as well as incompetent state and county and city governments, fail to reform the public school systems.
Yes, Sarah, I was going to point out the increasingly sad nature of public education in general. Either private schools or home-schooling are the best choices for careful parents in many, many locations.
[i] She’s got her boots on the ground in Mississippi [/i]
Jackboots or hobnail?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[i] The visit marks her first official visit to meet members of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi but not her first state visit [/i]
She likes the state dinner, color guard, and 21-gun salute.
So there are no black students in the school. So what? Don’t black people have the freedom to choose? Maybe they don’t want their in that school. Maybe the kids don’t want to go there. Must be at least a dozen reasons.
Just visit the website of the school. Diversity on the homepage and in the classroom as well. I am at a parish in Baton Rouge where we have a wonderful school. We were founded after Brown vs. Board, and by that I mean both the school and the church. We have a variety of races and religions in our school. Our tuition is expensive (but not as much as many private schools in Baton Rouge, and less than the tuition figure in a post above). We wish we had an endowment for financial aid; we have a little but not much. You can find out about our school at stlukesbrschool.org and our parish at stlukesbr.org
The irk that I have with Mrs Schori in the present case is her casual and thoughtless penchant for sterotypical questions and answers. Mississippi and the Episcopal Church deserve leaders who actually respect the dignity of every person, and not what we’ve got talking the talk but failing to walk.
Brien Koehler, SSC
St Luke’s Baton Rouge
Katherine, I would never try to you what decisions you should make regarding your children’s education. I don’t know you, your circumstances, etc., and it would be wildly inappropriate of me to do so on an internet forum. That being said, I do recall one family I’m acquainted with decided to deliberately send their children to public school rather than the private school they could afford because the father, who had attended a seg academy in Virginia during massive resistance, felt the value of an education surrounded by people who were distinctly different fromhis kids (not just racially, of course) was more important than test scores.
I do have distinct problems with private Christian schools that charge outrageous amounts of tuition and functionally bars low-income students from an education. I don’t think that’s Christian, period, and it’s a shame on American Christianity that it happens.
Besides, I was approaching it from an institutional perspective, saying, in effect, that given the historical situation regarding many private schools in the South, it wasn’t as far off base a question as it would appear. I’m glad that parents have reflected positively on the school’s diversity. I agree, also, with Brian, insofar as the question reflects an odd, asperger’s-like quality of the PB to say whatever pops into her head at whatever moment. It’s a good question to ask, but a question to ask BEFORE you get there, and not during the visit itself.
Frances, yes, black students do have the freedom to choose. But if your economic conditions give you a choice between A). and A)., is it really a choice when you pick A).?
RE: “I agree, also, with Brian, insofar as the question reflects an odd, asperger’s-like quality of the PB to say whatever pops into her head at whatever moment.”
You know — I honestly think it’s quite calculated and deliberate. I don’t think she goes home and says “goodness, I shouldn’t have said that about the primitive Southerners.” Instead it’s “I do hope the primitive Southerners took to heart my excellent and pointed questions concerning their racism. What a convicting power my words must have had.”
The city of Jackson is less than 30 percent white. This school is 89 percent white. Having carefully selected photos of minority children on its website doesn’t make it diverse. Of course, the presiding bishop is the proverbial pot here, since the demographics of this school mirror the demographics of the Episcopal Church in general.
Sure, minority children can choose to go there – if they have ten thousand dollars a year to spend or if they excel in sports or academics – if they are a “model minority.” But if they’re just average or maybe a little dull, it’s public school for them. The poor don’t get to opt out unless they have some factor that upper-middle class white society values. I can understand why they wouldn’t want to have to endure being the scholarship kid.
If the Episcopal Church were a business, it would be sued for lack of truth in advertising. For the most part Episcopalians want to “help” the poor. They just don’t want to worship or live with them. This is why I left the Episcopal Church. I got tired of being “helped” all the time. It’s not only condescending, it’s soul killing.
What does it cost to go to an Episcopal Church school? Could many minority kids afford to go to one?
I don’t know how Catholic schools are now, in terms of cost, but I know of so many that were started to bring education to those who had trouble gaining access to a decent education. I’ve had the impression that TEC schools, generally, are for the edification of children whose parents have money, whether they are located in the south, east, north or west. If that’s not true, I would be most happy to hear it. If it is true, the pb’s remark seems like a pointless rudeness.
First, there seems little question that Pb’s remark was rude and based on stereotyping, that she would criticize without mercy, were it directed at a minority. Second, all Episcopal schools have critieria for entrance, none of which involve race. Some, if not all, do give priority to Episcopalians (duh)! So how many black Episcopalians are there, percentage wise in the US or in Jackson, MS? Next, there are economic costs to private education. If you, as a parent, want your child to get a decent education and be safe at school, then you may have to find a private school for your child, many public schools being what they are. So, if you are a private school, and your population is made up mostly of those who can afford your tuition, you offer scholarships to those who can’t afford it to try to diversify. I would suggest to you that offering these scholarships to help diversify your student population is a much more Christian thing to do than the few minutes of serving the poor in a soup kitchen that the Pb did on her trip (see picture of her doing that in the MS article), before she returned to the expensive hotel in Jackson where she undoubtedly spent the night or to her penthouse suite in NYC. Those scholarships are permanent help and much better than the 1 hour walk in London performed at Lambeth by the Anglican bishops for world poverty before they went for tea at Buckingham Palace – or the few hours of help offered by the HOB in New Orleans to those devastated by Katrina, during their meeting there, before they returned to their luxury hotels. To mix as many metaphors as possible, I say to the Pb, if you ain’t walking the walk yourself, don’t be throwing stones at those who are trying.
Patty Mueller,
Not sure where you’re getting the “89% white” figure, but there is no way St. Andrew’s has only 11% minority students. For that figure to be that high, you’d have to include all Hispanics, all Asians, all Indians, and all other minorities except for blacks.
I know what I’m talking about – this is the school my child attends. I can snap a photo at the next Friday morning chapel if anyone doubts the racial makeup of the school. As I wrote at Stand Firm:
[blockquote]When I go to her classroom on special days, or to chapel on Friday mornings, here’s what I see in the way of race:
White
Black
White
Asian
Indian
Black
Hispanic
Black
White
Having worked with special-needs children in the Jackson Public School District, I have found myself on many occasions in classrooms and hallways of several of its schools. What I see there is:
Black
Black
Black
Black
White
Hispanic
Black
Black
Black
So you tell me which school is more racially diverse.[/blockquote]
For whatever reason, people who have a problem with a private school that’s majority white in a city that’s majority black, never see any problem with a public school in the same city that’s 90% black.
What explains the disparity? The answer should be obvious: The public schools are hellholes, and almost all of those who can afford to send their children to private schools do. THIS INCLUDES THE CITY’S LIBERAL COMPONENT, TOO. There were more Obama stickers on the backs of $50,000 SUV’s in line at carpool than you would probably think. If you’re looking to characterize St. Andrew’s as a redoubt for monied conservatives, you’ll be sadly disappointed. If anything, it is a redoubt for monied liberals.
The unspoken premise here that’s faulty is that St. Andrew’s should, as one of its necessary conditions, reflect the same racial makeup as the city, and that’s just not true. St. Andrews’ purpose is to offer an excellent education, and my complaints about its political correctness or liberal makeup aside, it does that beyond the shadow of a doubt. It consistently leads the way in National Merit Scholars, and the list of colleges to which its graduates go includes all of the country’s most prestigious ones.
Finally, you should know that the fastest-growing segment of private schools in Jackson is not in the wealthy and mainly white northeast section, but in the ghettos of west Jackson, where black parents have finally had enough, and have begun opening small private schools – whose student bodies are 100% black. The students are thriving, and demand for more schools to start up – and existing ones to expand – just keeps growing. Yet I’ve never once heard anyone complain that these schools might be racist in their admission policies, or that class or economics or anything else nefarious explains their all-black makeup. I’ve never once heard anyone complain about a “performance gap” between these all-black private schools and the public schools, much less any sneering directed at them for their ability to provide an excellent education for their students. I wonder why.
I would also note that, as I mentioned in my piece at SF, 1 in 4 students at St. Andrew’s is there on full or partial scholarship. I don’t know the figures for the other private schools in the area, but I would be very surprised if any of them, except possibly St. Richard’s Catholic school, come anywhere close to that.
#21, Greg, great email! It’s great to catch liberals being hypocritical and stereotyping, when they actually don’t know what they are talking about. What fun! Unfortunately, the PB will never see your email, most likely. But she definitely owes the folks in MS an apology for her rudeness.