GT: What message do you want to convey with this book?
Jefferts Schori: It’s really about what the reign of God looks like in today’s terminology. It shows examples of that that I’ve encountered and I’ve encouraged people to follow. The Millennium Development Goals give a concrete image of the reign of God. They give benchmarks of shalom, and metrics, which is not something the church does well or often. That part is very constructive in motivating people.
GT: Last month you were at General Convention in Anaheim, Calif. How did it go?
Jefferts Schori: General Convention was wonderful! People were careful with each other, and respectful ”” it was a different convention (from the last one) in that sense. There was no animosity. People treated each other appropriately. We had so many visitors from around the Anglican Communion (the worldwide organization that includes the Episcopal Church and 37 other provinces) ”” 15 primates and a number of other bishops, and lay people too! We invited them to come see how we make decisions. A lot of them were surprised at the strength of our House of Deputies (one of two legislative houses of General Convention, made up of clergy and lay people; the other is the House of Bishops). In many places, the bishops tell everyone how things are going to be, so we were delighted that people came and saw the way we work.
Yikes! Can’t comment on the book until I’ve read it – which I probably won’t do.
I’m not familiar with the theological term, “benchmarks of shalom.” Perhaps a learned theologian might elaborate.
I’m no expert in Hebrew, but I think that “shalom” means a lot more than what she says. Her actions as PB certainly would not qualify her as the Queen of Shalom.
The interviewer quotes her book as saying, “Islam, shalom and salaam all have the same root in a word that means a good deal more than simply ‘peace’.” Can someone familiar with both Hebrew and Arabic tell us whether the “sh” in Hebrew is the equivalent of the “s” in Arabic? In Arabic, words with the root sh-l-m would have quite a different meaning from words with the s-l-m root. The languages are closely related.
This view of what the Kingdom of God means is very consistent with what I heard the Bishop of North Carolina say in 2002: that the mission of the Church is to restore this world, by our efforts, to the condition it had in the Garden of Eden before the Fall. The Presiding Bishop’s call to feed bodies is commendable, but not when it is to the exclusion of feeding souls with the love of God and salvation through Jesus Christ.
[blockquote]Katharine Jefferts Schori: Shalom is peace that’s more than the absence of violence and war. It’s restored relationships and the world working like it’s intended to work, at least as envisioned in the Abrahamic traditions.[/blockquote]
It is more than the absence of war and restored relationships for KJS, it is litigation and depositions.
For Katherine-It may not be quite as simple as language since words take on different meanings when applied to religion. Salaam is “peace”, and also a name of God (as we call our God/Jesus various names, prince of peace, redeemer, saviour, lamb, lord, etc.). So salaam aleikum becomes both peace be with you and God be with you (plural you, including the angels with you), as we wish God’s peace in the morning greeting. I am not sure exactly how Islam (I-s-l-m) derives from s-l-m but you have the triconsonantal structure right. Philosophically, the only peace is in submission to God, we share that as well. Of interest, the Islamic view is of a world divided into dar ul harb, the house of war, and dar es salaam, the house of peace. Needless to say Islam is in the house of peace, or submission to God, and Christianity is in the house of war. I don’t do Hebrew, even a little. And you may have known all this already.
As for the Bishop, gee, you almost said something nice about her, and some of us view her approach as curative to the great hypocrisy which many see in Christian practice with a lot of professions but not much of it coming into real action.
No animosity at GenCon.
Does that include the member of another deputation who turned around and yelled at me that I should not have voted the way I did?
I guess she was not around for the cut off microphones or the dirty looks at the poor tiny faithful remnant.
Or the little joke offered at announcements that modelling clay would be offered to those who needed something to squeeze and choke “instead of some other deputies’ necks.”
It was more under the surface, and there were fewer of us to be targets. But no animosity?
Yeah. Sure. I guess it depended on where you were standing.
The reign of God is when He is worshipped and obeyed. I guess neither of these are modern terms and it is necessary to write a book to explain its meaning.
RE: ” . . . her approach as curative to the great hypocrisy which many see in Christian practice with a lot of professions but not much of it coming into real action. . . . ”
Right. Because God knows that giving a percentage of one percent to the “MDGs” — and then cutting that out of the budget — and then “restoring” it in a big flourish at GenCon after *deleting* the budget for evangelism is “real action.”
[roll eyes]
[blockquote]General Convention was wonderful! People were careful with each other, and respectful — it was a different convention (from the last one) in that sense. There was no animosity. People treated each other appropriately.[/blockquote]
“Sit down and shut up, old man.”
Or words to that effect.
Sarah1 #8 , 🙂
I am slightly familiar with Arabic. “Islam” is submission to God as revealed through Muhammad. A “Muslim” (fem. “muslima”) is one who has so submitted. “Assalama eleikum” indeed means “Peace be with you,” more or less, but in common practice at least it means “The peace of Islam be with you” and in Egypt today is used mostly as a Muslim-identifying phrase. I don’t know if that is its original meaning, and I don’t know if the Hebrew “shalom” has the same root — certainly it doesn’t have an Islamic connection, since it precedes Islam by something like 1600 years or more.
Know that one-liners are frowned upon, but this was what came to mind:
Pulp fiction.
I stand to be corrected here, but my first thought is, how in the world does she have time to write a book. Shouldn’t she be devoting her time to doing what she was elected to do? Unbelievable.
#11 She is a scientist so a better description might be science fiction. This is almost like it is a parody or made up in some way. And this motivates people? She is in a different world>
Alli B, #12, the snide answer is that she’s got lawyers for that.
Millennium Goals…Metrics on the reign of God?…benchmarks on shalom?…hmmm…
Does her ladyship hold a black belt in Six Sigma? Is she still searching for the cheese that has been moved? Or is she managing by objective…better yet by objecting to everything that is truly Christian?
Pb (#13)
It’s not so much science fiction as it is Orwellian Redefinition. When language has different meanings depending on who is speaking it is impossible to have a dialog( in the original meaning of the word). How can there be understanding when the meaning of the terms used represent different ideas depending on the speaker? If you can control the definition of the terms than you can control the argument.
Shori isn’t living in a different world, she is arranging the context of communication in such a way that no interpretation of meaning other than her own makes any rational sense.
In a post-modern world view I suppose that this makes a weird sort of sense. But the real world has a way of intruding, however you refer to it contextually. You can refer to a bull as a cow, but it won’t make it any safer to milk him.
What a thing is depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. Or isn’t.
How many more years will people using the utterly stupid term “Abrahamic faiths” be tolerated?
#17 – How about the stupid term “non-celibate” vice “fornication.”