In my opening address at General Convention, I spoke about the “great Western heresy” of individualism (see the full text here). There have been varied reactions from people who weren’t there, who heard or read an isolated comment without the context. Apparently I wasn’t clear!
Individualism (the understanding that the interests and independence of the individual necessarily trump the interests of others as well as principles of interdependence) is basically unbiblical and unchristian.
The spiritual journey, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is about holy living in community. When Jesus was asked to summarize the Torah, he said, “love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” That means our task is to be in relationship with God and with our neighbors. If salvation is understood only as “getting right with God” without considering “getting right with (all) our neighbors,” then we’ve got a heresy (an unorthodox belief) on our hands.
Spin babble………….
“If salvation is understood only as “getting right with God” without considering “getting right with (all) our neighbors,” then we’ve got a heresy…”
So there is inevitably a change that must take place both in our hearts and actions… I thought that we should not force people to change. I guess that what she wants is only for people to change in the direction that she likes, regardless of other authorities (ie the Bible).
I find it a bit of an oxymoron for +KJS to be talking about the need for community when she has, by her actions, told the Anglican Communion that their community is not needed.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Capt. DW, that’s not very specific. Are you saying that you disagree with aspects of this statement, and specifically with her interpretations of Amos and Matthew? If so, could you explain? Personally, I think this is an excellent statement.
InChristAlone, quoting Capt. DW, “Spin babble …..”. It’s not ‘the direction that she likes’, it’s the direction mandated by the Bible in the passages that she references. You and I may disagree on the correct interpretation of most of the passages referring to homosexual conduct (the elephant in the room, after all), but as I asked CDW, do you disagree with her interpretation of Amos and Matthew? If so, why? If we were actually engage in the debate, we might begin to find some common ground on what it means to be Christian.
#4, no I did not just wake up today and find myself in disagreement with what she wrote here, although please note that being right with community gets a lot more words out of her than “love the Lord your God” does. I am reading this in context:
1. The context of her heretical statements which have been well documented http://www.standfirminfaith.com/index.php/site/article/1503
2. The context of inclusive double-talk where conservative-orthodox folks are not included.
3. In the context of unprecedented litigation against fellow christians
6. In the context of a debasement of the authority of scripture and a disregard of the faith received from the early church fathers.
I hope my specificity here is helpful,
In His Service,
My personal relationship with God comes before my relationship with anything else. It is out of that relationship with God that my love for others comes. Yes, it is very important to love my neighbors and if I love God I will thus love my neighbors but God comes first. I think that’s why “the greatest” commandment is to love God with all your heart and all your soul and the “second” is love your neighbor.
PB Kate is confused. What she means clearly by her actions is “you’ll know we are Episcopalians by our lawsuitsâ€. How could she possibly have forgotten to mention that the lawsuit is THE supreme form of salvation for the perpetrator and the defendant? Golly, Miss Kate, those shure are sum big lawsuit dollars ya got there! Didja get ‘em all from them ‘ere MDG savings? or was it the Evangelism Budget? or savings from the Ecumenical Bishop fund?
KJS uses the term “in Christ” often. I think she means supporting the leadership of TEC and the direction in which it is going. I once heard a teacher say the TEC is designed to help folks on a journey which they had never begun. There is some of this in her defense of her previous oops.
I almost found myself largely agreeing with Dr Schori here (although I suspect that we have very different ideas of what it means `to do the will of my father in heaven,’ and her interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:29 seems a little offensive to that small part of myself which is catholic, and she does seem to be spending the bulk of the article attacking a straw man; but apart from that, it wasn’t too bad by her usual standards). Until I came to this paragraph:
The whole of creation will be restored? Including those that say `Lord, Lord’ but fail to do the father’s will? The very passage she quoted to try to establish her point contradicts her conclusion.
Why does she make no mention of judgement, but only restoration?
But then we come to `in a new way?’ Doesn’t this imply that there were previous ways, and perhaps other ways in the future? Hardly `And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’
And why does she persist in `reign of God’ rather than the Biblical `Kingdom of God?’ Is it because she thinks that the eschatological dominion ought to be a democracy, or that she denies that Jesus and the Father are both Kings with all that that implies?
Then salvation is happening all around us. In a sense that is correct, believers are being sanctified by the power of God (2 Corinthians 4:6). But `all around us’ again suggests universalism, and I get the feeling of the classic Schori heresy that God is leaving us to establish the `reign of God’ by our own efforts; rather than the Biblical doctrine that Kingdom of God will be established by His power and His power alone.
Salvation is complete – “It is finished”. Faith is all that is needed to receive it.
Actually, I am delighted: This is the first that I have seen her support each of her statements with quotations from Scripture. It leads me to hope that she believes in the authority of Scripture, otherwise why quote Scripture to support her argument?
On the other hand, the argument she presents has nothing to do with her proclamaition of what constitutes the Great Western Heresy. She is changing the subject.
Yet, if she really believes in the authority of Scripture, she made my day!
Denbeau,
I will first refer you to Capt. Deacon Warren’s response and add that
yes I was primary referring to the issues surrounding the homosexuality issue because what she implies by saying: “getting right with (all) our neighbors,” is that we “accept” other people’s behaviors and beliefs, which is not what the sweep of Scripture tells us. Instead the sweep of Scripture tells us to conform our lives to God’s standards.
I should also point out that just as one part of Scripture is not to be read without being put into the context of the whole of scripture, so a person’s speeches and writings should not be looked at absent of the context of the whole. It is like saying that a politician believes X because they say it at a press conference even though over their entire careers they have said the exact opposite.
This is important — this is not an accusation but a crucial correction. Please do read because this is another attempt at re-writing history that should not be alowed to stand.
In the official text of Bonnie Anderson’s “opening remarks to the HoDs” there is entire paragraph missing from what she actually said to that House. Here again, something has been left out. I call upon anyone with a good memory, or some recording equipment to check this out and prove the change. My memory for speeches and conversations is quite good. This is not an attempt to make an unsubstantial accusation: it is important to keep the record straight.
In the text of her sermon made available is this quote:
“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. [i][b]That individualist focus is a form of idolatry[/b][/i], for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.”
The change made is here: “That individualist focus is a form of idolatry.” What those of us who were there heard her say was that any formula defining who Jesus is, and what the nature of salvation is, is a form of idolatry. The idolatry is in defining salvation in Christ in a formula, not merely in the “individualistic focus.” This is quite a different thing.
She evens makes a reference to this herself in her explanation of her speech: “In my address, I went on to say that sometimes this belief that salvation only depends on getting right with God is reduced to saying a simple formula about Jesus. ” Yes! She DID in fact say that “fomulas about Jesus must always be heresy” and here she is admitting this.
However, you will not find such a sentence in the official rendering of the text. I was there when her sermon was originally spoken. Several of us, including Bp Love, remarked upon it at the end of her sermon as the liturgy was transitioning.
This is, I am sorry to have to say, another attempt at editing history. The crucial sentence has been omitted from the text, even though KJS herself makes a reference to it in her ubsequent statement.
How can there be any kind of discourse when there is no honesty about the statements that were, in fact, made?
She said, that formulas concerning salvation in Jesus are, by their very nature as “formulas,” heretical.
Can someone find an accurate record of the sermon AS DELIVERED so we can set the record straight?! Without an accurate rendering, any fallacious claims can be made.
Lumen Christie, I don’t have the time right now, but the PB’s opening address is located on video here: http://bitcast-g.bitgravity.com/tecdigitalmedia/GC09/gc09_070709_PB_OpenAddress.flv
#11 I don’t think she believes in the authority of Scripture, but she does know that we believe and thus quotes what seems appropriate to back her argument taking no heed of the actual context of the passages themselves. Notice how she quotes those parts of the passages to back her statement, then merely references those Scriptures that have only a tenuous connection which in the long run of the passage damns the argument itself. She may as well be saying to us all “He will command His angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.(Psalm 91:11,12).”
As with individual salvation versus corporate: False distinction. We are all saved through Christ, and all one in Christ, we are both the bridegroom and the bride. But the whole of the Body can only be healthy so long as each individual cell is healthy, once infection enters it can spread, so that the whole of the body is diseased. And if a cut should start on the hand should we say “Leave it be, for the whole of the body is healthy?” Or should we disinfect the cut, so that the hand stays healthy and the body as well?
And of course “ubuntu” is ridiculous and anti-Christian. “I am because we are” has nothing to do with God or the Church, rather “We are because I AM”. Forget Ubuntu, I want ekklesia.
The opening paragraphs’ condemnation of individualism is hard to reconcile with her position that individual sexual feelings trump Scripture, Tradition, and reason applied to Scripture.
I agree with Boring Bloke that the middle paragraphs aren’t bad, but then she loses it again in the final two paragraphs. “Salvation is happening all around us” seems to me, in the context of many of her other statements, to be saying that salvation is what happens when good works are done, that works in this world and healing in this world constitute “salvation.”
She is a HERETIC and she is spinning a WORKS Based Salvation.
I had not heard her preach that “individual sexual feelings trump Scripture, Tradition, and reason applied to Scripture.” Is it possible that No. 17 overstates a bit?
The exegesis offered by many commenters on this particular post seems to be that the PB can’t possibly be saying anything correct or of value because we have already classified her as being categorically incorrect and without value.
#19, “individual sexual feelings trump Scripture, Tradition, and reason applied to Scripture” is the essence of the position which allows the ordination of practicing homosexuals and the blessing of homosexual relationships. After all the discussions of the past decades, this is what it boils down to. Gays feel this is an unalterable attraction, and therefore it is good, despite what Scripture says about the practice. I don’t think this is an overstatement; it is what people believe, including Jefferts Schori.
I think what you are describing is not KJS’s position as expressed by her, but rather your position on what you think of her. It might be well to make that distinction.
Novascout: The real problem lies here, that TEC and Schori have made it a principle that language is malleable, and one can, for the sake of one’s agenda, make it mean what you wish it to mean, see listen, inclusive, tolerance, committed monogamous, and the rest. Her words are, a priori, not to be trusted because their face value has been altered so often. And then there is the heresy – Mother Jesus – and the company she keeps tp which I say again, Lie down with dogs, rise with fleas.
Her words are fairseeming but untrustworthy because they are agenda driven. What for example, is her complaint with individualism? Is she not confusing this concept with egotism and self-centeredness, soliopsism? They are not the same. On individualism in the west, see Barzun’s discussion in “FrlomDawn to Decadence.” And what can she mean when she says, “Salvation is happening all around us?” Happening how? And to whom? Is she saying that the world of life after death is not necessary, but that the world shall become the heaven promised. For she HAS said this before; this is the point of the MDG. Larry
Her words are pure Obfuscatory Episcobabble served up to sychophants who hang on every pronouncement coming from her office.
Yes, it’s unbelievable when a bishop of a church started by a schism preaches community. This is a probably deliberate distortion of Catholic ecclesiology; what it really means is ‘quietly obey us, your betters, as we make decisions for you on gay weddings etc.’. Much like their half-truth on scripture: it is the church’s book and parts of it aren’t taken literally but revelation isn’t open-ended (Mormon theology). These liberal Protestants putting on the airs of the Catholic Church claim an authority (to say homosexuality isn’t a sin after all for example) the Pope never dared.
NoVa Scout, I am not quoting Jefferts Schori directly, but I do think that my summary of her views on same-sex practice is accurate. This is what the liberal leadership of the Church has been saying, in essence, for years, and it reflects their genuine beliefs. It’s not ad hominem to say so. My own belief on the subject is that Scripture, taken as a whole as well as the famous verses, condemns same-sex activity as sinful, that refraining from such activity is part of the moral law by which Christians are bound, and that therefore persons active in same-sex relationships, whether or not exclusive, should not be ordained and the relationships should not be blessed by the Church. If you say that is what the conservative position is, you would be making an accurate statement.
That “wonderful” and oft-quoted sentence from the Prayer Book — “The mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” — is itself arguably heretical (ignoring for the moment that the “whole creation” talk is a yet later ideology). It confuses our work with the work of God. By contrast, “[b]God was[/b] in Christ [b]reconciling[/b] the world to himself” (2 Cor 5:19). God is the active subject; not us. The reason is clear — any human project is necessarily limited by our finite modeling of means and ends. We are in relation to the infinite being of God — but it is a relationship in which we always progress without ever reaching completion (Gregory of Nyssa). KJS’s confidence that she can reduce the work of reconciliation to finite means and ends is in itself (oh horror!), “putting God in a box”. We must confess the mystery that we are the subjects of the reconciling work of the infinite and transcendent God.
The second step, then, is that the love of God and the love of neighbor are simply not on the same level (and, by the way, don’t belong in the same sentence). The love of God (both senses, God for us and us for God) is absolutely first. Absent the love of God there is no love of neighbor — it simply doesn’t exist as a stable and real possibility.
Incidentally, my objection to the sentence from The Outline of the Faith is not intended as a slam against the whole statement. Much of it is wonderful and teaches well.
I have just re-read, for about the fifth time since yesterday, this release from ++KJS. My thoughts may be a day late and $5 short, but I really feel a need to make a comment.
I agree with most of the comments written so far. #6 RL echos my own thoughts and I believe most of the folks I know will agree. We needed to come to a right relationship with Christ ourselves and in so doing became compelled to reach out to those around us and do what we can to right wrongs, mend fences, build hope.
IMVHO, Schori has not only put the cart before the horse, but the horse has turned around and is galloping back in the other direction. and she fails to acknowledge it is happening.
Seems to me it took an awful long time for her to respond to the criticism regarding her opening sermon. Why? If the spin she is now attempting to put on what she said then is what she truly believes, she should have spoken out long before this. Seriously, I feel that her original sermon is her true understanding as you would not get up in front of thousands of people and make a statement if you did not believe in what you were saying. Or…maybe I am out of touch with reality.
TLH
If you want to know WHAT is truly wrong with this Church, turn to Susan Russell’s blog on this subject. A man named Father Craig notes:
“…thus do I consider myself a Great Commandment Christian, rathe (sic) then (sic) a Great Commission Christian…She is absolutely right.”
Sick.
Since when CAN one take the priorities uttered by Christ himself and VIA MEDIA them into meaningless babble?
In the last century the Church of England has given us John Stott, Rowan William and Tom Wright. The Episcopal Church has offered up … Katharine Jefferts-Schori.
TEC is part of a much broader war, one with the highest of stakes. The issue of ssm and homosexuality in general is part of the issue of whether the US will return to an identity of self-discipllne and self restraint, ramain in short an Apollonian culture, or whether it will completely institutionalize self-indulgence and self-centeredness, in short, remain an Dionysian society. This is why the battle with TEF is so vital. We MUST win it, because it is the blitzkrieg armor that is trying to break through our defensive lines; once broken, they cannot be reformed and the breach can only widen for all the forces that come behind their canons, if I may put it that way. Larry
Does KJS really believe that some people think that salvation is accomplished by simply reciting a specific formula? Perhaps she does. Does she really believe the thinngs she sometimes says, or does she have trouble expresssing herself on theological issues? In any case she needs, like John Kerry needed, a handler. I do believe that individualism is a heresy if it does ignore the fact that the Church is the vehicle of salvation.
robk, that line struck me too. One would almost think her target is independent Bible believers who insist that one is “saved” solely by “inviting Jesus into your heart,” or by reciting the correctly-phrased acceptance of God’s saving grace. Yet it seems unlikely that this population is the prime field for Episcopal Church growth.
Katherine, do you personally know anyone who believes that the mere recitation of a formula has salvific value? Such a flimsy straw man if that is what KJS meant. Thx.
Yes, rob k #32, I do. I know Baptist-style and independent Christian “Bible believers” who do think that once they have invited Jesus into their hearts or recited the correct acceptance of Jesus, they are “saved” and cannot be “unsaved.”