The mission that grounds Jefferts Schori is transforming the world so that it looks like the reign of God. She is vocal about the Episcopal Church’s priorities, including the United Nations Millennium Development Goals that address issues including poverty and hunger, climate change and care for the earth and sustainable development. “There’s more in the Bible about hunger and poverty than sexuality,” she said. “Jesus healed people more than he did anything else.”
Jefferts Schori also challenges the church she pastors to “recognize, bless, and celebrate multicultural reality.” In the Omaha diocese, Episcopal, Jewish and Muslim congregations are purchasing a single piece of property to build a shared building that will include worship space for each faith and a common area that can be used by the community during the week. The example of interfaith relations recognizes the commonality of the three denominations Abrahamic roots and their differences, Jefferts Schori said.
Attendance at the Episcopal Church is declining just as it is at other traditional denominations. The average Episcopal congregation has 75 worshippers on a Sunday and 19,000 more members of the aging church die than are born each year. The presiding bishop said the solution is to reach out to growing populations, including Hispanics, who have not been part of what is mistakenly perceived as a white, upper class church that kneels and stands and supports gays and lesbians. “The task of evangelism is to present worship in a language that can be understood and shape worship to speak to a new generation. It’s not necessarily change. It’s addition,” Jefferts Schori said.
[b]The presiding bishop said the solution is to reach out to growing populations, including Hispanics, who have not been part of what is mistakenly perceived as a white, upper class church that kneels and stands and supports gays and lesbians.[/b]
Of course this “perception” is not in error at all. Rather, what the PB means is that the elitist and liberal [i]”white, upper class church that kneels and supports gays and lesbians”[/i] will welcome all who will fill its shaky seats and pay the bills while the elitist and liberal white upper classes stays home and reads the New York Times on Sunday or saves the whales or distributes condoms or lobbies congress for unlimited abortion on demand or teaches teens how to fornicate “safely” or makes up new theologies never before heard in Christendom, or, as they would put it, the “real” work of the Church.
“The task of evangelism is to present worship in a language that can be understood and shape worship to speak to a new generation. It’s not necessarily change. It’s addition,†Jefferts Schori said.
“It’s addition”…. Every heresy includes some truth to legitimize its foundation, then adds layers of error.
In theory, TitusOneNine seeks to be a civil and intelligent discussion of the issues placed before its viewers, and “ad hominem” attacks are out of bounds. Unless, apparently, the speaker of interest is the PB. I, for one, would like to see equal active participation of our elves when the response drifts from the subject to misquotes, misattributions, and distortions which attack not the issue but the person of the PB as of others.
[Thanks Doug Martin – it is often a judgement as to when comments cross over the line, and in some instances assertions are made which we are not in a position to check. If wrong others will often correct them. We do encourage people not to use derogatory names. If you have a particular comment which concerns you please contact us, as we generally get involved when a complaint is made, unless the point is extremely obvious – Elf]
[i]The PB[/i] has a point about healing. Maybe it is time for the Church to start healing people rather than affriming them. And Albany–I find it interesting that the liberal upper class you speak of now has as its Cause du Jour freeing Roman Palanski, who merely raped a 13 year old.
[Slightly edited by Elf]
This stuff just writes itself.
😉
The additions have replaced the gospel. This is a new religion.
Bad math.
Re: “What they read in the headlines isn’t the Episcopal Church.” Actually, as a born and raised Episcopalian, I can tell you that what you read in the headlines most certainly is the Episcopal Church.
Doug Martin,
The BP is spinning here. Spin needs address. The address would be what she is dodging which is in fact the real substance of the issue. If someone is spinning, which is a deceptive act, then the person as well as the spin warrant address.
“Jefferts Schori also challenges the church she pastors to “recognize, bless, and celebrate multicultural reality.†In the Omaha diocese, Episcopal, Jewish and Muslim congregations are purchasing a single piece of property to build a shared building that will include worship space for each faith and a common area that can be used by the community during the week. The example of interfaith relations recognizes the commonality of the three denominations Abrahamic roots and their differences, Jefferts Schori said.”
Does anybody know anything about this effort in Omaha. Multi-culturalism is one thing (i.e., a predominantly Anglo parish has a Spanish language Eucharist). Multi-religion is another.
Multi-religion is just what Josiah tackles in today’s reading from Kings 23:4-25. There we see what a true leader does when faced with the worship of Baal, Asherah, Astarte the abomination of the Sidonians, Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. The PB would have us to not just roll over and play dead, but to jump in the sack with multiple religious partners.
Please don’t take the analogy any further!
“…..mistakenly perceived as a white, uper class church that kneels and stands and supports gays and lesbians.” I believe this comes under the category of “the truth hurts’. Yes, TEC is much more then this, or at least it should be, but I would ask the PB just which part of this perception she finds to be in accurate?
And she knows what the reign of God looks like because………….
“engage them in conversation?” How about preaching the Gospel straight out of the Bible?
[i] Slightly edited. [/i]
When you have nothing to offer but spin, you have no concrete substance. TEC has no substance, ergo they spin like my brand new dryer.
One of the problems today is the tendency to treat religion as a part of the culture rather than the formation of the culture. This is why Islamic prayers in school are ok as multicultural according to some and the Sudan has a cultural conflict. Our PB does no know the difference between other religions and other cultures. Or is Christianity only a part of “out” culture. Troubling.
Two portions of this column caught my eye:
– The Presiding Bishop’s definition of mission that completely ommits the Great Commision. (Mt 28:16-20) – her emphasis on celebrating the “multicultural reality” clearly works in opposition to the primary directive of the Risen Lord.
– The Presiding Bishop’s definition of the task of evangelism. In this, as in much else, she departs from St. Pauls admonition (2 Tim 4:1-5) as to what the work of an evangelist is.
I would agree with the Presiding Bishop’s final admonition that we cannot wait for people to wander into churches but engage people on “the big questions in their hearts”. A Christian would respond the answer is “Jesus, the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” What would her answer be?
Pax et Bonum
Steve Goodman
#17 The answer is “your way.”
#18-Her answer is “Many Ways” and that is the heart of the problem.
Intercessor
Hey, Anglican, Jewish & Muslim congregations using the same building! The Muslims must be thinking “This is going to be a lot easier than we thought”. I wonder if Ann Redding could be induced to attend? After all, she is both Muslim and a communicant in good standing in the Episcopal Church. It takes all the trouble out of commuting from mosque to church. Greener way to worship. Now the normal way things develop is that the Muslims take over the whole place. Ask *ANY* christian group in *ANY* Muslim country.
For Christians there is precisely nothing to recognize, bless or celebrate in Islam. Zero. Only in something that doesn’t understand what Christianity (or Islam) is can do this.
[Comment deleted by Elf]
Franz
Here is an article on the initiative:
http://jta.org/news/article/2009/03/24/1003944/coalition-plans-interfaith-campus-in-omaha
“In the Omaha diocese, Episcopal, Jewish and Muslim congregations are purchasing a single piece of property to build a shared building that will include worship space for each faith and a common area…”
Point of correction here. The Omaha Diocese (actually Archdiocese) is Roman Catholic. I bet they’d be really surprised to hear they’re involved in this type of syncretism! It should correctly read, “In the Diocese of Nebraska…” – that is the proper identification of the local TEC establishment spearheading this project.
Open communion celebrated too?
Intercessor
I see we’re back to the “gospel” of the UN Millenium Development Goals.
And here is the blog for the Tri-Faith Initiative
http://trifaith.org/wordpress/
[blockquote]“Jesus healed people more than he did anything else.â€[/blockquote]
Or perhaps he fed more people than he healed. But, really, what did Jesus come here to do? Of what do we need healing; of what food to be fed?
Of Schoris many heresies – well, heresy is too weak a word here – her position here is the most extreme and the most dangerous. She truly believes that pursuing the TEC course universally will at last produce a genuine Heaven on earth. Not a replica or preview, but the real thing. Moreover,she is relying of science to make this come to pass, a common view for those who view science as a system of beliefs, a faith, in short. Any many do, do they not? With science’s help, we may even live forever; immortality IS possible.
0
This so flagrantly violates God’s most obvious mandate, that if we are to survive as a race, we must die individually, and after a relatively short life, that it is hard to find the words for such arrogance, such chutzpah, such overweening pride.
The very notion that we can fix all of man’s social and economic problems if we only will put our minds to it and commit the necessary resource to bring this end to pass- there is a pervasive and uncompromising blindness here that we must call this delusion, a thoroughgoing disconnection from reality. In an ordinary individual, this would be a harmless insanity; he would stand on a soapbox at the corner ofs the park and harangue the passers-by. But in a Bishop of a church? Larry
[blockquote]The presiding bishop said the solution is to reach out to growing populations, including Hispanics[/blockquote]
Could this be translated “inveigle lapsed Catholics”?