Jefferts Schori’s stop in Shepherdstown ended a three-church pilgrimage to the Mountain State. She also visited Christ Church in Fairmont, W.Va., and St. Luke’s on Wheeling Island.
She said that during a dinner at Christ Church, paper stars were passed out inviting those eating to write notes to its rector, who is facing cancer surgery. The woman turned 29 Saturday and the congregation had seen her only once since she became ill in May, Jefferts Schori said.
“At some point … a parishioner stood up and offered a lament … ”˜Why is this vibrant young woman so terribly sick? Why has our shepherd been taken away?’” Jefferts Schori said during her sermon.
“Questions like those haunt all of us at some time or other,” she said. “That lament is universal. Why can’t we fix it? Oh, God, why?”
The Presiding Bishop said in her sermon:
[blockquote]efferts Schori said faith “is not the result of whiz-bang encounters with the holy. It’s much more like the production of coal, through the long, slow accumulation of dead organisms, slowly covered with rock, and then the millennia of pressure. Faith comes through the accumulation of life’s challenges.â€[/blockquote]
Good. Let’s just keep on piling up those dead organisms.
[blockquote]Jefferts Schori said faith “is not the result of whiz-bang encounters with the holy. It’s much more like the production of coal, through the long, slow accumulation of dead organisms, slowly covered with rock, and then the millennia of pressure. Faith comes through the accumulation of life’s challenges.â€[/blockquote]
What an odd commentary on yesterday’s lessons. It’s as if she really doesn’t know what faith is, and that she skipped theodicy when taking pastoral theology. Perhaps she’s merely trying to foreshadow halloween.
The Episcopal Church welcomes you. Become a part of a long, slow accumulation of dead organisims. You gotta love it. Terry Fullam loved pointing out that in the BCP the Ordination of a Bishop follows immediately after the Burial of the Dead.
As for the headline . . . We must keep repeating until it sinks in: The Episcopal Church does not have a “top bishop”.
A very bottom up approach to the question of Faith. No road to Damascus moments allowed.
I too think this is hilarious. She DOES have a way with words doesn’t she. his gives the phrase “a tin ear” new dimensions. Larry
She has gotten better. She preached at my seminary commencement, and likened God to an Octopus. Even the liberal folk I knew at Seabury were baffled on that one.
#7 It is what I would expect from an expert on invertebrates.
Riffing on Ralph’s comment in #2, could we call what she preaches theidiocy? 🙂
So Luke’s comment of faith and the mustard seed mean nothing to all you cynics.
It was an odd analogy, to be sure, but I think her point stands. I would have said it differently. I would say that for some, faith [i]does[/i] come by whiz-bang encounters (the Road to Damascus), for others it is more like a geological process, a slow building of layer upon layer. Nearly every time she speaks she gets my dander up, but I’ll give her credit for this not being one of those times.
The analogy is not one that I would have made given the easy jokes that can be made at its expense. But, in all fairness, she knew she was going to WV and felt like she had to try and relate to them. What better way than coal.
My real problem is that she answered the wrong question. The lady wanted to know why bad things (like the priest’s suffering/their lack of a pastor) happen not how is our faith formed. Too bad our PB thinks that sin is a 4-letter word because sin has caused there to be too many dead organisms.
[blockquote]Faith comes through the accumulation of life’s challenges.â€
She spoke of examples of faith that she witnessed at St. Luke’s, once a playground for the very rich, now mostly inhabited by people struggling to get by.
The congregation at St. Luke’s prepares lunch every Sunday for anyone who stops by. The members also provide free lunches during the summer for children who normally only get decent meals in school when classes are in session[/blockquote]
If this news piece is accurate, the PB doesn’t have a clue about faith. She is treating it as something to be obtained by performing good works. It most assuredly is not. What she is describing is the response to faith – obedience to God. What she has no idea about is that faith is a gift of grace, given to us by the Holy Spirit, sometimes even through a whiz-bang encounter.
Everything I read about this woman’s beliefs indicate she is a heretic with regard to the historic, orthodox Christian faith. She should be a member of the Unitarian clergy.
No, #11, she has chosen faulty imagery and placed it in language that suggests that she is unable to hear what her words sound like. No, the growth of faith is NOT like a geological process, which is mechanical; it is a LIVING process, not the result of compression but the result of assimilation and reintegration of thought and feeling. There is nothing geological about it in any way. The image of dead organisms is exactly and precisely wrong.
Nor is it the result of “life challenges,” a mealy mouthed phrase if ever there was one as a substitute for suffering and misery. There are plenty of Americans right this very second who have lost their houses and livelihoods and who have no more faith in God’s love for them than they had when they were rolling in money. Indeed, the evidence we have all seen is that their faith is less, not more. Faith arises when some people realize that God is indeed THERE and that he is, contrary to Aristotle, worthy of worship. To believe this straightforward proposition as a simple fact, this is faith. From this to the Great Commandment is a logical step that the thinking mind cannot avoid. Larry
Her point seemed to me to be that not everyone has a definable conversion experience (a whiz-bang moment) and that for some people faith comes with time and is built in layers. As someone who was recently challenged by an evangelical to state the exact date and time of my conversion, I can appreciate this. Sure it is a living process and not a dead one, and in that sense the allusion is off base. Perhaps a better (though still imperfect) analogy would have been tree rings, building living tissue upon living tissue, growing stronger in faith with time, showing the scars of our lives as well as our spurts of growth. But, she was speaking to a West Virginia coal community and tried to pull together something that would be apposite to their community. I guess what I am saying is that I can appreciate her comments on that level. Sure she has unitarian and universalist theological perspectives, I didn’t need this article to convince me of that.
I think you’re quite right, #14, her analogy or allusion is precisely wrong. Having a PhD in geological sciences gives me a small measure of confidence to recognize a discontinuity exists between 1) the attributes of accumulations of dead organisms and 2) communities of people alive in the Lord. It doesn’t require an advanced degree to do so, however. We might say that she has ‘consciousness’ confused with ‘conscience’.
Pope Benedict XVI, in contrast, has said over and over for decades that Christianity is foremost an event, rather than a system, and far from being a state of existence developed in ‘layers’ over time as coal is, being a Christian is to be in relationships (with other living beings, is implicit). Furthermore, his faith developed in adversities (‘life challenges’) through WWII: “…. it was liberating and essential for us to know that the “we” of the Church does not rest on a cancellation of conscience, but that, exactly the opposite, it can only develop from conscience. Precisely because Newman interpreted the existence of the human being from conscience, that is, from the relationship between God and the soul, was it clear that this personalism is not individualism, and that being bound by conscience does not mean being free to make random choices; the exact opposite is the case.” (my bold)
In trying perhaps to meet these people where she thinks they ‘find themselves’ (on top of lots of coal seams), she neglects to preach and teach the Living Word which would connect with the centers of their being. Once again, she seems to me the perfect poster child for why it may be useless to ordain women……
‘Top Bishop’ is of course headline-speak. But it would be useful if the present incumbent didn’t think this was so. It goes to show how far we have fallen away from our Presiding Bishop model.
My father was the Rector of Christ Church, Fairmont, and my brother is the rector of St Matthews, Wheeling. It is probably irrelevant, but there is no coal production, nor has there been, in the eastern panhandle (Shepherdstown) which is now a suburb of DC, nor in the western panhandle (Wheeling) where steel and glass were the industries that once made the region thrive. So maybe the illustrations worked in some loose way — however inapt they may be of themselves.
Most of my early religious instruction was given by two Priests at an all boys RC High School: Father Chapman and Father Doyle.. The nuns in Primary school laid down the basics.
When I did not understand some of the mysteries of the Faith I was told to offer it up. We had the mystery of Faith, the mystery of Transubstantiation and the Mystery of Christ etc. We were taught that the supernatural truths revealed by Jesus and taught by the church were so profound that humans could never fully understand them and we should put aside our reason and accept the revelation with prayer and thanksgiving. We were taught that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Blessed Trinity, was here to guide us; the most sublime mystery.
I still do not understand the Mystery of Faith. How satisfying it must be to have the certainty of knowledge that one feels free to ridicule and condemn Presiding Bishop Schori when she attempts to describe the un-describable and explain the un-explainable.
#18. It is indeed a sad fact and a bit of a tragic spectacle that such harsh language is thrown around in general — on both sides of the issue. People used to be hard on Griswold, as well, for all sorts of reasons. But the intensity at present is of a different order. There is one explanation for this: the millions of dollars spent on litigation, the misuse of canons to get an end, the manipulation of committees and the ongoing western domination of communion-wide affairs. This has raised the level of mistrust to extraordinary levels. Griswold respected the dioceses and allowed CFL, Dallas, and VA to do what was necessary in their own affairs. That came to a stop with this PB. When you understand that dimension, you will begin to understand the response. It is also not the case that the PB defers to mystery — very much the opposite. You make that point yourself. If the PB spoke of sublime and sacramental mysteries too great for science to comprehend, we would have a different person speaking altogether.
#19. An interesting rewrite of history. Not one of those Diocese were forced to leave TEC. They chose to leave and take property with them. The PB has an ethical and fiduciary responsibility to recover those properties for future Episcopalians.
The church I attend split. We were misled by our Rector. The vestry followed The Chapman agenda. They hid their true motives. They diverted monies, they spent money to secretly incorporate the church outside TEC and they denied the Bishop of Atlanta access to the property. They wrote the ballot, selected who could vote and they counted the ballot. Surprise they won.
From my observation the CANA majority lied, illegally diverted funds and acted in an unethical manner. I do not know what happened in Texas, Va or California but in our parish in Georgia I saw who was responsible for all the turmoil.
The ‘national church’ does not ‘own’ dioceses and their properties. It is highly questionable if the PB actually has the ‘standing’ to enter into litigation on behalf of TEC. So, you are quite correct — dioceses were not forced to leave. They simply defended their autonomy as historically de facto. If you read the case in Texas closely, you will see that this is exactly what the judge is saying. The case is not final and much more will transpire. But the entire logic of the case thus far is: the ‘national church’ has no ‘rule book’ (Judge Chupp) to be produced which gives it the authority it is claiming. This is no ‘rewrite of history’ but a simple digest of what has been held. We see a similar logic in the cases in SC. You might want to use an adjective like ‘arguable’ when you state that the PB has a fiduciary responsibility — where in the C/C is this spelled out, in the way that someone like Judge Chupp can read it and so interpret it, which, familiar with such language in other contexts, he has not. Griswold’s instinct was to say, ‘It is not my jurisdiction’ — hence the settlements in Dallas with Christ Church Plano and in CFL with the parishes +Howe negotiated with.
You missed my point swac. The PB’s analogy was fundamentally unsound, fundamentally faulty. She has mischaracterised faith, pure and simple. She is what we used to call “wrong.” Larry
21 and 22. We are flogging a dead horse. You believe that judges can make decisions about a hierarchically composed church. I believe they have no standing.
I do get your point Larry. I have read several sermons and speeches the PB has given. I find no fundamental faults. I do see where she has been misquoted and misinterpreted. On the one occasion when I met her I found her to be thoughtful, polite and spiritually sound.
I wish I could say that about a CANA Bishop
Thanks swac–when the courts of the land are impotent before churches, we will find ourselves in the Middle Ages…well, maybe.
‘Standing’ is a term from jurisprudence. You cannot declare judges without standing, except in blogland.
24. I did not presume to make judges impotent. I left that to the 1st Amendment- “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof……
But I could be wrong, I am not a lawyer; just a US citizen and christian.
Swac: so the Episcopal church is a ‘hierarchically composed’ church? So Schori is your Pope?
When you launch an expensive lawsuit against a congregation like Good Shepherd, Binghamton, then sell the building to a non-Christian organization for a third of the price that congregation had offered you, with the caveat that they never sell it back to that congregation, that is not exercising a fiduciary duty, that is spite – pure, unadulterated, unchristian spite. And at a third of the price it is even a violation of fiduciary duty!
[i] Comment off topic. [/i]