(TEC Office of Public Affairs)
I look forward to greeting many old friends at the Primates Meeting in Dublin, and I look forward to meeting those who have been elected in the past two years. I am deeply grateful that we may begin to focus on issues that are highly significant in local contexts as well as across the breadth of the Anglican Communion. Certainly issues of serving our brothers and sisters, offering good news for body, mind, and spirit, are the central ones in our province. The Episcopal Church is urgently focused on rebuilding in Haiti, seeking increased ways to bring good news to the poor in indigenous communities, inner cities, and expanding and depopulating rural areas in all the nations in our province. Across the globe, in partnership with Anglicans and others, we seek to serve the least of these, bringing light in the midst of darkness, peace in the midst of war and violence, and hope in the face of devastating natural disasters and the growing reality of climate change. We own our domestic responsibility to change our habits and ways of life that contribute to environmental damage and destruction. In all we do, we seek to recognize the face of God wherever we turn, realizing that the body of God’s creation will only be healed when all members of the body of Christ are working together.
–(The Most Rev.) Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate The Episcopal Church
While some of her statement is good and to be expected, alas, no hint about the Great Commission in her message–why am I not surprised.
Of course, unless one counts “offering good news for body, mind, and spirit, are the central ones in our province”. IMHO, it should be “delivering ‘the Good News’….”
Really bizarre, and expected.
Of course, the implication at the end is that those schismatic Anglicans are preventing the healing of “the body of God’s creation” (read “Gaia”) by staying away from the gathering. Really?
Darin+
RE: “I look forward to greeting many old friends at the Primates Meeting in Dublin . . . ”
Oh, not 15 “old friends,” PB Jefferts Schori . . . what a pity. A whole lot of “scheduling” and “local Provincial matters” are preventing an “old friends” reunion with a number of them.
Heh.
[blockquote]We own our domestic responsibility to change our habits and ways of life that contribute to environmental damage and destruction. In all we do, we seek to recognize the face of God wherever we turn, realizing that the body of God’s creation will only be healed when all members of the body of Christ are working together.[/blockquote] Planet Earth has now become the “body of God”. What does it mean for creation to be “healed”. This is rather anthropomorphic unless she considers earth to be a living thing. Just what constitutes healing? What now constitutes the body of Christ in her mind?
Oh I’m sure you do, Dr. Shori, meeting and greeting friends you can lead down the path of destruction. No doubt. Please, though, come to your senses and remember it’s the Episcopal Church that you lead and not some international aid agency. Fix your heretical self and fall before God before you start telling anyone else how to live their life and trying to force “improvement” on the world.
Sorry about that, but one can only take so much.
Paul writes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
PB Schori is attempting to show what Paul’s words mean in today’s troubled world. Is that a crime or even a sin? She is speaking as a Christian leader on how to feed the poor and be a good shepherd.
I see very little love in most of the previous comments.
Interesting last line. God’s creation won’t be healed until Christ returns. Of course that is not the healing the Presiding Bishop speaks of.
RE: “PB Schori is attempting to show what Paul’s words mean in today’s troubled world.”
Yeh — pretty badly. But hey — it’s good for revisionists, I’m sure.
RE: “She is speaking as a Christian leader on how to feed the poor and be a good shepherd.”
Yep — she purports to be a Christian leader.
Note: “in all the nations in our province”
Meaning, of course, “We have our own mini Anglican Communion, so if you all go away, we will still be international”
It’s slightly amusing to see the PB relentlessly affirm the “international” nature of the Episcopal Church. Other then Haiti and Honduras, the non-US parts of TEC are all small (some tiny – the membership in Micronesia is 138 and in Taiwan 680) and all are dwarfed by the US church.
In truth, many Provinces cross international boundaries, most in a way, unlike TEC, in which one country does not completely dominate – West Indies, Central Africa, Jerusalem and the Middle East, Ireland, Southern Cone, Melanesia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the Church of England itself.
See: http://www.anglicancommunioninstitute.com/2010/06/the-16-countries-of-tec
I believe that President Obama also promised to heal the planet. She is talking about the environment and carbon emissions, etc.
Not really swac, because, as Paul said, how do we know love? Until her message includes the Gospel of Christ crucified, her statement really offers no faith, no hope, and no love. None of the true healing can be experienced apart from Him. Alas, she knows the source of life giving water and would prefer, instead, to offer a nuanced statement that leaves people wandering in the desert wilderness.
Why do you require PB Schori to repeat what she has previously repeated several times. She has stated that for us Christians, Jesus, His death and resurrection are the way. When asked what about all the others she states she cannot speak for God.
Do you know what God will decide?
Well we can let Jesus speak for Himself can’t we? “I am the way, the truth and the life no one comes to the Father except through me”.
#7. swac,
[blockquote]Paul writes, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.â€PB Schori is attempting to show what Paul’s words mean in today’s troubled world.[/blockquote]
We’re not feeling her love here in the DSJ.
This takes me back to my High School religious instruction about Limbo. Even RC’s don’t talk about Limbo now but then we discussed what happens to good people who die unbaptized. My Catholic Encyclopedia states this-
“The Church has made no pronouncement concerning limbo, and persons should know that the divine love has made provision for such children beyond our comprehension.”
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 13 And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
“She has stated that for us Christians, Jesus, His death and resurrection are the way..”
Yes she has and that is a great part of the problem orthodox Christians of all stripes have with her.
As Christians, we are all required to form a “correct conscience.”
i would like to known as a correct Christian not an orthodox one
Orthodox means correct. Literally “right belief”.
[blockquote]Why do you require PB Schori to repeat what she has previously repeated several times[?][/blockquote]
Well, at least in part because she gets it wrong. More precisely as I recall she said that Christ was “a vehicle to the Divine.” I count at least 4 errors in those 5 words. SWAC, no doubt there is some truth in what you say but in my interpretation the Presiding Bishop clearly ennunciates salvation by works alone.
Note that she is blissfully unaware of any contribution of the EcUSA to any problem in the Anglican Communion. But, in truth, I think it a front, because she is really pretend queen to the AC in ths same mode as Jadis to Narnia save that the temptation is money not Turkish Delight.
“swac” – I appreciate your stepping into an obviously difficult environment in order to defend someone who, for various reasons, is not particularly popular in this space. Personally, I think Mrs. Schori is a nice enough person (yes, I know that others will strongly disagree – and many for good reason) with no doubt considerable expertise in her original profession (though frankly, I have no way of knowing one way or other). But she has thus far proven an exceptionally poor leader who fails repeatedly to follow her organization’s rules (and justifies her noncompliance with sophistry unworthy of a 10-year old), claims for herself powers enumerated nowhere in the governing documents of the organization she heads, and has cost said organization millions of dollars and considerable ill will to no good purpose.
Theologically, she appears to understand only what they taught her at CDSP, which is basically nothing. Her pronouncements are consistently vapid (as witness the careless phraseology Paula Loughlin highlights in #18 above) and her understanding of the unsearchable riches of the Gospel appear to begin, continue and end with exhortations to good citizenship and nothing else.
By way of contrast, Archbishop Williams, for instance, is a very careful, well-trained, if not unproblematic theologian. He consistently demonstrates a deep understanding of the Christian faith and is capable of expressing it in nuanced albeit felicitous terms. One has to work pretty hard to identify where his muse is problematic – even when he is arguing for something as obviously theologically indefensible as same-sex imitations of marriage. Mrs. Schori, on the other hand is not only a comparative lightweight (‘twould be no sin after all), but consistently fails to express even basic Christian themes with any particular competence. There is absolutely no reason to praise what she says about anything if one doesn’t agree with her politics – even her most bland pronouncements (and it is to her credit that they have been getting more so the longer she remains in office) are at best poorly worded and uninteresting to those who aren’t already convinced that it is every Christian’s duty to vote Democrat.
As to her claimed inability to speak for God, the matter has been settled for quite some time. Rather than engage what the Church Catholic has been saying, she acts as if she’s never heard of it. I can’t help but suspect that she in fact hasn’t. It’s the most charitable explanation I can think of for her painfully clumsy response to the question. Such ignorance in the pew is no real problem. The same level of ignorance in one who heads the House of Bishops is, alas, another matter.
oh, please don’t mistake my criticism of her use of public statements, our own PR arm and the bully pulpit as thinking she is a bad person. She seems nice enough if unsure about some foundational matters in the church. Her statement, as chief pastor of a province at a meeting of other chief pastors, was simply a waste of words. Our message to the world is that we have something/someone to offer radically different than what the world needs. Own it. What she said could have been aid by any generic non-profit and the world would have yawned. While her statement that our working together to heal creation might raise some theological and eschatological eyebrows, I am willing to wait and see if she considered her words and would like to explain them better. And frankly, whether she believes what she says or not is immaterial. Lucky for all of us, the One who hung on the cross gets to decide for whom He died and who will rise with Him in the new creation He is ushering in. That is the true love about which Paul was always speaking and writing!
[blockquote] begin to focus on issues that are highly significant in local contexts as well as across the breadth of the Anglican Communion. [/blockquote]
All those other things were never very important…to her.
Not a correct conscience but a rightly formed one.
[blockquote]Do you know what God will decide?[/blockquote]
No, I don’t know what God will decide, but that misses the point doesn’t it? We cannot confuse God’s judgement with our [i]obligation[/i] to confront and correct error.
swac, the plain mistake is not in the good works, but in the appearance that the work is the thing. I’m sure that Paul also agreed with Jesus’s statement (from St. Mark) that the first commandment is: “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.” Jesus went on to tell us, as I think we (I include myself) often need to be reminded: “And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.” A Christian’s good works follows and flows from our worship of the Father and through the forgiveness of the Son, not because it’s “nice.” As others have pointed out, it’s a bit disingenuous for the leader of a church to blow off that theology and not present it as a witness to the Gospel.
Which is why I felt compelled to write my original post. If Dr. Schori claimed to be of some other belief I’d have no dog in the fight, for helping others is a good thing. But as Sarah noted, she is acclaimed as the leader of a Christian church. Not a few of us Christians, leaders or otherwise, think she’s got things very wrong. Yet, Dr. Schori continues to ignore the criticism as if the church catholic isn’t up to her level of thinking. As a point of example, she’s attending the latest meeting of Anglican Primates who in previous meetings have called for her to explain her questionable interpretation of scripture and to seek consensus before carrying on, to which she replies “what problems are you talking about?” and issues bland statements such as this. It’s apparent from this press release that she looks forward to not have to address their concerns, which are the concerns of the whole church, the church catholic, which is dragged into this chaos by association as “Christians.” I have little doubt that she knows this and is good with it. Me, not so much. She needs to answer up or call herself something other than Christian.
[blockquote]Do you know what God will decide[/blockquote]
What we do know is before whom the entirety of humanity will be judged (to use Jesus’ terminology), namely the Son of Man.
Desperate drivel to make herself sound like she is “somebody”. As others have pointed out, what’s Christian about it? It could be a statement issued by UNICEF.
“We own our domestic responsibility to change our habits and ways of life that contribute to environmental damage and destruction”.
What about “theological damage and destruction”? I guess that’s beside the point…
Eeew.
How do we know what God will do? Well, while God is sovereign, we get some pretty good clues in Scripture. Jesus entire ministry is filled with an unmistakable urgency concerning judgment and the need to turn from sin and embrace the Kingdom of God. Jesus is quite clear: judgment is real, it is coming and not all will be saved.
Now we may not know in specific cases, but the fact that some persist in error can give us a pretty good clue. By way of example look at the house of Eli in 1 Samuel. God keeps his promises even as to judgment.