Here is the NPR blurb:
The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first female bishop to preside over the Episcopal Church, has faced a number of crises since she accepted the post in 2006.
At least one diocese has seceded in response to the ordination of the Right Rev. Gene Robinson ”” the denomination’s first openly gay bishop ”” and more congregations may follow.
The events reflect a growing schism within the broader Anglican Communion, and the numerous social and theological pressures on Episcopal congregations.
The segment is just over 40 minutes, listen to it all.
She has at least one factual error, in dating the first ordination of a woman to 1942. It was in 1944, as Wikipedia makes clear: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Tim-Oi
She was accurate about 1989 as the first woman bishop, however.
I am glad Kendall posted this because it has been getting a fair bit of attention. My blog – where I have posted a brief criticism of the interview – suddenly got an increase in traffic because of Google searches for this interview.
Frankly it made me angry. Primarily with the interviewer for giving the PB such a free ride. For the clip in which she uses a quote from Gene Robinson of all people to argue (if politely) with +Duncan over homosexuality. (Thanks, Terry – glad to know where you stand. Poor Bishop Duncan just doesn’t understand these things does he?) For asking the PB “why do you think these people want to leave?” rather than asking… uh… these people why they want to leave the Episcopal Church. And for not challenging the gross misrepresentations in how the PB answers that and other questions. (“They say we do not believe Jesus is the Son of God”. Har har har. No really why [i]do[/i] they have problems with the leadership/direction of TEC?)
And of course angry with the Presiding Bishop for 40 minutes of nauseating drivel. (Which is not completely fair. She presents herself and her side well I think and remains remarkably calm even when pushed although not by Terry Gross. And some of what she says I agree with. I am [i]moderately[/i] conservative and “healing of creation” plays a big role in my own theology as well.) Such as “if they leave we cannot have conversation” (the purpose of which is…?) Such as “there are people dying of starvation and poverty and so on – and yet why are we making homosexuality the most important issue?” (Gimme a break. Conservatives care about those things too thank you very much. And who really is elevating same-sex relations to the top of the pile?) And then there is the whole “tradition must speak to current concerns” stuff which is true in a way but applied dreadfully by liberals.
Not Terry Gross’ finest 40 minutes.
I can’t expect any theological intelligence from either woman in the interview, certainly not an intelligent question about it on NPR or Terry Gross in particular. No surprises. However, does Katherine ever, EVER get a more sharp edged question from concerned ECUSA-ites? All one hears is “The questions were polite and civil”, and she responded in the Xanax tones with the Opium of the day. If you toss her a marshmallow you will receive one back. How about someone asking how if she thinks Jesus is both God and man she can be in communion with those who (names like Spong occur to me) utterly deny it? No waffling about diversity, what does it *mean* to say you’re Anglican as opposed to not being? Get some teeth. If you let her do this she will. There are about six more years of her drivel aren’t there? Then she goes into well paid Spong mode, still yammering away in retirement.
“Fresh Air”
Fresh air from KJS? I dunno. But air, certainly, and lot’s of it.
Everything coming from the mouth of KJS is Obfuscatory Episcobabble.
“I can’t expect . . . an intelligent question about [theology] on NPR”
—NWLayman [#3]
What do you object to in NPR’s religion reporter, Barbara Bradley Hagerty?
[i] Please discuss the content of the interview rather than make judgments about the individual. [/i]
I listened to the “interview”. Basicaly NPR simply provided the PB with a forum to safely talk about her agenda. NPR has been equally accomodating to Spong. Quite franky the “interview” revealed more about the bias of NPR and Gross.
Round 1 in the leaning media goes to Schori. But, what will be the excuse when she loses a 2nd diocese? A third? A fourth? A fifth?
After awhile even the most dense of Joes and Janes listening to the PB will wonder what’s wrong with HER that her Church has fallen to bits.
TEC lost 4,500 ASA worshipers over the weekend.
Keep adding.
Fresh methane.
Oh, the rise in the South Pacific sea level!!!
She’s already lost two dioceses, and more lining up to follow.
Whilst you could probably write a PhD thesis on the Christology of Rowan Williams, Ms Schori’s utterances are mostly so opaque, contradictory and confused it is difficult to know what she does believe (apart from ‘inclusiveness’, provided you don’t oppose her).
So I should listen to this, why????
Anything from NPR’s Fresh Aire with Mrs. Schori will unavoidably yield only predictably vacuous questions replied to by a source of predictably useless answers.
I have better things to do with my time.
When she says TEC is orthodox, she is referring to the liturgy. Theology is a different matter. This way she can affirm differing positions and be correct on both.
After the first four dioceses leave, who will be next, one wonders? It would be less than honest of her to say that there will be no more diocesan defections to other provinces. I’m afraid that she is in for a rude awakening.
[blockquote]The Presiding Bishop Interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air[/blockquote]
Hmmmm……That doesn’t smell like fresh air. Smells more like another bovine emission.
the snarksterâ„¢
When I heard that Terri Gross would be interviewing Mrs. Schori, I knew four things:
a. Ms. Gross would frame the issue as homophobia.
b. Ms. Gross would do no real research on the issue in The Episcopal Church, but would lob one marshmellow after another to the PB because Ms. Gross wants to believe that she and Mrs. Schori are on the “right” side of the gay issue. (Ms. Gross, after all, has featured interviews with the authors and producers of gay travel books and other gay media productions.) Ms. Gross would not – will not – engage Mrs. Schori on any issue of substance, and would certainly not use Mrs. Schori’s own words (except those she agrees with) to challenge or even question Mrs. Schori’s words or behavior.
c. 40 minutes of airtime would be wasted on a superficial and deceptive advertisement for Mrs. Schori and her allies in the Episcopal House of Bishops.
d. The entire interview would provide another instance of why Ms. Gross is perhaps the most overrated and biased interviewer on PBS – remarkable given the number of overrated and biased interviewers on PBS. Unable to suppress my gag reflex after 25 minutes, I had to change the station.
I don’t think anyone could accuse KJS of being an Augustinian. Perhaps she’s Pelagian. I never get a sense from KJS that she’s come to grips with the injustice and outrageousness of sickness, suffering and death and our powerlessness. As an ordained minister in her church the one thing she is commissioned to do is proclaim the good news, but I just don’t hear it from her.
Last week, four parishes joined the Diocese of Pittsburgh/Southern Cone and two parishes joined the Anglican Network in Canada.
To get an idea of the effects of the social/political/liberal agenda on TEC and the number of parishes that have left over issues of theology *AND* practice over the last several decades (long before VGR) check out Shelter in the Storm: http://www.shelterinthestorm.org/
But, keep in mind that almost as many people have left for other denominations (Catholic, Orthodox, LCMS, PCA, Baptist) as to other Anglican organizations.
People want The Real Church of The Real Lord Jesus Christ, Author, Finisher, Creator, Deliverer, Redeemer.
People want to hear, learn The Real Word of God, the saving, redeeming, transforming Word Truth, Love and Life.
People want the real true eternal unchanging Faith that gives people hope, peace and joy in the midst of the trials, sorrows, pain of this life.
Hopper said, “How sad that some have a desperate NEED to have everything defined … with little to no uncertainty … where everything is nice and neat and in its place.”
The “progressives” have their certainties, such as we can’t be certain of the historic assertions of the Christian faith, and also that we MUST get on board with the MDG’s or we are failing in our mission.
You have some certainties at the core of your belief system. They may not be the same ones that have sustained the Christian Church for millenia, but you have them nevertheless. And you would become quite unsettled if many of those around you began to question them.
Don’t talk down to we conservatives as though we were poor, darkened minds with no psychological insight into ourselves, and an ignorance of theology and Church history.
Hopper,
The difference is that KJS & Co. have repeatedly “said” that there is a place in TEc for all people, regardless of beliefs, and then turn aorund and by their actions prove they are lying.
The conservatives/reasserters make no pretense about saying that the only legitimate belief in a CHRISTIAN Church is orthodox, historic CHRISTIANITY. No lying, no pretense, no hypocrasy. Just a plain statement of the facts.
In this matter, no matter how ‘calmly’ KJS presents her “Obfuscatory Episcobabble” (as Cennydd put it so well), it still rings hollow and is simply a presentation of half- and non-truth.
In His Peace
Jim E. <><
Hopper, my sense of KJS is that she suffers little uncertainty. She’s enrolled as God’s co-worker in healing creation and she’s a little impatient that God’s taking so long.
Hopper (#14)
We don’t need everything defined. I just wish we would stop “undefining” things that have already been defined.
Here is “The Reappraiser Shuffle”
1. Pick a topic that has been decided that you personally disagree with.
2. Frame your disagreement as a “Justice” issue.
3. Get some friends to disagree with you.
4. Now that you have > 1 person disagreeing with the decision, say that, since there is disagreement on the decision, we should be free to act on our new understanding.
5. Act on the understanding. Dare the authorities do do anything about it.
6. Get your new understanding approved by resolution and/or then canon in General Convention. Be sure to use easily reinterpreted language to give “moderates” cover so that what you intend as perscriptive can be sold as descriptive.
7. Start to talk up the perscriptive interpretation.
8. Get your decision enshrined as canon law. Leave an opening “for conscience sake” in some resolution or as an agreement within the House of Bishops.
9. Begin to talk about how unelightened those who hold the “old” decision are.
10. Persecute them until they leave the church.
11. If they won’t leave of their own accord, begin to depose them for not accepting the teachings of the Church (e.g. your new understanding). Couch the depositions in terms of abandoning the communion of the Church
12. Find another topic
13. Go to step 1.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
[blockquote]As for Episcopal Church theology not being orthodox … well … no, of course isn’t from a fundamentalist point of view … a point of view that presumes to possess God’s judgment.[/blockquote]
What does it say that after five years TEC apologists have yet to be able to offer a [url=http://www.willgwitt.org/General_Convention.htm]theological articulation of their position[/url] that goes beyond name-calling? As has been pointed out repeatedly, in the current debate, a “fundamentalist” is simply anyone who believes more of historic Christianity than does the person who applies the label.
#21. Its a great process until ASA = the HoB.
Tactically, it was the perfect choice of interviewer; Ms. Gross is to the left of TEC on the gay stuff, hard as that is to believe.
She is also so profoundly ignorant of Christianity that you can slide ANYTHING past her: she asked if the conservatives were objecting to the notion that Jesus was human, rather than solely divine.
I don’t understand why Terry Gross would interview some leader as unimpressive as the PB. Seriously, TEC is a joke when compared to other denominations. The PB is head of, at best, 2 million Christians in a country of over 300 million. Why wouldn’t Gross interview some one whom the majority of American Christians actually respect? TEC is dying and the MSM would be wise to understand that and actually focus on some denominations that believe something of consequence.
#21
Brilliant!
Sometimes imprecise, but great for a bishop. Given that her audicen is predominantly non-Christians, she made a good impression.
I have had reservations about Dioceses leaving the Episcopal Church. [b] After hearing this interview w/ the PB, I have to say Pittsburgh absolutely has done the right thing. [/b] This is an earnest change of mind. The more I hear the PB speak, the less hope I have for reconciliation w/ in TEC.
#21 Should be required reading.
#28 – interesting and clever. I am left scratching my head at the realization that reappraisers are fundamentalists.
Schori is difficult to deal with because of her confidence in the complete justice of her beliefs. Evidence to the contrary leaves her unmoved, unshaken. We are baffled (or furious) at the contradictions that are perfectly obvious. But Schori is a relatively new American creature, the fundamentalist liberal. She is a fundmentalist in the sense that she is a True Believer, a literalist. she has read the text of American liberal values and has taken them in their entirety as new scripture. I must emphasize NEW scripture, for much of the liberal text is emotional, a-logical, ill-formed, often contradictory, oral, a feeding together of many streams of belief into what may become a single river of belief, in short, a scripture. She is a liberal in the sense that the central tenet of her belief is permissiveness – that which she calls inclusivity – and its antecedent, enforced discontinuity with the past.
You may argue, with perfect reason, that in creating a new scripture, she is creating a new past for which she is demanding continuity. This is certainly true. Fundamentalists must hold a rigid articulation with the past as they understand it. But for the liberal True Believer, the created past is the Right One, and because it is so, it is not past at all. Now this attitude is characteristically conservative; surely both postures cannot be held. But for humans this is not not necessarily a contradiction. The liberal fundamentalist knows something essential the conservative does not: He is simply right. The content of the True Beliefs distinguish the liberal scripture from the conservative, and this distinction is definitive and incontrovertible. That this is illogical is not germane to the problem at hand. No one requires of scripture that it be logical, only that it be True.
We and better be prepared too deal with this, because this attitude now shapes much of American culture. Liberalism, not as an agenda or a philosophy, but as a scripture whose tenets define a new salvation and a new earth, is with us everywhere. Permissiveness is at war with self-restraint and self-discipline, and from this we may see the Schori Scripture grow: Disciplined self-indulgence, regulated narcissism and the reign of the Liberal Fundamentalist’s rule of law: Everything is included save that which is explicitly excluded. Larry
Hooper (#28)
When I was beginning the process for ordination, I was intereviewed by a Seminary Professor and asked: “Are you a fundamentalist?”
Having been “warned” about this particular professor by my father (who was a student of his 20 years earlier), I knew I was being led into a “trap” (not maliciously, but logically. I was being asked an emotional question to guage my response.)
I answered: “What do you mean by ‘fundamentlist?'” (I wanted him to define his terms.
He responded: “I’m asking the questions.” (I’m not going to help you by letting you know what I want)
So I got to define my own terms. I replied: “If by ‘fundamentalist’, you mean someone who believes every word of Scripture is literally true such that God created the world in 6 24 hour periods known as ‘days,’ then, No, I am not a fundamentalist. However, if by ‘fundamentlist’ you mean someone who believes the fundamentals of the faith as stated in the Creeds and the Book of Common Prayer, then yes. I am a ‘fundamentalist.'”
While there is a technical definition (denotation) of the term (and it is about a century old), there is the connotation (operational definition) that a fundamentlist is someone who takes scripture to be more historically accurate than you do.
YBIC,
Phil Snyder
Somewhere is all this discussion is lost the fact that despite the differences of opinions, TEC almost stands alone among all of the world’s Christians. We are not talking about a minority within TEC.