The murders, beatings and state-sanctioned violence suffered by Anglicans in Harare under the Mugabe regime are akin to the discomforts faced by Episcopalians loyal to the national Church who reside in dioceses that have departed for the Anglican Church in North America.
This summary of the situation in Harare from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori came in an August 2 report released by the Episcopal News Service (ENS) summarizing her trip to Central Africa. Her remarks are similar to claims made at the Jamaica meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in 2009. However, in Kingston delegates from the Global South rejected the Presiding Bishop’s attempt to cloak the Episcopal Church with the victim’s mantle, arguing in the United States it was the Episcopal Church who was the aggressor in its legal battles….
As my grandmother would have said, “She’s really a piece of work.”
Oh! the poor abused Episcopal Christians in America. The West is using its immense financial power to crush any poor country that won’t buckle under to the New Morality exemplified by Episcopal Presiding Bishop Schori, Bishop Robinson, etc.
Malawi in Africa is one of the poorest countries in the world and desperately needs help. That country also passed a law against sodomy. But the law was rescinded under pressure from the West that included cutting off aid to a basically starving nation unless it buckled under to the the dictates of an arrogant West which now uses starvation and poverty to advance the Gay Agenda internationally. (although this is kept quiet in the MSM–you have to read the internet to see what is going on behind the scenes.)
The first word that came to mind when I first heard this little rant was “pathetic”. After thinking about it awhile, I amend that to “pathetic on numerous levels”.
The article made me realize that this woman has serious psychological issues. How did I miss it for so long?
What an amazingly bizarre thing for her to say…the church will never grow spiritually or emotionally under this sort of adolescent girl jr high mentality.
#2 – I know you mean “main stream media” with MSM. However, that is the acronym for “men who have sex with men” in the medical and liberal worlds. You may want to use acronyms carefully – or maybe you don’t care. Just thought you’d want to know.
I think many of the comments are more focussed on what Mr. Conger said or implied than what the Presiding Bishop actually said. Zimbabwe is a horrid, violent place. The allusion KJS made was not to Mugabe, his thugs and his stooge Bishop, but to the hurt people feel when dispossessed from their places of worship. In Zimbabwe, this Mugabe crony takes charge of the church in Harare, declares his independence from bishops who are not cowering to the regime, and then evicts continuing Anglican worshipers. Information now is that his actions are spreading to other parts of the country. There is no parallel in this country and I’m certain Mrs. Schori would acknowledge that. The only link is that there are many Episcopalians who have lost, although probably temporarily, their places of worship when a new group was formed and those who left kept possession of the properties. As the PB said, there’s more to worship than the building, and a lot of us have been enriched spiritually by exile (a not uncommon occurrence). But we can relate to the dispossession perhaps better than many Westerners who have not had that experience. I think that is all that is meant.
Having said that, the situation is Zimbabwe is so dire that I doubt if the relatively comfortable exile of a relatively few dispossessed Americans while they wait to return to their church homes is of any real interest or comfort to people there who face physical violence, total economic collapse, and rampant governmental corruption. She could have foregone the allusion and thought a bit about the tendency of her detractors to exaggerate negatively her every utterance before she offered it up in this context. Some politicians get very good (or the people around them get quite skilled) at parsing every phrase before it is uttered to deal with exactly this type of phenomenon. Once the counter-story gets out, it will appeal to the people who want to believe it, and no one will really care what is said to provide context or explanation.
I wonder if this woman ever contemplates how sudden the transformation has been from a second-career priest to be a demonic boogie man for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people, many of whom have already left the church, but take continued satisfaction in magnifying her often all too pedestrian comments. I wonder if those who supported her elevation to this position thought about whether it was even fair to her to put her into such a spot at such a time. To some extent this kind of treatment would have been dished out to whomever occupied the spot. But I think a person of more depth and experience could have probably handled it much more effectively.
RE: “I wonder if this woman ever contemplates how sudden the transformation has been from a second-career priest to be a demonic boogie man for hundreds (perhaps thousands) of people . . . ”
Nah — just an incompetent stooge that offers a tremendous source of humor for us all.
RE: “. . . many of whom have already left the church . . . ”
Not I — and not most of my friends either. Still happy TEC members and still aware of what a silly and amusing little buffoon she is.
RE: ” . . . in magnifying her often all too pedestrian comments.”
No need to magnify of course — her comments — magnified by the breathless ENS et al — speak nicely with a trumpet about who and what she is — a tawdry little tinpot dictator.
Actually, Sarah, I was not thinking of you in my reference to “many of whom had already left the church.” Nonetheless your happiness in being a continuing Episcopalian is a source of happiness to many, including me. I do think “tawdry little tinpot dictator” is name-calling beneath our no doubt shared sense of personal dignity and not consistent with your otherwise happy state. My guess is that the Elves don’t take kindly to that around here, even if it is meant to be humourous.