[Katharine] Jefferts Schori seems to delight in drawing such unexpected connections between her scientific background and her religious duties. She compares Episcopal bishops to humpback whales because they gather for a few days each year, learn to sing a new song together, then head home to teach the song to others. She says \u201cgravity\u201d\u009d is an apt translation of \u201ckabod,\u201d\u009d the Hebrew word for God\u2019s glory, because it suggests something pervasive, substantial, and inescapable. And while God shouted down Job\u2019s doubts by pointing to His awesomely fashioned hippopotamus, Jefferts Schori urges Episcopalians to consider the anableps (left). These four-eyed fish can see above and below water simultaneously\u201d\u201da good example for Christians conflicted about whether to salvage this world or just wait for the next one. The point of such examples, Jefferts Schori says, is to encourage the church to see itself with new eyes, stop bickering about finer points of doctrine, and get about the business of healing the sick, clothing the naked, and relieving the impoverished.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, religion and science speak the same language, and impart the same lesson, she says. Each teaches that the world is made of connections and that actions in one place have consequences, often unforeseen, in other places and times. And nowhere are the effects of our deeds as grave as in how we care for the environment, a dear subject for the nature-loving presiding bishop who once trolled the seas. Numerous times, she has passionately urged believers, politicians, and all people of good will to make care of God\u2019s creation their topmost priority. As she explained in testimony before the U.S. Senate in 2007, \u201cAs a priest, trained as a scientist, I take as a sacred obligation the faith community\u2019s responsibility to stand on the side of truth\u201d\u201dthe truth of science as well as the truth of God\u2019s unquenchable love for the world and all its inhabitants.\u201d\u009d In the beginning, Katharine saw the world, and saw that it was good; in the end, she is trying to save it.<\/p>\n