Tag Archives: Katharine Jefferts Schori

Katharine Jefferts Schori to speak at Diocese of BC Cathedral

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Katharine Jefferts Schori spent much of her time as Presiding Bishop of TEC embroiled in lawsuits against ACNA parishes and dioceses who were trying to hang on to their buildings. I met her in 2010 at the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada and asked how a Christian denomination could justify launching so many lawsuits. Her response was that she had a “fiduciary responsibility towards TEC”. The implication that, in her view, it was her most important responsibility, was not lost on me.

Having so much experience in promoting harmony and good-will must have been what prompted the Bishop of BC, Logan McMenamie to invite Jefferts Schori to the Diocese to impart her timeless wisdom – distilled over many years of acrimonious litigation – about Truth and Reconciliation.

I’m not sure if Logan is paying her or not, but I can only assume she is not neglecting her fiduciary responsibility to herself.

From here:

Truth and reconciliation is a response to colonialism but for individuals it’s a chance to enlarge our viewpoints by hearing experiences of others, a pioneering clergywoman says.

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the U.S., the first woman to be elected a primate in the worldwide Anglican Church, said truth and reconciliation at its most basic, is about listening and respect.

“It’s really an anti-colonialism response,” said Jefferts Schori in a telephone interview from her home in Nevada.

“It encourages people to hear each other’s stories and perspectives and to respect their differences rather than imposing your own view.”

Jefferts Schori is speaking Thursday at the University of Victoria and will be at Christ Church Cathedral in Victoria for a forum on Sunday.

Jefferts Schori was American Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop from 2006 to 2015. She has served as Bishop of Nevada and is currently a visiting professor at Church Divinity of the Pacific.

She has degrees in biology and a PhD in oceanography, serves on the Earth and Life Studies board of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was a member the Council on Neighborhood and Faith-Based Partnerships when Barack Obama was president.

Bishop Logan McMenamie, of the Diocese of British Columbia, said Jefferts Schori has demonstrated incredible leadership in the church and community.

“It wasn’t easy for her with some of the other primates throughout the world,” McMenamie said.

“But she has always demonstrated amazing leadership, and stood tall during some very difficult times in the life of the [Anglican] communion.”

Jefferts Schori said: “A founding principle of Anglicanism is the Gospel, the faith, is supposed to grow and develop in unique ways in different contexts.

But Anglicans haven’t always thought so, she said. In particular, those working as colonial missionaries thought only their views and contexts were correct.

“But it’s core to what it means to be an Anglican today,” she said.

“[Faith] takes different shapes in different contexts.”

For example, she said the U.S. Anglican community has experienced a new creative experience listening to how the Christian Gospels have found new contexts in indigenous societies.

“You begin to develop a more creative community as a result,” Jefferts Schori said.

“There is an ability to see truth in different contexts and find a larger picture than any one individual can find on their own.”

A Green Easter in TEC

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In Katharine Jefferts Schori’s Easter missive, the message of Jesus’ Resurrection is like the seed scattered among the thorns: it is choked by weeds – green weeds.

In reading her Easter guide to spring planting, I remain uncertain as to whether or not the gardener is Jesus. I note the lack of a capital “G”. He himself is planted and then spring[s] up green, so my abiding suspicion is that this is nothing other than a roundabout way of encouraging churches to enhance their electrical plant by installing more rooftop solar panels.

Meaning does occasionally struggle defiantly to raise its head in this epistle, but it is ruthlessly suppressed by the keen mind of the Presiding Bishop.

You can read the whole panegyric to Easter shrubbery here:

She peers in once more – who are these, so bold appearing? “Fear not, woman… why do you weep?” She turns away and meets another, who says the same – why do you weep, who are you looking for? This gardener has himself been planted and now springs up green and vibrant, still rising into greater life. He challenges her to go and share that rising, great news of green and life, with those who have fled.

Still rising, still seeking union with Creator, making tender offering to beloved friends – briefly I am with you, I am on my way. Go and you will find me if you look.

The risen one still offers life to those who will look for evidence of his gardening – hope, friendship, healing, reunion, restoration – to all who have been uprooted, cut off, to those who are parched and withered, to those who lie wasting in the desert. Why do we weep or run away when that promise abides?

We can find that green one, still rising, if we will go stand with the grieving Marys of this world, if we will draw out the terrified who have retreated to their holes, if we will walk the Emmaus road with the lost and confused, if we will search out the hungry in the neighborhood called Galilee. We will find him already there before us, bringing new and verdant life. The only place we will not find him is in the tomb.

Katharine Jefferts Schori rationalises TEC’s declining membership

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From here:

The head of The Episcopal Church has stated that the declining numbers of her denomination could be the work of the Holy Spirit to create “greater fruitfulness.”

TEC Presiding Bishop the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori made this statement last Thursday in remarks delivered at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly in Pittsburgh. “Some have judged our smaller numbers as faithlessness but it may actually be the Spirit’s way of pruning for greater fruitfulness,” said Jefferts Schori.

“If we see ourselves standing at the foot of the cross, any such judgment will be far less important than our response.”

Between 2010 and 2011, ELCA membership went from about 4.2 million to just over 4 million, representing a loss of more than 212,000 members. During the same time period, The Episcopal Church had a decrease of over 28,000 members, causing the number of members in its domestic dioceses to dip below the 2 million mark.

Jefferts Schori is clearly confused about which part God is throwing out in all this pruning.

Pruning entails targeted removal of “diseased, damaged, dead, non-productive, structurally unsound, or otherwise unwanted tissue”, a fitting description of what’s left of TEC, the ACoC, the ECLA and the ELCIC. These liberal denominations are all in rapid decline; they appear to be hell-bent on holding their current course until they finally vanish in a puff of sulphur scented incense.

Those who have fled these institutions are committed Christians now attending growing, healthy, orthodox churches.

The last sin standing according to Katharine Jefferts-Schori

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The Episcopal Church doesn’t pay much attention to personal sin, but there is still at least one sin over which TEC laments, according to presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori. It seems that anyone who disagrees with the prevailing dogma that human activity is causing global warming is committing a sin:

 

 

For those interested in searching for vestiges of orthodox Christianity in the KJS interview, the whole thing is here. I didn’t have much success.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori displays Islam myopia

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On September 11th, Katharine Jefferts Schori preached the sermon at St. Paul’s Chapel in the shadow of Ground Zero. Among other things, she said this:

I saw a pickup truck a couple of weeks ago with a waving American flag painted on its rear window.  As I walked through the parking lot, I realized there was something written on the tailgate – the word ISLAM stood out first.  Finally I saw the whole sorry slogan, “everything I need to know about Islam I learned on September 11th.”  How will we change hearts that seem closed to learning more about peace?

Are we willing to recognize and then proclaim that as children of Abraham, Christians, Jews, and Muslims share that vision of a healed world that Micah paints for us?

That isn’t true – at least, it’s not true in the sense that Jefferts Shori means it. In the majority of Islamic nations there was rejoicing on September 11th, 2001 because America had finally got what was coming to it. The Islamic vision of a “healed world” is one of an Islamic caliphate ruled by sharia law where democracy, free speech and Jefferts Schori style “diversity” have been obliterated.

Here is a not untypical Islamic reaction to 9/11 from Saudi Arabia:

Then we all knew it wasn’t an accident. We heard sporadic yelling in the streets and happy shouts from Saudis in our own hospital. In the terminal cancer ward, patients were hooting and screaming “Down with USA,” much to the horror of the American nurses tending them.

Katharine Jefferts Schori given honorary doctorate by Huron University College

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From here (page 5)

Bishop Jefferts Schori was in London to receive an honorary doctorate of divinity degree. Her visit to the Diocese began in the afternoon of May 4, 2012 at St. Paul’s Cathedral where Bishop Dance introduced her to Huron clergy who gathered to hear her thoughts on current issues facing the church. Bishop Jefferts Schori is a dynamic speaker with an artistic gift for listening that truly values the individual as well as the group.

Schori’s gift for listening and valuing the individual as well as the group is doubtless what has prompted her to take so many American Anglicans to court for trying to hold fast to the received faith and having the presumption of thinking the buildings they paid for belong to them.

The granddaughter of a former Huron college professor and bishop is not happy about Schori’s doctorate:

As a granddaughter of Bishop W.T. Hallam, in whose honour the Bishop Hallam Theological Society was named, I am deeply disappointed by the recent decision of the college to confer an honorary doctorate upon Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori at its upcoming convocation. It is sad to see such a clear sign of the degree to which Huron College has departed from the historic faith of the Anglican church, as represented in the 39 Articles, and as exemplified in my grandfather’s ministry throughout his life, and particularly in his last days as Professor and Dean of Divinity at Huron College, and Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Huron. I am further saddened by the decision because I myself am a graduate of Huron College and enjoyed important years of my life there. As well, I am a lifelong Anglican, and continue to uphold the historic faith along with others in the midst of the current tide of theological confusion.

It is well known in our family that Grandad spent probably the happiest years of his life and ministry at Huron College and in the Diocese of Huron. It was because of this and also the remembrance of his name through the theological society that I had arranged with the college to donate papers of his now in my possession. I have now decided to entrust them to Wycliffe College, where the historic faith is still upheld, and the legacy of evangelical bishops in the Anglican church is likely to be of greater interest.

Although Wycliffe College is more theologically orthodox than the Diocese of Huron – after all, what isn’t? – it still has adopted a head-in-the-sand Neville Chamberlain attitude to the apostasy that is rife in the Anglican Church of Canada. Presumably because it is reluctant to bite the hand that feeds it.

Huron gives Schori a Doctor of Divinity

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From here:

The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from Huron University College, London, Ont., as part of its May 5 theology convocation. Archbishop Fred Hiltz, primate of the Anglican Church of Canada, delivered the citation, and the Right Rev. Robert Bennett, Bishop of Huron, hooded Bishop Jefferts Schori.

In her address to students, she appeared to believe she was on a quest to unknown lands and had discovered dragons. This must be a reference to New Hampshire and Gene Robinson:

The faithful are all on that kind of journey into the unknown, she said. “We’re like the explorers who went looking for the places on old maps beyond the known world labelled ‘There be dragons.’”

She obviously sees herself as an “intrepid leader” as she heads the charge of Western Anglicanism down a metaphysical latrine:

She called journeying an ancient image for honing leaders. “Leadership asks us to be agents of change and to take others with us,” she said. “The voyage is rarely calm these days.

And believes that Jesus had internal demons with whom he wrestled:

These are times for courageous and intrepid leaders, for those who will try seemingly impossible things, and, like Jesus, wrestle with internal demons and more worldly dragons.”

No wonder she received a Doctor of Divinity from Huron University College.

 

 

The inclusive Anglican church

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Let’s include everyone!

The Episcopal Church must open its doors to become more inclusive and find ways to make itself relevant beyond Sunday mornings, its presiding bishop said Friday as she prepared to take part in the Diocese of Milwaukee’s annual convention.

Let’s include atheists, paedophiles, pagans, neo-pagans, Muslims, Universalists, Druids and polyamorists. Oh, hang on, we already do: we make them bishops.