The blind leading the benighted

From here:

The heads of the National Association of Evangelicals and The Episcopal Church are among those newly named to President Barack Obama’s faith advisory council.

Obama announced on Friday his intent to appoint a dozen religious and secular leaders, including NAE president Leith Anderson and Episcopal Presiding Bishop the Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori.

“I am grateful for the opportunity to be of service to the larger community in this way,” Jefferts Schori said in a statement. “The ability to build partnerships between civic and religious bodies can only expand our capacity to heal a broken world.”

The question is, will Jefferts Schori – in just one year- manage to accomplish for Obama what she has wrought in four in the Anglican Communion: schism, mayhem, blight, litigation and omnipresent lamentation?

The Episcopal Church faces a “life or death decision”

From here:

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori challenged the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council Oct. 24 to avoid “committing suicide by governance.”

No need to worry about governance, the Episcopal Church is already using the method much preferred by Anglicans: suicide by heresy.

Jefferts Schori said that the council and the church face a “life-or-death decision,” describing life as “a renewed and continually renewing focus on mission” and death as “an appeal to old ways and to internal focus” which devotes ever-greater resources to the institution and its internal conflicts.

Does that mean Jefferts Schori will stop using ever-greater resources to sue recalcitrant parishes into submission? No, that is not a serious question.

Later in her remarks, Jefferts Schori said “we need a system that is more nimble, that is more able to respond to change,” calling for “a more responsive and adaptable and less rigid set of systems.”

Good idea, a less rigid set of systems would allow for so-called cross-border interventions.

In case anyone wonders what “mission” means to TEC, the following clarifies that it has nothing whatsoever to do with winning souls for Christ and everything to do with marrying homosexuals:

For example, the ongoing work of the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to respond to General Convention Resolution C056’s authorization to collect and develop theological resources and liturgies for blessing same-gender relationships is what she called the work of mission.

As for the future:

Jefferts Schori said “we don’t know what the future will look like … but what we do know, if we’re honest about it, it will look different than it did last year or 10 years ago.”

It will look different: there will be even fewer TEC Anglicans.

Katherine Jefferts Schori to walk to Canada for the ACoC Synod

At least – assuming she does not want to participate in our collective sins when she attends GS2010 – that’s how I interpret this:

The still-unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is good evidence of the interconnectedness of the whole. It has its origins in this nation’s addiction to oil, uninhibited growth, and consumerism, as well as old-fashioned greed and what my tradition calls hubris and idolatry. Our collective sins are being visited on those who have had little or no part in them: birds, marine mammals, the tiny plants and animals that constitute the base of the vast food chain in the Gulf, and on which a major part of the seafood production of the United States depends. Our sins are being visited on the fishers of southern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, who seek to feed their families with the proceeds of what they catch each day. Our sins will expose New Orleans and other coastal cities to the increased likelihood of devastating floods, as the marshes that constitute the shrinking margin of storm protection continue to disappear, fouled and killed by oil.

Conclusive proof that there are Multiverses

For those that doubted the reality of the multiverse, The Anglican Church – TEC specifically – has produced incontrovertible evidence that alternate universes do exist. Add an ImageThey must, Katherine Jefferts Schori inhabits one:

Episcopal leader Jefferts Schori says anger over gay ordination has eased.

The Episcopal Church USA and its sister churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion have stronger relationships in many ways now than before the American church angered the more conservative members by consecrating a gay bishop, the church’s presiding bishop said Friday….

She said fallout from the 2003 decision to consecrate Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire appears to have settled out for the most part.

“The reactivity right now is much, much less than it was seven years ago,” she said during an interview at Christ Church, where Waldo’s consecration will take place.

“I think the church, and certainly the part of the church in the United States, is reasonably clear about where we’re going, even though everybody doesn’t agree. And those in the church, I think, are willing to live with that tension.”

You will notice that residents of this interpenetrating dimension wear funny pointed hats; it is suspected that the hats house a jamming device designed to prevent rational thought from disrupting the inhabitants’ harmonious – if illusory – euphoria.

Katherine Jefferts Schori to attend GS2010

Katherine Jefferts Schori will be attending the Anglican Church of Canada’s General Synod in June. I wonder if she’ll bring her Rainbow Add an ImageHat as a subtle reminder to us Canucks what it’s really all about.

Synod members will welcome a number of international guests including The Right Rev. Suheil Dawani, Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem; The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church