Kathleen LundquistICHABOD
Kate Schori kicks things around with Time and demonstrates that the Spongian takeover of TEC is complete:
What will be your focus as head of the U.S. church? Our focus needs to be on feeding people who go to bed hungry, on providing primary education to girls and boys, on healing people with AIDS, on addressing tuberculosis and malaria, on sustainable development. That ought to be the primary focus.
Translation: we need to become "Christian" Shriners.
The issue of gay bishops has been so divisive. The diocese of Newark, N.J., has named a gay man as one of its candidates for bishop. Is now the time to elect another gay bishop? Dioceses, when they are faithful, call the person who is best suited to lead them. I believe every diocese does the best job it’s capable of in discerning who it is calling to leadership.
Translation: kiss off, rest of the Anglcian world.
Many Anglicans in the developing world say such choices in the U.S. church have hurt their work. That’s been important for the church here to hear. We’ve heard in ways we hadn’t heard before the problematic nature of our decisions. Especially in places where Christians are functioning in the face of Islamic culture and mores, evangelism is a real challenge. [But] these decisions were made because we believe that’s where the Gospel has been calling us. The Episcopal Church in the U.S. has come to a reasonable conclusion and consensus that gay and lesbian Christians are full members of this church and that our ministry to and with gay and lesbian Christians should be part of the fullness of our life
Translation: see above.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, who leads the Anglican Communion, wrote recently that a two-tier Communion may be a solution. What did you read in his message? The pieces that I saw as most important had to do with the complexity of the situation and the length of time that this process will continue. He’s very clear that we’re not going to see an instant solution. He’s also clear about his role: it is to call people to conversation, not to intervene in diocesan or provincial life--which some people have been asking for.
Translation: since I'm an Episcopalian, I saw only what I wanted to see and ignored the rest.
What is your view on intelligent design? I firmly believe that evolution ought to be taught in the schools as the best witness of what modern science has taught us. To try to read the Bible literalistically about such issues disinvites us from using the best of recent scholarship.
Translation: don't worry, I won't get all up in your face about this Bible nonsense.
Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven? We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
Translation: we're probably going to get run from the Christian religion so I've got to start sucking up to the Uni-Uni's
What is your prayer for the church today? That we remember the centrality of our mission is to love each other. That means caring for our neighbors. And it does not mean bickering about fine points of doctrine.
Translation: see "Christian" Shriners comment above.
UPDATE: Patrick(the real one) points out that comparing TEC to the Shriners is an insult. To the Shriners. Rebuke accepted.
Submitted by alfonso
at 7/10/2006 3:45:49 PM| Sounds like her PhD lab work included too much time with multi-tentacled applications of copper-neutrino-pulse IED's. |
Submitted by Jeffersonian
at 7/10/2006 4:05:03 PM| She's not even making an effort to pretend she's Christian anymore, is she? No wonder the revisionists react to resolutions proposing a confirmation of, say, the Creeds as a vampire reacts to garlic. Or, as it might be, as both react to a crucifix. |
Submitted by Little Gidding
at 7/10/2006 4:12:33 PM| Sexual morality = mere "fine points of doctrine." After all, gender's just a suit of clothes. Or was it an innate characteristic? Where to locate the bike paths around here = a social justice issue that might well break the Church apart. |
Submitted by The Real Patrick
at 7/10/2006 4:19:16 PM| Hey Chris, you're hitting below the belt, here. As a Shriner (no, I'm not kidding, I am a Shriner),I take offense that you would put Katie and us on the same level. We do good for the children, she's a heretical (is that a word?) moron. If ya wanna pick on Katie and the Boyz, that's fine, but leave us Masons and Shriners out of it. Pretty please? |
Submitted by Gregg the obscure
at 7/10/2006 4:36:26 PM| So, Kate, hypothetical question here. You love someone dearly and see that they are doing things that cause themselves physical, emotional and spiritual harm while simultaneously injuring the basic dignity of all humans. Would it be "loving" to encourage them to continue to the same, or would love require that you attempt to motivate them to amend their ways, with God's help? |
Submitted by alfonso
at 7/10/2006 4:37:51 PM| Patrick, for your information, although today the Shriner/Mason line in N. America is strongly "we are not a religion", it was not always so. And in Europe, Masons may continue to see themselves as a religion. Further, the oaths that one is required to give as one progresses, are sometimes contradictory to the Christian Faith. That said, I don't take a "Shriner = Heretic" line, but I can understand the sentiment and the partial justification. |
Submitted by ccinnova
at 7/10/2006 4:50:50 PM| +Schori's answers to these questions further confirms my suspicion that ECUSA/TEC elected a Unitarian as its PB. Lord, have mercy. |
Submitted by Fuinseoig
at 7/10/2006 4:51:38 PM| "Literalistically"? "Disinvites"? I thought she had some fancy degree in oceanography and she's the Big Cheese Elect of the Sophisticated (not the ignorant inbred rednecks, we will thank you to remember!) Church, and she uses 'words' like those? She doesn't know the word she is looking for is "literally"? For an educated bishopess, she sounds kinda ignorant, don't she? |
Submitted by Craig Goodrich
at 7/10/2006 5:12:04 PM| As any of us who have lived with ?Schori in the Missionary Diocese of Nevada could tell you, it is not that her theology is liberal; it's that her theology is nonexistent. She is a socialist politician, pure and simple, in a position where she has to talk church. (The same is true of many other ECUSA clergy, of course.) Although they may be wrong in their premisses and/or their conclusions, liberal theologians are theologians, at the end of the day. Katharine is not. She is purely a functionary in the Griz mold, but with more ruthlessness and less addiction to perks and trappings. Kyrie eleison indeed! |
Submitted by JM
at 7/10/2006 5:20:31 PM| Don't misunderestimate her strategery. Compliment her that she is a straight talker like George W. Bush. That should get her. |
Submitted by Paula Loughlin
at 7/10/2006 5:53:01 PM| Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven? We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box. Is there any other way to interpert this but to say she does not believe Jesus is God? And it is God Himself who revealed that Jesus alone is The Way, The Truth and The Life. Mankind does not hvae any ability to limit God. So not only does she not believe Jesus is God she also does not believe that God's plan for salvation is fully revealed in Scripture. She has managed to discount both the Incarnate and Written Word. |
Submitted by Jeffersonian
at 7/10/2006 6:49:41 PM| Ah, for the good old days when a stake some kindling would have resolved this forthwith. Now the lunatics are in charge of Bedlam's neighbor and it's the sane that are tied to the poles. |
Submitted by Laurence K Wells
at 7/10/2006 8:51:21 PM| Folks, don't knock it! Madam Shorey is one of the best breaks us dissident breakaways have had since VGR. If she didnt exist, we would have to invent her. Seriously, this woman will be extremely useful in helping people see the need to move out of Sodom before the fire and brimstone descend. |
Submitted by Sasha
at 7/11/2006 12:07:01 AM| Let's be honest folks!: Sooner or later we all find out that practically NO revisionists whatsoever are Christians, period! [Of course, one doesn't have to be a revisionist to be Antichrist: I've known enough people who're supposedly traditionalist yet who're no more Christian than anybody else! However, the ratio of real Christians with being a non-revisionist is many, many times higher than with the revisionists... I had several bitter experiences over the past 16 months to prove my point, alas - enough that I've not gone to church at all over nearly the whole of the last 6...] |
Submitted by Katherine
at 7/11/2006 12:07:56 AM| Schori's candor is refreshing, after years of watching Griswold trying to hide the same sentiments behind tortured rhetoric. She has no god but the UN (I agree the Shriners do better work). |
Submitted by Consanescerion
at 7/11/2006 12:33:00 AM| I heard an interview a while back where she gave a surprisingly direct answer to a direct question: She doesn't believe in a real afterlife at all. So saying that Jesus is not the way to heaven... well, I suppose by her way of thinking she's being truthful. |
Submitted by Fuinseoig
at 7/11/2006 8:14:48 AM| See, this is the bit that gets me (and it's not confined to Anglicianism; you get the same kind of thinking on this side of the Tiber): "...feeding people who go to bed hungry, on providing primary education to girls and boys, on healing people with AIDS, on addressing tuberculosis and malaria, on sustainable development" - all good and laudable goals, and not at all incompatible with being a Christian. But. But is that all there is? But don't they see something more to it? But if they want to be social workers, then why don't they go for that job? What is the point of being in religious life if you think that social justice is not just the main but the only aim? Why not remain secular and work in a profession such as law, medicine or even politics? Healing the paralytic man, Jesus said first "Your sins are forgiven"; the healing of his physical disability only followed afterwards. Doesn't that give some glimmering as to what is more important here? |
Submitted by Gayle
at 7/11/2006 3:44:16 PM| That's my thinking. I know this might be a stupid (and oft repeated) question and I really wish that some revisionist/reappraiser would answer me. But having been a heretic, apostate, agnostic and atheist (in that order), I just wonder if you don't believe then why are you in the clergy, much less even going to church on Sunday morning? I really don't understand. |
Submitted by Ed the Roman
at 7/11/2006 4:43:35 PM| Ifear that the answer to your question for some of them is Robert A. Heinlein's: it's nice work if you can stomach it. |
Submitted by davod
at 7/11/2006 4:47:45 PM| Gayle: The reason they are in the church is so they can change the church. Read what she said. Nothing really relates to Christ and the gospels. They are a fifth column and they have succeeded. |
Submitted by The Real Patrick
at 7/12/2006 4:19:46 PM| Okay alphonso, I'll take the bait. Freemasonry is religious in nature, but we are NOT a religion. We offer no means of salvation, but you must believe in God to join us. We are Christians and Jews, and we have within our ranks NO atheists. We believe in brotherly love, relief and truth...we support taking care of widows and orphans...for those of us that proceed to the Shrine, we have lots of fun, but with the main goal of supporting the children's hospitals and the burn units. We are men from all walks of life. If I may be so bold, it is my sincere belief that we are the product of persecution. Without a corrupt pope (Clement V), and a greedy king (Philip IV), we very well might not be inexistance. Sling not your arrows at us, for we were born of godly stock...IMHO, of course. |
Submitted by anthills
at 7/13/2006 10:53:44 PMWell Christopher, I'm bowing out of the blog "blood-sport" (as in Living Church). I've got to focus on the parish I serve and the diocese. My last hurrah echoes your Ichabod. I assert that I thought of it independently. I'm just glad I spotted it here before I went and acted like I was so brilliant. http: //anthill.wordpress.com/2006/07/13/%e2%80%9cichabod%e2%80%9d-too/#respond I'll be checking your site for the best in edgy commentary. Keep it up. |
Submitted by anthills
at 7/13/2006 10:56:56 PM| http://anthill.wordpress.com/2006/07/13/%e2%80%9cichabod%e2%80%9d-too/ |
Submitted by Christopher Johnson
at 7/13/2006 11:05:25 PM| anthills,
I'm sure you did. I've used it before and let's face it; it's an obvious pick for a church "having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof(2 Timothy 3:5)." Hope you get back in at some point. I've enjoyed your stuff immensely. |