A reader sent me the following article.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Episcopal Church, threatened with losing its place in the world Anglican fellowship in a feud over the Bible and sexuality, is putting its future in the hands of a new leader.
On Saturday, Katharine Jefferts Schori was to be installed in the Washington National Cathedral as presiding bishop, becoming the first female priest to lead a national church in the nearly 500-year-old Anglican Communion.
Jefferts Schori, 52, was bishop of Nevada when she was elected at the Episcopal General Convention in June. She hopes to revitalize Episcopal parishes after years of declining membership and advance the church’s fight against poverty and other social ills at home and abroad.
But internal conflicts are likely to consume much of her time.
The 2.3 million-member denomination, the U.S. wing of Anglicanism, sparked an uproar when it consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, three years ago.
Most overseas Anglican archbishops believe same-sex relationships violate Scripture and they want the U.S. denomination to adhere to that teaching or leave the communion.
By contrast, conservatives are a minority in The Episcopal Church, yet their protests here have had some impact. They have chipped away at the authority of the denomination by withholding money and building alliances directly with like-minded Anglicans overseas.
It will fall to Jefferts Schori to try and reconcile The Episcopal Church with its critics — a job complicated by her personal outlook on sexuality.
Jefferts Schori unapologetically supports ordaining gays and allowing blessing ceremonies for same-sex couples, and she voted to approve Robinson’s election in New Hampshire.
…Jefferts Schori decided to pursue full-time ministry after federal funding for her scientific research dried up. She was ordained in 1994.
Wow, now this is an arguments for Federal funding of scientific research if I ever saw one. The term Anglican Communion is getting more ironic by the day, perhaps Anglican Diaspora would be more accurate.
8 comments
Looks like the Left getting an increasing share in a diminishing market.
you have to understand how Anglicans use words. By ‘communion’ they mean everyone who goes to the Anglican Church despite the fact that they believe totally contradictory things about everything from dogma to moral theology to liturgy and social teachings. In other words, communion doesn’t mean communion at all. The best metaphor for communion in the Anglican church is a public restaurant. Many different people have happened to gather in the same place because they like the menu, the muzak and the atmosphere. That’s the only thing they have in common.
From what I remember of her background, wasn’t she studying marine invertebrates? Which is ironic now that she leads theological invertebrates..
The Anglican Communion can’t survive its own internal contradictions. It will inevitably split into a set of autonomous national churches with nothing in common but the Book of Common Prayer.
After watching the slow motion train wreck for several years, this Episcopalian enrolled in RCIA….Pax vobiscum.
Yes, st. Jimbob, her Grace is an expert on mollusks, or at any rate oysters, clams and mussels. So it should spark up hope among all the blinking agnostics among the progressive Episcopalians here, anger the African orthodox, and make Sr. Joan Chittister green(er) with envy.
“After watching the slow motion train wreck for several years, this Episcopalian enrolled in RCIA….Pax vobiscum.”
Me too. GC 2006 & reading the Ven. JH Cardinal Newman’s “Apologia Pro Vita Sua” did me in, and I’m now making my way through RCIA.
Catholic Communion is sadly questionable, as well. Today, for the first time, I heard a couple profess during Mass that they believe in “Jesus Christ, HER only Son..” Too bad, because they had such good voices that I was hoping to invite them to join our choir.
Now I must take back my recent “I don’t mind if we sit or stand, but it’s humanly impossible to do both at the same time”, because, according to those behind me, one can do contradictory things simulataneously: didn’t they just profess dissent “in communion” with the Church? The Catholic “faithful” (will that be an oxymoron soon?) must be torturing the Holy Father’s brain with their inconsistencies. Maybe he keeps trying on new hats to relieve the pressure…
That always irks me: the Church is a She (the Bride of Christ), God is a He (God the Father). In the mind of progressive dimwits, however, it’s exactly reversed. You want your “feminine religious language”? We’ve had it for ages! You don’t need to make it up yourself and then misapply it to the wrong places.