This is a sad account of an orthodox priest going head to head with the liberal Presiding Bishop in the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori. (She's the top person in the hierarchy).
When Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori recently visited the
Diocese of Georgia she got
more than she bargained for when she went
head to head with the orthodox rector of St. John's Church in Savannah,
Georgia.
At a meeting with the clergy of the diocese, she asked them to meditate on Mark 1:11, "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased", the words spoken by "a voice from heaven" to Jesus at his baptism in Jordan.
"We were to apply this text directly to ourselves, and to ponder what it meant to be assured of God's unconditional love and approval. To judge from the responses, the assembled clergy loved this exercise, and in the discussion that followed the conventional themes of inclusiveness emerged - although a few did
acknowledge a nagging sense that God might not be altogether "well-pleased" with them," wrote the Rev. Dr. Gavin G. Dunbar, rector of St. John's in his parish newsletter, under the title "Miss Congeniality."
"What no-one acknowledged was that this approach to the biblical text rested on very thin ice. It simply ignored what the text actually says: "Thou art my beloved son" - the singular, and not the plural "you" - or, as it appears in St. Matthew's gospel, "This is my beloved son" - this person, and not any others.
"That (unacknowledged) exegetical fact has critical theological
implications, likewise ignored. On the one hand it means that the human
race does not by nature immediately enjoy divine sonship and God's
love. On the other it means that only Jesus does. And therefore our
share in the love of God is not by nature but by grace, not immediate
but mediated, and mediated by Jesus. "There is one God, and one
mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus" (1 Timothy 2:5). As
sole mediator of God and man, as the one through whom alone we may come
to enjoy the Father's love and approval, Jesus has the right to command
our faith and obedience to his word, as means and conditions for
receiving the benefits of his mediation. And that opens up the whole
question of what faith and obedience to him involves: in particular,
the right ordering of the Church's life, and the right ordering of the
human soul. And that brings us directly to the questions which Ms
Jefferts Schori and her adulators dismissed as ungracious nit-picking
by trouble-making conservatives. "We all believe in Jesus" she assured
us, but what do we believe about Jesus? Who is this Jesus? In her
account, a person of remarkably little consequence.
"When I
ventured to raise this exegetical and theological problem, Ms Jefferts
Schori made no answer. But other persons present were quick to refute
me. One appealed to the immediacy of his feeling of God's love as proof
that I was wrong about the need of mediation. Subjective experience
trumped doctrine. Another dismissed the authority of Scripture and the
Church's teaching as irrelevant, because, he said, (I kid you not) he
had heard the voice of God when Ms Jefferts Schori spoke! An
over-excited response, no doubt - but virtually the whole room then
endorsed his comments with a standing ovation. Sad as it is that an
officer of the Church gives so little importance to the mediating
person and work of Christ, it is even more sad that so many
Episcopalians see no problem there, and resent those who do.
"There
were two places where Ms Jefferts Schori's grace and charm wore thin.
The first was in her inability or uninterest (I couldn't tell which) in
engaging with conservatives in rational exchange of views designed to
set their doctrinal fears at rest. She hinted that attempts to do so
were impolite.
The other was in the matter of church property
- a "legacy", she said, which she has no moral right to abandon, even
though it means spending enormous amounts of church money on
litigation. That's a stark contrast to her attitude to the theological
legacy of the Church - the priceless treasure of truth entrusted by
Christ to his Church, the legacy which she is solemnly sworn to uphold,
and which the constitution makes the fundamental commitment of the
Episcopal Church. Apparently this legacy may be abandoned without a
second thought."
Fr. Dunbar said he went away from the meeting "sad and sorry."
The
rector said Jefferts Schori employed language only to evacuate it of
its content - theological baubles brought down from the attic to
ornament a theological perspective that can only be called sub-creedal,
because it fell below the level of what the Constitution of the
Episcopal Church speaks of as "the historic Faith and Order as set
forth in the Book of Common Prayer". "In so doing she perpetuates the
illusion that the Church can be united as a spiritual community without
coherent doctrine."