The selection of Katherine Jefferts Schori as Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has caused cheers and jeers for exactly the same reasons. Many celebrating her selection applaud the first female to head TEC and her pro-homosexual theology. Those are the reasons I’m concerned, along with many Episcopalians. She’s getting a lot of press and it’s very telling how the story is covered.
Some see it as a womens’ rights issue. Newsweek Magazine (Periscope July 3, 2006) reported her appointment as progress for women: “Women make up 61 percent of all Americans who attend religious congregations, but they still struggle for their place in some denominations….But there are indications that times are changing….The stained-glass ceiling ‘has certainly been punctured.’” On a news program I saw, one panelist declared, “There aren’t two sides to this. There’s only one: Women pastors.”
Her appointment is seem by some as progress for the pro-homosexual rights movement in the church. She supports the selection of openly homosexual Bishop Robinson and the Newark, N.J. nomination of a homosexual for bishop. This coverage, too, seems more political than religious. The point should be what the Bible teaches, not what seems good to us in 2006.
And that is what concerns me about how many, in and outside the church, view the issues involved in Schori’s appointment. It’s political, not doctrinal. It’s understandable for those outside the church who don’t share our source of authority. But that approach isn’t acceptable for Christians who should take their guidelines from the Bible. It’s the denial of the Bible’s authority that is the starting point for following what seems right to us rather than what the Bible teaches. That’s how denominations get to the point we find TEC.
This denial of authority is evident in an interview with Schori in Time Magazine (July 17, 2006), p. 6. Schori states that the primary focus on the church ought to be helping others. While that is a necessity for the church, it’s quite telling that she believes this is the primary duty rather than the Gospel. And here’s why she thinks that: “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.”
What’s very baffling about her statement is that she isn’t willing to affirm what is clearly taught in the Bible – that Jesus is the only way of salvation because He is the only one who has taken care of our sin. However, one of Schori’s distinctive virtues to her supporters is that she does affirm something that is not taught in Scripture – the blessing of homosexuality. In fact, the Bible explicitly teaches the opposite.
Schori finishes this interview by saying her prayer for the church is not to engage in “bickering about fine points of doctrine.” Certainly when she has abandoned the authority for doctrine there’s no point in bickering over it. That would be a good point of doctrine for TEC to deliberate, rather than bicker, over. More doctrinal differences will continue to divide the church as long as members don’t share a common view of the Bible.
