Church Planting For The 21st Century - The Christian Challenge

Just before taking TEC’s reigns, though, Jefferts Schori
insisted that her province would uphold its “blessed diversity,”
and dismissed those who claim that TEC has fractured and lost
its sense of mission as “a small segment of the church.”
As noted in other reports in this section, there are signs, too,
that she will be more active than Griswold has been in pressing
the church’s claim to the property of congregations that flee
TEC and in disciplining bishops who buck the new religion.
No Kids, Please: We’re Episcopalians
Hardly reassuring to the faithful, either, are some of the
comments Jefferts Schori has made to the media.
Widely circulated has been her response to a Time magazine
question on whether Jesus is the only way to heaven. She suggested
that, while Christians understand Jesus as their “vehicle
to the divine,” it would “put God in an awfully small box” to
assume that “God could not act in other ways.”
This caused an interviewer with National Public Radio
- hardly known for its conservatism - to wonder aloud if Jefferts
Schori was a Unitarian. The P.B. responded in part that
“Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God
through their...own cultural contexts; they relate to God,
they experience God in human relationships...and Christians
would say those are our experiences of Jesus...”
Said interviewer Robin Young: “It sounds like you’re saying
it’s a parallel reality, but in another culture and language,” to
which Schori replied: “I think that’s accurate.”
Equally startling was a more recent interview the P.B.
gave to Deborah Solomon of The New York Times magazine
in November, in which she seemed to take pride in TEC’s
declining membership.
q. How many members of the Episcopal Church are
there in this country?
A. About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise, but
Episcopalians tend to be better educated and tend to reproduce
at lower rates than other denominations.
q. Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their
ranks by having children?
A. “No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay
attention to the stewardship of the earth, and not use more than
their portion.”
There was also this:
q. You were previously Bishop of Nevada, but your
new position requires you to live in New York City. Do
you and your husband like it here?
A Visit To
South Africa
ARCHBISHOP EMMANUEL KOLINI (pictured)
of the Anglican Communion province
of Rwanda visited South Africa in July
as a guest of the Rt. Rev. Frank Retief, the
presiding bishop of the Church of England
in South Africa (CESA), an Evangelical Anglican
body not recognized by Canterbury.
What’s more, a “memorandum of agreement
was signed between the two church
groups to forge stronger links, and to assist
and encourage each other to stand for the
truth of the Gospel.” (CESA News)
16 November-December 2006 The Christian Challenge www.challengeonline.org
A. He is actually in Nevada. He is a retired mathematician.
He will be here in New York when it makes sense.
So, one observer asked, “it doesn’t ‘make sense’ for “the
first female bishop to head this denomination to try to model
marital togetherness?”
“True to Schori’s boast, the Episcopalians have done
magnificently in reducing their numbers and, purportedly,
sparing the earth the ravages of an enlarged Episcopalian
presence,” wrote Mark Tooley of Washington’s Institute on
Religion and Democracy. “Forty years ago, [TEC] was over
50 percent larger than today, even while the U.S. population
was 40 percent smaller...” n
Sources included IRD, The Living Church, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Times, The
Washington Post, Reuters
Williams: Jefferts Schori
Invited To Primates’ Meeting;
Orombi: Global South Will
Not Sit With New P.B.
Provinces Affirm Impaired/Broken Communion;
Southern Cone Backs New U.S. Structure
A conflagration over new Episcopal Presiding Bishop
katharine Jefferts Schori now appears to be in the making
for the February 14-19 meeting of Anglican primates in Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania.
Ugandan Anglican Archbishop Henry Orombi said in
mid-December that he and other global South primates
(provincial leaders) had informed Archbishop of Canterbury
Rowan Williams “that we cannot sit together” with Bishop
Jefferts Schori at the Primates’ Meeting, due to her unbiblical
teachings on “faith and morality.”
At deadline, however, Dr. Williams had told fellow primates
that he had invited her to the meeting anyway. However, he
also seemed to indicate that he was prepared to answer, to some
extent, the September call from 18 global South archbishops
meeting in kigali, Rwanda, for U.S. conservatives to have their
own episcopal representation at the Primates’ Meeting.
“I believe it is important that [Bishop Jefferts Schori] be
given a chance both to hear and to speak and to discuss face
to face the problems we are confronting together,” Williams
wrote his colleagues December 18. “We are far too prone to
talk about these matters from a distance, without ever having
to face the human reality of those with whom we differ.”
He felt that his decision was in line with “our current position...in
relation” to TEC. The latter has “agreed to withdraw its
representation from certain bodies in the Communion” until the
2008 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops, he said (though it
appears that this will amount only to North Americans not having
voted in one meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council). He
added that primates have not yet acted as a whole to reach conclusions
about TEC’s response so far to the recommendations of the
2004 Windsor Report. He also cited the “importance of planning
constructively for Lambeth ‘08” as among other bases for his
decision “not to withhold an invitation” to Jefferts Schori.
“However, given the acute dissension in The Episcopal
Church (TEC) at this point, and the very widespread effects