Washington Post religion reporter Alan Cooperman put together a nice roundup of news on Katherine Jefferts Schori, the new ultraliberal woman elected to lead the Episcopal Church USA for Monday's front page. The worst thing you can say about it is the way it almost seems designed by the front-page editors to put the juicy news inside the paper, instead of up-front.
The headline is "Episcopal Protest of Top Bishop Increases: More Dioceses Reject New Female Leader." From this, you get the idea that conservatives object to a female leader, first and foremost. Cooperman begins by explaining that an increasing number of dioceses are rejecting her authority, and then right at the "jump" to page A-5, we read: "Gender is only part of the reason that some conservative in the church [turn the page] are unhappy about her election. Jefferts Schori, 52, is also firmly planted in the church's dominant liberal wing."
Cooperman doesn't really prove in the article that the conservative bishops primarily object to a female Presiding Bishop, although he does note that three dioceses refuse to allow female priests. He does, however, make it clearer than most initial national reports where the new boss goes off the rails of Christian orthodoxy.
Right after the "dominant liberal" sentence, Cooperman elaborated:
Three years ago, she voted with the majority of Episcopal bishops to approve the New Hampshire Diocese's election of V. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay bishop in the Anglican Communion. She has allowed the blessing of same-sex couples in her Nevada diocese.
Most recently, she irritated some conservatives by speaking about "Mother Jesus" in a sermon.
"Mother Jesus"? Wouldn't this have been shocking enough to make the first five paragraphs of the story, or the headline? Have the conservative bishops made an issue of this in the last few weeks, and if so, why haven't we heard this before now? (Some papers had it earlier.) Cooperman offered more detail:
To those who accuse her of heresy for referring to a female Jesus, she responds with a typically learned disquisition on medieval mystics and saints who used similar language, including Julian of Norwich and St. Teresa of Avila. "I was trying to say that the work of the cross was in some ways like giving birth to a new creation," she said. "That is straight-down-the-middle orthodox theology."
Traditional Christians would be at risk of spewing their morning orange juice that the idea of a female Christ is "straight-down-the-middle orthodox." But let's continue:
Yet she acknowledged that she likes to shake people up a bit.
"All language is metaphorical, and if we insist that particular words have only one meaning and the way we understand those words is the only possible interpretation, we have elevated that text to an idol," she said in a telephone interview. "I'm encouraging people to look beyond their favorite understandings."
Jefferts Schori's "all language is metaphorical" approach is a giant red flag to traditionalists at home and abroad who believe that the Episcopal Church is heading toward schism because it has departed from the plain words of the Bible.
"The incoming presiding bishop has made her positions very clear -- that she is committed to the new agenda, committed to same-sex blessings, committed to having same-sex partners in the leadership in the church -- which means she is also not committed to the faith as delivered to the saints," said Bishop Robert W. Duncan of Pittsburgh.
Cooperman offered the usual biographical details of Jefferts Schori's scientific and spiritual career. It grew more interesting again at the very end, as the feminists elaborate on how they're so beyond the old categories:
Cathy Roskam, the suffagran bishop of New York and a friend of Jefferts Schori, said women hold 3 percent of the leadership positions in the Anglican Communion.
"Many women feel that were we represented even close to the percentage we have in the pews, we would not be having these divisions over human sexuality," she said of the hierarchy. "Of course, women differ over sexuality. We just wouldn't be dividing over it."
Jefferts Schori agreed. The message of her election, she said, is not that Episcopalians don't care what other Anglicans think, but "that we're more interested in feeding hungry people and relieving suffering than we are in arguing about what gender someone is or what sexual orientation someone has."
This has to be one of the most annoying poses that ultraliberals strike when they're trying to spread a sexual revolution. They push the revolution, push the revolution, push the revolution, and then when the critics object, they say "why, we care more about the poor than the revolution." No one should buy that. It's just the same way that the gay left pushes "gay marriage" hard, and then when Republicans object, they say there are so many much more pressing issues they should be debating instead of wasting time on this lame issue -- the one they spend their whole lives pressing.
But it's also annoying the way these radicals presume that their mode of thinking is already dominant, so why "divide" in defense of tradition when you should just knuckle under in surrender to the New Progressive Idea? Isn't it the "mother Jesus" advocates and "gay marriage" pushers who are the dividers?
R. Andrew Newman at National Review Online had more detail of the actual "Mother Jesus" sermon.
At the convention’s closing Eucharist, the new presiding bishop preached, “Colossians calls Jesus the firstborn of all creation, the firstborn from the dead. That sweaty, bloody, tear-stained labor of the cross bears new life. Our mother Jesus gives birth to a new creation – and you and I are His children.”
Our mother Jesus?
Bishop Schori felt no need to cloak her language so as not to scandalize the average Episcopalian. Tossing aside the New Testament, she transgendered the Lord without a qualm in the world — and for all the world to hear.
