MORTAL REMAINS
What the Bishop Didn't Say
An article from a conservative Anglican website, titled "Diversity, not Jesus, saves, says Presiding Bishop," analyzes a recent sermon given by Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. According to the article, the sermon contained an (unsurprising) litany against exclusion of homosexuals, and documented the triumphant movement of history toward the undoing of this evil, as it has others, like industrial slavery.
St. Paul is, once again unsurprisingly, a villain of the piece. "There are some remarkable examples," Bishop Schori is quoted as saying,
of that kind of blindness in the readings we heard this morning, and slavery is wrapped up in a lot of it. Paul is annoyed at the slave girl who keeps pursuing him, telling the world that he and his companions are slaves of God [Acts 16]. She is quite right. She's telling the same truth Paul and others claim for themselves. . . . But Paul is annoyed, perhaps for being put in his place, and he responds by depriving her of the gift of spiritual awareness. Paul can't abide something he won't see as beautiful and holy, so he tries to destroy it. It gets him thrown into prison. That's pretty much where he has put himself by his own refusal to recognize that she, too, shares in God's nature, just as much as he does—maybe more so!
(Consider the implications of Bishop Schori's observation that Paul asked for what he got.)
Further on the article says, "She concluded her sermon by stating that we are not justified by our faith, but by our respect for diversity," then quotes Schori: "Looking for the reflection of God's glory all around us means changing our lenses, or letting the scales on our eyes fall away. That kind of change isn't easy for everyone, but it's the only road to the kingdom of God." The article's author concludes that this means, "Salvation comes not from being cleansed of our sins by the atoning sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, but through the divinization of humanity through the work of the human will."
Delusional Exegesis
Now this ghastly preachment is in one sense pretty standard liberal homiletical fare, depending for its acceptability on the ideological agreement of other liberals, the ignorance and insouciance of church-party dullards, and utter lack of responsibility towards the Christian faith. The article quotes a respondent on the Episcopal Church's website who said—and I can hardly think of a more accurate and compact summary—"This
is quite possibly some of the most delusional exegesis I've ever read in my life."
So in another sense she has gone beyond the mere substitution of religious humanism for orthodox Christianity typical of liberal preaching, out to the Cloud-Cuckoo Land of a delusion that allows her to do what she does here with Scripture and its interpretive tradition. Accusing her of incompetent theologizing is probably beside the point, for she answers to no standard except one of which she must be recognized as an adept.
Nowhere "Not Jesus"
It is necessary to say, however, that this is not an entirely honest piece of reporting. It evidently yields to the temptation to extrapolate from what was actually said in order to make its own point. I can find no justification in the article for its title. Bishop Schori, to be sure, appears to have marked herself for hell by calling what the Christian faith has universally identified as demonism "beautiful and holy," but nowhere here is there a "not Jesus."
Theological liberals and egalitarian ideologues do not do away with "Jesus," but reinvent him. Bishop Schori knows perfectly well how this is done, and consistently does it. Frontal attack on Christianity is not the way people like this do their jobs: they redefine, and have found that using the concept of "inclusion" is one of the most effective tools for construction of a Jesus in whom they can believe.
Likewise, there is no reason here to claim Schori indicated that "salvation comes not from being cleansed of our sins by the atoning sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, but through the divinization of humanity through the work of the human will." Nowhere in the actual quotation that follows does she say this, nor are we given any justification for believing that she did. The presiding bishop believes in all these things, in a manner of speaking, and we may expect ready explanations for what cleansing from sins and the atoning, sacrificial death of "Jesus" mean. Her sect takes the whole of Christian doctrine as its template, and answers to it in every particular, with just the smallest and subtlest of alterations at its foundation. It begins each of its distinctive teachings with, "Hath God said?"
A Master of Recasting
What we find in the actual citations is what one would expect to find in the sermons of those who believe what Bishop Schori does: a divergence between the true faith and the religion of St. Paul (as a high exemplar of the exclusivism from which Jesus came to save us), and continual assertion of the inclusion theme that does not directly deny orthodox doctrine. It does the denying indirectly, so that if what she says about inclusion is true, it means that much of the teaching of Scripture and the Christian tradition is wrong—without explicitly saying this.
If one wishes people to believe in the gospel of inclusivity, it would be stupid to be explicit about which articles of the Creed it perforce denies. Schori is not stupid, and the Creed is still repeated in her churches. One of the coups that ridding mainline Protestantism of strong traditionalists has allowed is the removal of the pestilential Paul as an apostolic authority. But a mutilated Jesus and a redefined Creed it must retain as its justification for identifying itself as Christian.
The recasting of the Lord in the liberal image and the indirect attack on Christian doctrine are the stock in trade of people like the presiding bishop. She has not held this office in the Episcopal Church for many years now without being a master of the craft. You can't pin these people down unless they make a serious misstep out of their rhetorical program, and I see no evidence here that Schori has done it. To find the evidence, to assert that they are saying that Jesus does not save, one must make a leap from ground they rarely provide, for "Jesus" saves for them, too.
One of the most frustrating things about being a Christian is that we cannot fight the devil with his own tools. We cannot lie and cheat—or extrapolate—when we're up against liars and cheaters and extrapolators, but are forced to go about the slow and so often apparently fruitless task of pointing out the subtlety of the Adversary's hook-baiting so the faithful can be acutely aware of his method of making evil appear good and good appear evil. The inability to score decisively against the most intelligent and—we make no mistake in calling them so—spiritually gifted of his envoys is a trial of faith that we must, for a time, endure.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
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