It's been a busy day so I've not gotten to this until now. Earlier this morning I read an article in the
LA Times discussing the disheartening problems afflicting the church of my birth -- the Episcopal Church. It focuses on the Presiding Bishop's visit to San Jose to ordain a new bishop -- the first woman bishop in California history. There you have history in the making -- Katherine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, ordaining Rev. Mary Gray-Reeves as California's first.
It is a most interesting article that talks about Schori's efforts to hold her province together and to stand firm against attempts to undermine her jurisdiction. What is most interesting here is that this ordination took place in the diocese abutting that of San Joaquin, whose bishop John David Schofield is trying to lead it out of the Episcopal Church and has placed himself under a conservative Chilean bishop. All of this is most unusual.
Jefferts Schori noted that it is most unhelpful for bishops from outside the province are meddling in the affairs of another. Reconciliation is made all the more difficult. Here are a few of her thoughts in closing:
"It's removed the necessity for people in the church to deal with their complaints within the church," she said. "It's not unlike in a troubled marriage, if one spouse goes off to find aid and comfort in another relationship. It makes reconciling almost impossible."
Reconciliation can come only through engagement, Jefferts Schori said, adding that it pained her that some on both ends of the theological spectrum seemed no longer able, or willing, to discuss their differences. And this in an American church with a long history of tolerance for diversity of all sorts."
I think the center of the church has heard the message," she said. "But it's more of a struggle for people on the edge of the progressive part and the edge of the more conservative part. Both believe in utter faithfulness that they're right . . . and there's less patience that God will work all things out in the end."
So I pray that the church will find its center, knowing that the fringes of this cloak are getting more and more frayed.
Comments