MRS. SCHORI'S FALSE GOSPEL

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
2/7/2007

The new Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, has revealed herself to be the mistress of a post-modern deconstructed gospel that pushes earthly salvation, while placing atonement and eternal salvation right outside the orb of Christian conviction.

The 52-year old former oceanographer gave an interview to USA TODAY in which she expounded on what she believes the Christian Faith is all about.

She says she sees two strands of faith: One is "most concerned with atonement that Jesus died for our sins and our most important task is to repent." But the other is "the more gracious strand," she said.

It "is to talk about life, to claim the joy and the blessings for good that it offers, to look forward. God became human in order that we may become divine. That's our task."

Mrs. Schori wants us to reach out to a lost world, not with the timeless message of the Good News of God's salvation through faith in the risen Christ, but with social action.

"It's no longer the social norm to be a Christian," Mrs. Schori says. Her answer isn't to ramp up on orthodoxy but to reach out to all ages and cultures with Christ like social action, she told USA TODAY.

Mrs. Schori equivocates on such essential doctrines such as the necessity for atonement and the exclusivity of salvation through Christ; instead she believes and teaches that the more urgent task is focused on this world rather than worrying about the next world.

"It's not my job to pick" who is saved. "It's God's job," she told USA TODAY.

That, of course, is not the point. It IS God's business who is saved and who is not, but it IS our business to preach the Good News of God's salvation, leaving the results up to the hearer and to God. Mrs. Schori just reshuffled the deck of cards and took out the King of Hearts. By playing the card of who, whom, she avoids the message entirely.

Yes, sin "is pervasive, part of human nature," but "it's not the centerpiece of the Christian message. If we spend our time talking about sin and depravity, it is all we see in the world," she says.

Really. Mrs. Schori must think then that the "Passion of the Christ" was totally unnecessary, and that all the people who saw it (and were converted) were merely being deluded by the Savior of the Universe (who deigned to "become man"). He died a self-deluded Rabbi for the sins of the world because Mrs. Schori believes that money, and lots of it, imparted through 0.7% of TEC's budget and the UN's Millennium Development Goals, will save the world and make everyone happy with a nice middle class home, a 50-inch telly, 2.3 kids and a family dog who will live better than most Third World Bangladeshis.

It is no surprise then that the Rev. Canon David Anderson, president of the American Anglican Council, says her theological statements are not orthodox Christian, not [even] orthodox Anglican. Frankly, they're bizarre, he says.

He's right of course, but that's not the half of it.

By dispensing with the reality of sin and the centrality of atonement, Mrs. Schori dispenses with the need for a bloodstained cross and a sin-bearing Christ, thus reducing Christianity to a "gracious strand" of social activism.

It's ironic when you think about it. The great philanthropic organizations of America -- the Salvation Army and World Vision International, spend tens of millions of dollars annually assisting the poor around the world, while maintaining a solid understanding of the Gospel message that Jesus came into this world to save the lost sinners. The dying thief was not thinking of MDG's when, on his cross, he cried out to Jesus, "remember me this day when you come into paradise." Presumably, had Mrs. Schori been on the other cross, she would be bewailing the church's manifold failure to save the world, (at 0.7% of GNP), even as her unforgiven soul departed to another place.

Her statements reveal she is willing to dump the entire corpus of the Christian Faith into the garbage can of history for a more deserving social activism that goes way beyond what even mainline liberal Protestant denominations in America have been doing for the past half century. This kind of activism has left them dying on the battlefield of historic Christianity - and is now being replaced by a new and vibrant evangelicalism that is also, ironically, socially concerned and aware.

Mrs. Schori wants us to dispense entirely with the Great Commission, which is built on the Great Commandment, for a mess of socially active pottage that may (or may not) take man out of the gutter, while failing completely to take the gutter out of man.

The new leader of The Episcopal Church is prepared to jettison 'the faith once for all delivered to the saints' and then expect to sit down with the saints (archbishops of the Anglican Communion) next week in Tanzania. She may then wonder why a number of them might leave the room as she enters it!

Mrs. Schori just doesn't get it. At a time when there is a massive biblically-based evangelical renaissance in America, led not by TV evangelists, self help gurus or New Age peddlers, but by thinking evangelicals like Rick Warren, Mrs. Schori jettisons the faith faster than American colonists dumping crates of tea bricks from ships into Boston Harbor.

The new evangelicalism has never been more alive, combining head and heart with gospel and social activism in a way that we have not seen since the beginning of the Billy Graham era and the more recent socially concerned evangelical renaissance.

John R. W. Stott, perhaps the greatest living Anglican Evangelical of the 20th Century, commenting on evangelism and social action, has this to say. "If pressed ... *if one has to choose*, eternal salvation is more important than temporal welfare. This seems to be indisputable. But I want immediately to add that one should not normally have to choose."

He is right, of course. As Archbishop William Temple put it, 'if we have to choose between making men Christian and making the social order more Christian, we must make the former. But there is no such antithesis'.

England and Europe are perfect examples of egalitarian societies where few, if any are left behind, but incidents of depression, (major use of anti-depressants) pill-popping, and social disorder are rising. Increasing numbers of sexually transmitted diseases, even violence, continue to rise, filling prisons and psychiatric institutions. Africa, on the other hand, has increasing poverty, high unemployment, HIV/AIDS, all the while it is experiencing a spiritual (Christian) revival the likes of which we have not seen in recent human history! Literally tens of millions are bowing their knee to the Lord Christ with the Anglican Communion in the forefront of major evangelistic efforts. China, too, as Communism declines, has a reported 100 million mostly Evangelical Christians, while card-carrying communists now number only 70 million and is shrinking.

What is even more amazing is that Mrs. Schori's MDG's emphasis failed in her former diocese. When adjusted for population growth or loss, Average Sunday Attendance for the Diocese of Nevada was number 99 (out of 99 dioceses) in The Episcopal Church, losing more than it gained. On the other hand, orthodox dioceses like Pittsburgh and South Carolina, that have a very clear fix on the gospel, ranked third and number one in Average Sunday Attendance. This speaks volumes about Mrs. Schori's false gospel.

What about the TEC's declining numbers? Mrs. Schori admits that membership is down from 3.2 million in 1960 to 2.2 million today, a downward trend similar to all the mainline churches, That is not the real statistic. Real attendance, that is, Average Sunday Attendance, reveals a figure of only 780,000 active Episcopalians.

Mrs. Schori downplays what she calls a tiny but influential number of churches, from Virginia to California, as being little more than "one-half of 1% of the 7,200 congregations," which, she says, have spurned her leadership and the liberal direction of the Episcopal Church to align with Southern Hemisphere traditionalists. What she omitted to say is, while the parishes might be few, the numbers of Episcopalians leaving is huge. For example, the departure of Christ Church, Plano, in the Diocese of Dallas, was the equivalent of the entire Diocese of Nevada!

The parishes leaving are often large cardinal parishes which, by their departure, can and do affect the finances of the diocese, as in the case of the Diocese of Northwest Texas, where Bishop Wallis Ohl faces a major crisis with the departure of his three largest parishes. The Diocese of Kansas lost its largest donor parish, but Bishop Dean Wolfe cut a deal to get income for ten years from Christ Church, Overland Park, and its 1100 parishioners, with Wolfe admitting that the departure of Christ Church put a financial strain on the diocesan budget. His diocesan administrator admitted that of the remaining 49 parishes, a third have fewer than 100 members and cannot survive without diocesan assistance.

Mrs. Schori is strangely silent about diocesan financial loses.

To hear her talk, the future of her denomination is brighter every day with many "healthy, vital churches." This is pure fantasy. The "healthy, vital churches" are leaving the TEC. Look what has happened in the Diocese of Florida. Nearly all the largest parishes have left that diocese, leaving only small parishes and missions to prop up the bishop and the fantasy of MDG's Mrs. Schori hopes will save the world. In the Diocese of Pennsylvania, the finances are such a mess that the diocese can only offer the national church about $200,000 instead of the $700,000 Charles Bennison would like to give to support Mrs. Schori's "vision."

Mrs. Schori forgets Luke 4:18 where Jesus says "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed." Mrs. Schori has no such gospel. Whatever good works she thinks she can accomplish with the minimal resources at her disposal, she completely overlooks the words of our Lord who said the poor we would have with us always. Mrs. Schori thinks she can play God and do better than Jesus with loads of money and an MDG plan.

But the biggest and most arrogant of Mrs. Schori's claims is her belief that she can unite the Anglican Communion with MDG's, even as her province withers and dies, while the provinces of the Global South thrive and grow DESPITE massive social problems.

Do you think for a moment that if the Province of Nigeria reversed its evangelistic thrust and took up MDG's as its new mantra that it would continue to grow and reach its goal of 36 million saved souls under Archbishop Peter Akinola?

Furthermore, the fiction, floated by bishops like John Chane of Washington, that Global South archbishops are not concerned for the welfare of all their people, is a myth needing to be exploded. In recent months, Archbishops Peter Akinola (Nigeria), Benjamin Nzimbi (Kenya) and Henry Luke Orombi (Uganda) have all spoken out about government corruption in their respective countries. To say they are not socially concerned is pure rubbish.

The Anglican Communion is on the brink of collapse. The divisions seem irreconcilable. The Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, seems now to agree that is the case. http://tinyurl.com/2fswj8 Mrs. Schori cites Gamaliel, in the Book of Acts, who said, 'Well, what you're about may not be right, but we'll just have to wait and see what comes of it. If it is of God, then there won't be any stopping it.'"

The truth is the train has left the station and next week it will stop in Dar es Salaam, where Mrs. Schori might be invited to get off, graciously of course, and if she doesn't, the other primatial passengers might alight, cross the tracks and jump onto a kingdom train that is bound for glory. There won't be any MDG's to contend with, just a train full of saved souls singing the praises of Him who died and rose again. Sadly Mrs. Schori will not be one of them.

For the USA TODAY story click here: http://tinyurl.com/2wyqc7

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