Episcopal Bishop calls individual salvation 'heresy,' 'idolatry'

One News Now ^ | 7/9/2009 | Staff

[IbJensen]

ANAHEIM, CA - Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says it's "heresy" to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner's prayer of repentance.

In her opening address to the church's General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori called that "the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."

The presiding bishop said that view is "caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus."

According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual's prayer can achieve a saving relationship with God. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy."

[piperpilot]

Agreed. I was raised as an Episcopalian but after reading the Bible in its entirety (something few Episcopalians do these days), I find it more and more difficult to go to services every week. I think I get a better understanding of my faith listening to podcasts by Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Gary Wilkerson and R.C. Sproul while I’m outside working in the yard and mowing the lawn than during the 10-minute sermon about the Millenium Development Goals at my church. It’s sad how the Episcopal Church has become nothing more than just another vehicle to promote Socialism and various other left wing causes.

[kingpins10]

Hmmmm. She needs to read the part in the Bible about female bishops/pastors.

[Gargantua]

"Sounds like this Bishop needs to read the Bible a bit more."

Actually, she needs to take off the pants and the robe, put her apron back on and get back in the kitchen, shut up and do as she's told... as God intended. :-)

There, that's done...

;-/

[firebasecody]

Lordy. The Anglican Church keeps going further and further into la la land. It is very sad to watch that shipwreck.

[Jackson57]

You’re welcome in the Catholic Church ... :-)

[MuttTheHoople]

God to bishop you are fired

Literally.

[meandog]

This the same woman (I refuse to call her Bishop) who referred to Tiller as a saint and a martyr. How proud members of the Episcopal Church must be, having this person as head of their church. Almost as proud as they much have been when their gay bishop in NH announced that he’d always wanted to be “June bride”.

No...it was The (Wrong) Rt. Rev. Katherine Ragsdale (but also an Episcopal bishop)

[Kolokotronis]

Fear not, bd; this comes from a woman who wears a rainbow oven mitt as a mitre! She and her comic book theology are enough to gag a maggot on a fence post a quarter of a mile away.

[stephenjohnbanker]

“Sounds a lot like the new Dean of the Harvard Divinity School (which is essentially an Episcopalian entity) publicly declaring that abortion is “a blessing””

You’ve got to be joking!

[afraidfortherepublic]

Is this the same female bishop who proclaimed “Abortion is a gift”?

Ooops. Now I remember. That was the newfemale head of the Episcopal Seminary.

Lord, have Mercy!

[savedbygrace]

Spirit of Antichrist. “Hath God said?”

[PapaBear3625]

In a few short sentences the priestess babbles like an obomba sycophant.

Here is her complete speech. She has a fondness for the word Ubuntu, a term coined by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Reading between the lines, she's saying you can't be Christian without being Socialist.

[MrB]

What I’m wondering is - what does she believe is “correct doctrine”?

That we must work to achieve “collective” salvation?
Let me guess, only through achieving “social justice” can we achieve our collective salvation, and thus our own individual salvation.

I’m putting the over/under on that at 85.

[MrB]

I’ve found that whenever scripture demolishes liberal doctrine,

the liberal being demolished will either claim another “equally valid interpretation” or that scripture itself is not divine revelation.

In other words, they choose their worldly (Satan inspired) religion over the Gospel.

[Jackson57]

You’re correct. I got confused.

“This is about the loss of a man who was a saint and a martyr. He was a prayerful man who put his life at risk to protect others and died for it. People are in shock, outrage and mourning. They need a place to go.” - “Rt Rev” Katherine Ragsdale

[PapaBear3625]

Is she incoherently trying to frame a modernist Pelagian type heresy? After A. Comte, the individual is subordinate to the ‘community’, and so perhaps in her view the attainment of God’s grace can only be obtained by the community and not by individual effort.

You got it, that's what she's doing. See my post #52.

[meandog]

hey genius, there are a lot of conscienceless men out there and I a woman will instruct them in court if need be about what their obligations are to the women they impregnated when it was “a good time” and the babies they created. Furthermore, you may stfu it has nothing to with anatomy and everything to do with a godly developed character.

Either of you ever hear about "Lilith"? She supposedly was Adam's 1st wife and was created from the same dust as he, rather than from a rib, therefore she was on equal footing...according to the Biblical legend. Adam wanted her back.

[MrB]

That’s funny right there.

Looks like she could be an extra in
“Killer Klowns from Outer Space”

[MrB]

Satan, since the beginning, has tried to place doubt on God’s Word.

[NavyCanDo]

This is actually an old debate within the Church - can we be forgiven without uttering the traditional confession of sin, in other words by Faith Alone? Theologians have argued this since the days of the early Church. The Thief on the cross is usually used as the point of argument. Remember the thief on the cross, who said only, “remember me when you enter your Fathers Kingdom. The same thief on the cross is also used by some to prove water baptism is not essential to enter Heaven.

I'm not a Theologian, so I'll just confess my sins and have faith they they were already paid for on that cross. But it seems wrong to me for this Bishop to call those on the other side of the debate idolterers.