Posted on 06/19/2006 1:10:35 PM PDT by SmithL
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Newly elected leader of the U.S. Episcopal Church Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said on Monday she believed homosexuality was no sin and homosexuals were created by God to love people of the same gender.
Jefferts Schori, bishop of the Diocese of Nevada, was elected on Sunday as the first woman leader of the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church. the U.S. branch of the worldwide Anglican Communion. She will formally take office later this year.
Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.
"I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts. Each one of us comes into this world with a different collection of things that challenge us and things that give us joy and allow us to bless the world around us," she said.
"Some people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender and some people come into this world with affections directed at people of the other gender."
Jefferts Schori's election seemed certain to exacerbate splits within a Episcopal Church that is already deeply divided over homosexuality with several dioceses and parishes threatening to break away.
It could also widen divisions with other Anglican communities, including the Church of England, which do not allow women bishops. In the worldwide Anglican church women are bishops only in Canada, the United States and New Zealand.
Three years ago when the Church last met in convention, a majority of U.S. bishops backed the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history.
The Robinson issue has been particularly criticized in Africa where the church has a growing membership and where homosexuality is often taboo.
Jefferts Schori, who was raised a Roman Catholic and graduated in marine biology with a doctorate specialization in squids and oysters, supported the consecration of Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay bishop in more than 450 years of Anglican history.
The 52-year-old bishop is married to Richard Schori, a retired theoretical mathematician. They have one daughter, Katharine Johanna, 24, a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and a pilot like her mother.
Asked how she reconciled her position on homosexuality with specific passages in the Bible declaring sexual relations between men an abomination, Jefferts Schori said the Bible was written in a very different historical context by people asking different questions.
"The Bible has a great deal to teach us about how to live as human beings. The Bible does not have so much to teach us about what sorts of food to eat, what sorts of clothes to wear -- there are rules in the Bible about those that we don't observe today," she said.
"The Bible tells us about how to treat other human beings, and that's certainly the great message of Jesus -- to include the unincluded."
Eliminate sin by defining nothing as sin. Satan must be very satisfied.
According to ECUSA, believing in the existence os sin is the only sin.
Just another smorgasboard Christian church.
What next? Will she say it’s OK to marry my Cocker Spaniel?
Schori = Apostate
My MILs gonna have a cow! That's her church!
Mix just enough truth with damnable lies and gullible people are dying to drink it.
The sin is sodomy.
I guess Leviticus 18 has been removed their Bibles.
Of course it's okay. God put animals on this earth to be loved./sarcasm
In the absence of a universally accepted proof, all beliefs are relative.
PERFECT!!
I suppose that is correct. I am attracted to sin. I may not ACT on that impulse and I SHOULD pray to have that inward desire removed.I may want to eat of the tree of Good and Evil but as long as I eschew I did not sin.
So much for the "inspired word of God"
(Interviewed on CNN, Jefferts Schori was asked if it was a sin to be homosexual.
"I don't believe so. I believe that God creates us with different gifts.)
1) Apparantly one of those gifts is for certain guys to place their genitals into the rectal orifice of another guy.
2) If she doesn't think it's a sin I suggest she re-read her Bible. Or is that dusty old book just mean't as "guidelines" to ECUSA?
Again, these are the churches belonging to the NCC:
• African Methodist Episcopal Church
• The African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
• Alliance of Baptists
• American Baptist Churches in the USA
• The Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America
• Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
• Church of the Brethren
• The Coptic Orthodox Church in North America
• The Episcopal Church
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
• Friends United Meeting
• Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
• Hungarian Reformed Church in America
• International Council of Community Churches
• Korean Presbyterian Church in America
• Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church
• Mar Thoma Church
• Moravian Church in America Northern Province and Southern Province
• National Baptist Convention of America
• National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc.
• National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
• Orthodox Church in America
• Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA
• Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends • Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
• Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.
• Reformed Church in America
• Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada
• The Swedenborgian Church
• Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church of America
• United Church of Christ
• The United Methodist Church
I wonder if she thinks there's such a thing as adultery.
There is one such church in our neighborhood, the building and grounds are rather large, Sunday services have 10 -15 cars in the parking lot.
“The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.” – Pope Pius XII, Radio Message to the United States National Catechetical Congress held in Boston (October 26, 1946)
The Labradors and I are waiting for our day in family court so the adoption will be legal!
We want equal rights too! /sarc
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