Posted on 07/10/2009 5:04:53 AM PDT by Frumanchu
ANAHEIM, Calif. (ABP) -- The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church called the evangelical notion that individuals can be right with God a "great Western heresy" that is behind many problems facing the church and the wider society.
Describing a United States church in crisis, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told delegates to the group's triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., that the overarching connection to problems facing Episcopalians has to do with "the great Western heresy -- that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."
"It's caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus," Jefferts Schori, the first woman to be elected as a primate in the worldwide Anglican Communion three years ago, said. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."
Jefferts Schori said countering individualistic faith was one reason the theme chosen for the meeting was "Ubuntu," an African word that describes humaneness, caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation.
"Ubuntu doesn't have any 'I's in it," she said. "The 'I' only emerges as we connect -- and that is really what the word means: I am because we are, and I can only become a whole person in relationship with others. There is no 'I' without 'you,' and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the One who created us."
Jefferts Schori said "heretical and individualistic understanding" contributes to problems like neglect for the environment and the current worldwide economic recession.
"The sins of a few have wreaked havoc with the lives of many, as greed and dishonesty have destroyed livelihoods, educational possibilities, care for the aged, and multiple forms of creativity," she said. "And that's just the aftermath of Ponzi schemes for which a handful will go to jail."
She said in order to be faithful, "we need to be continually rediscovering that my needs are not the only significant ones."
"Ubuntu implies that selfishness and self-centeredness cannot long survive," she said. "We are our siblings' knowers and their keepers, and we cannot be known without them."
"We have no meaning, no true existence in isolation," she said. "We shall indeed die as we forget or ignore that reality."
About 200 Episcopal bishops and 850 clergy and lay deputies were expected to convene for the 10-day meeting. Business items are set to include debates over human sexuality, politics and poverty.
One resolution being considered calls for "generous discretion" to be extended to clergy in exercising pastoral ministry in six states -- Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- where the civil marriage of same-gender couples has been legalized as well as other states that may follow suit in the next three years.
The 2.1-million-member denomination has argued vociferously about homosexuality since 2003, when the group approved the election of its first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Many more conservative Episcopalians and a handful of congregations have begun breaking away from the church in the years since.
Southern Baptist mega-church pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, took sides in his sister denomination's debate recently by showing up in Texas to encourage about 800 Episcopalians attending the first annual meeting of a conservative breakaway group calling itself the Anglican Church in North America.
Warren, who spoke out last fall against legal gay marriage in California, said in January that any nearby Anglican congregation that loses its property after breaking with the U.S. Episcopal Church was welcome to meet on the campus of his Saddleback Church.
-30-
Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.
A joke? You mean I installed SUSE for nothing??
At a time when the push for globalization is on a steep incline, and the popular speculative interpretations of Biblical prophecy include one-world government, it's no surprise that people's eschatological views increasingly color their commentary and even affect their short-term decision making. If I didn't think Christ were sitting on His Throne right now, I'd probably be worried too. Nevertheless, His Kingdom is advancing (and is no way tied to the rise or fall of the United States of America).
Amen!
While I believe the world is manipulated almost completely these days, and in ways we can't even imagine, I still believe God knows what He's doing and that creation is being redeemed as we speak.
Rather than look to Scripture as the early warning system for the deceit that currently is taking place, we need only go back a few decades to the John Birch Society and the patriot movement of the '90's to see that what they all warned about is exactly what is happening today.
God willing, dissent in this country will grow rather than be silenced as it is in Iran and China.
To that end, we should all pray our beloved celebrities stay healthy and off the front page.
Paul clearly identified what was required. Yah'shua(Jesus) => YHvH is my salvation.
Joel 2:32 "And it will come about that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Will be delivered; ..... Her argument is with YHvH.
shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach
Romans 10:13 for "WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED."
Thank you the prayers are appreciated.
My husband and I left for an break-away traditional Anglican church when our children were little. We could see the writing on the wall.
My auntie attends a liberal parish and seems to have bought the new way of thinking and thinks everything is wonderful. My mother attneds a traditional conservative parish. She is elderly and has 4th stage breast cancer. She is devastated by all this. Please keep her in your prayers.
BOTH. In the first place, God does not make souls with a cookie-cutter: Every person is unique. Thus a man has a particular differentiation of "mental and spiritual equipment and needs," so to speak, as compared to another man. Moreover, it seems to me that the Holy Spirit can work through rituals just as well as directly on individual souls if He wants to — the Spirit bloweth where it wilt.
Plus the two seem complementary in a certain way, "ritual" symbolizing "body" and "heart-direct" symbolizing "soul." God made man body and soul. They are designed to work together. So why cannot ritual and direct Spiritual presence work together likewise?
Other than that teensy quibble, Dr. Eckleburg, I think your essay/post at #180 is absolutely splendid. Thank you oh so very much dear sister in Christ!
I will, kaylee. Your mother, you, and all your loved ones are in my prayers!
AMEN. THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT. No rites or chants or mystical events will do anything.
And I don’t want to be standing next to her when God sends her to her destination. Lightning and all, you know.
Yeah, didn’t Hillary say something about that not so long ago? The common good is communism thinly disguised.
Yeah, didn’t Hillary say something about that not so long ago? The common good is communism thinly disguised.
When you read your Bible, you can’t help but see current events/end times prophecy coming to pass. He wants us to be AWARE, not consumed or worried by it.
I used to type papers for Philosophy and Religion students and believe me, they just go round and round and where it ends, nobody knows. Vain, indeed.
Like the ten maides, five had their lamps filled and five did not. I believe it will be that way in the end, when Christ comes back for His own. Those filled with His Spirit will go and those who are not (religious folks but not filled) will stay behind where there will be much wailing.
We need to trust that God will show us who REALLY desires that drink of water and won’t spill it all over the floor.
God knows who will listen and who will walk away. We need to ask HIM who He wants us to witness to. Ask Him to bring people across your path daily that have a hunger for Him. Otherwise you are wasting your time on ‘swine.’
I am virtually certain that the answer to your question is NO! But I will ping some better able to answer this point.
The Pope is pulling for a one world government couched in phony “religious” justification - socialism. He simple lacks the courage to some right out and state he’d like to see world wide socialism. THIS is what caught Obama’s eye - plus Hispanics are typically Catholic. That’s a doubly hit for Obama - letting Catholicism promote socialism and get the Hispanic vote in addition to a Hispanic U.S.S.C. who is another racist and socialist.
Thanks for the ping, I think ;-)
Do you refuse a dying person a glass of water because they are going to die anyway?
= = =
OF COURSE, I give the water.
However, I do NOT give them a glass of . . . swill from a hog trough and tell them it’s spring water from Heaven.
The realization of such a “moral and ethical” one-world religion or system of governance by means of our own human powers would be impossible. We are made in the image of God, to be moral actors in this world, to cooperate in His Law. We have reason and free will; but these gifts of God are never sufficient to establish a global moral and ethical order, either religious or secular.
But if we bear witness unto the Lord, and do His Will — above all loving Him wholly, heart, mind, and soul — then He can work in and through us. We can start; but only He can “finish” what we start, if we begin in Love and Truth.
= = = =
QUITE SO.
However, the good Pope seems to be calling for something . . . pleading for something . . . and that something
seems more or less clearly to be . . . human agencies collaborating together toward a more sanitized globalism.
It won’t happen, this side of Armageddon. He should know that.
Is he advertising for God to come and fix globalism?
He should know that’s scheduled after Armageddon.
imho, He should NOT trigger false hopes in anyone about the redeemability of the state of globalism prior to Armageddon.
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