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.
The first rule for individuals it to “get right with God”, This is not rocket science. Salvation is for all, but each one of is us is an individual and each one of us must “work out our salvation”, as Paul puts it in one of his epistles. That means embracing the gospel in its entirety, and putting Christ above everything else in our lives.
How did such a woman become a bishop, anyway? It must have been a PC selection. She does not know or understand Jesus Christ and His mission at all. She ought not to throw stones as other’s faith and call it heresy. She is promoting heresy herself.
Note verse 9 as well as other verses in the Scriptures plainly teaches to those who search the Scriptures that every individual is responsible before the Christ of God to beleive this gospel or suffer the consequences of the wrath of god for not believing His Testimony of Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour. Each person says yea or nay to the witness of God and this woman is a heretic who like so many changes the Word of God into a lie like her master Satan.
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
Romans: 10:
5 For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them.
6 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:)
7 Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.)
8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
11 For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.
12 ¶ For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him.
13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Funny, Jesus isn’t quoted in my Bible telling the parables of the many lost sheep, the lost coins, the lost sons, the ungrateful servants. Sheesh, do people even read the Bible anymore?
Every Israelite slave in Egypt had to put blood on their door posts to avoid the judgment (passover). It was a forshadow of appropriating the blood of Christ today to be saved.
“putting Christ above everything else...”
Well said, Gumdrop. If we put Christ in his proper place (at the top) in our lives, everything else seems to fall into place. I don’t mean that my life is perfect, but through Christ I have true Joy and I have peace with the things that don’t go “my” way. Part of being a Christian is submitting to the will of God, even when truthfully we may not agree or understand His reasons. It is a key component of faith. Sadly, our society and even some of our denominations have trouble with this concept, and it is to our great loss.—JM
Funny, Jesus isn’t quoted in my Bible telling the parables of the many lost sheep, the lost coins, the lost sons, the ungrateful servants. Sheesh, do people even read the Bible anymore?
___________________________
No time to read the Bible with all the academic literature on tribal umba bunga wisdom to keep up with.
"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."
Thanks for the ping, Fru.
With these others of hers, which I just corrected for grammar:"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." -- That "GROUP is a form of idolatry for it puts US and OUR words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being."
I don't see any difference. In fact, she just refuted herself by saying that her own words in the form of idolatry, in the place of God's words. It isn't about her words, or my words, or anyone's words. It is about the fact that God calls individuals, not groups. He didn't Abram and his family, nor David and all his brothers, nor Isaiah and his family, nor... He didn't say to the thief on the cross, you and your ubuntu buddies will be with me in paradise. But YOU. He says..
"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
and:
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Nothing there about when the GROUP, the ubuntu of you all act together doing nicey nice things, then you will have life. Nothing there except through group hugs and ubuntu mumbo jumbo will you see the Father. Nada..
Sounds like just another cult that says that only through their group can anyone find salvation with very little mention of coming through Jesus.
Ubuntu is all about the pantheistic concept of interconnectedness
< offtopic>So, should I ditch Ubuntu for it's parent distro, Debian?< /offtopic>
:=)
It's easy to see why this church is dying and 7 day a week Christians are leaving it.
In other words, Humanism....
I wonder how many African tribesmen are humanists?
Schori is a heretic, and as Paul feared, easily deceived.
Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
Muslim Priest and Buddhist Bishop-Elect Are Raising Questions About Syncretism
Found at: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/marchweb-only/112-53.0.html?start=2
For years, Episcopal Church leaders have taught that God can be found in other faiths. Now some clergy are pursuing him there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For the pluralists, the Shema of the Jews, the Christian Creeds, the Muslim Shahada (There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet,) and the Buddhist belief that at the heart of reality there is the emptiness of Nirvana, all have their own saving power.
In an October 18, 2006, interview broadcast on NPR's "Here and Now," Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stated, "Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. That is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through human experience—through human experience of the divine."
Jesus Christ is the way and the truth and life for us, Canadian Anglican Bishop Michael Ingham argued in his 1997 book Mansions of the Spirit, but there are other "diverse paths to God." The Bible stands as an account of "emerging God-consciousness," he argued, but our knowledge of God is not solely confined to Scripture, as there is "a yet wider view of God's self-disclosure" through human mystical experiences.
"We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine," Jefferts Schori told Time magazine in its July 10, 2006, issue. "But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box."
Protestant and Catholic Church leaders have largely rejected these views, from the Council of Florence's 1438 declaration that there was "no salvation outside the church" to the 1974 Lausanne Declaration by evangelicals that there was "no salvation outside a personal and explicit confession of faith in Jesus Christ."
Anglican theologian J. I. Packer defended the exclusive role of Jesus in his 1994 book, Jesus Christ the Only Savior, while Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the current Pope Benedict XVI, in 1996 called this interreligious relativism "the fundamental problem of faith in our time."
In 2000, the Roman Catholic Church clarified its position in Dominus Iesus, which stated "the thesis that the revelation of Jesus Christ is of a limited, incomplete, and imperfect character, and must be completed by the revelation present in other religions, is contrary to the faith of the Church. … This position radically contradicts the affirmations of faith according to which the full and complete revelation of the salvific mystery of God is given in Jesus Christ."
"If Billy Graham or Pope Benedict" were asked the questions Episcopal leader Jefferts Schori were asked, they would respond that "Jesus is the Way, the Truth and Life," Harmon said. In a time of doctrinal confusion, "good leadership claims its particular identity from the stability of its historical faith," he argued.
"It's the leadership of this church giving up the unique claims of Christianity," Harmon said. "They act like it's Baskin-Robbins. You just choose a different flavor and everyone gets in the store."
Druid priests
The question of multiple paths leading to the divine has also been a professional question for some Episcopal clergy.
At the Episcopal Church's 2000 General Convention—the triennial meeting of its governing body—a booklet entitled Resources for Jubilee was distributed to deputies; it carried an endorsement from the convention's secretary that it could serve as a "possible source of ideas to carry with you." Enclosed in the booklet was the Summer 2000 issue of Spirituality and Health with articles promoting "witchcamps," the Wiccan "Pentacle of Iron," and a "shamanic journey into the underworld and back again" taken by an Episcopal priest with the guidance of a "raccoon spirit."
It is Not of Man, otherwise a person could lose it after they got it. No "SALVATION IS OF GOD"
. God Implants the Faith to Believe for "It (faith) is the Gift of God.... that no one should boast"
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori needs to go back to Theology School and learn about THE DEATH OF MANKIND.
THANK you for finally getting that joke out of the way. I can’t believe it took 30 posts! :D
“mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”. Strikes head with board. Repeat.
Q: For the past 2000 years up to the present day people have awaited the return of the one called Jesus as the saviour of the world. This was demonstrated recently when people of many lands took part in the 'Walk for Jesus'. You say that Jesus have returned and is now in Rome at this very time. What do you think people's reaction will be when one called Maitreya declares himself as the 'World Teacher'? Do you think people will still regard Jesus as the promised one?
A. For a time, it may well be that very orthodox Christians - in particular Fundamentalists - will reject both Maitreya and the Master Jesus, now in Rome. He has not come 'on a cloud at the end of the world' as they expect, nor does He have holes in His hands and feet. But gradually, many Christians will find it easier to accept the Master Jesus as the returned Christ (at least the name is the same) rather than Maitreya, and the Master Jesus is in charge of the Christian Church worldwide. Eventually, however, I believe that most people, Christian and otherwise, will accept that Maitreya is indeed the Christ, Messiah, Krishna - World Teacher for all.
Q. Many Christians fear that Maitreya is the anti-christ; will he be able to say or do something to assuage these fears?
A. It may well be that, for many, the acceptance of Maitreya as the Christ will be impossible in this life. For the vast majority of Christians, however, I believe that the events and experience of the Day of Declaration and His subsequent mission of salvage and teaching will remove their fears. The tree, after all, is known by its fruits.
Q: Will Maitreya be accepted by Christians?
A. Most Christians, I think, will find it easier to accept and follow the Master Jesus rather than the Lord Maitreya. Jesus 'stood in' for the Lord Maitreya. As far as Jews are concerned, the Master Jesus is the Messiah, though they have yet to recognize Him as such. He came to them, as a Jew, to end the Jewish dispensation and prepare the way for Christendom.
No-one knows for sure, but my feeling is that the vast majority of open-minded Christians will accept Maitreya and the Master Jesus, Whom they will see side-by-side. Maitreya will introduce the Master Jesus and other Masters to the world after the Day of Declaration. The Master Jesus has a special task in that He is in charge of the Christian Churches, and very many Christians will look to Him for guidance and teaching.
Q: What will happen to people who do not go along with Maitreya's teachings when He comes out?
A. There is a huge misunderstanding underlying this question.
Maitreya's teachings will be given for humanity to consider and accept or reject as people wish. No infringement of our free will will ever be made by Maitreya and His Group of Masters. Nothing will 'happen' to anyone who dislikes or disagrees with Maitreya's ideas and advice - except that they will probably hold up their own evolution by their inability to make the shift in consciousness required to share and so create justice and peace in the world.
Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here [is] Christ, or there; believe [it] not.
For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if [it were] possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Behold, I have told you before.
Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, he is in the desert; go not forth: behold, [he is] in the secret chambers; believe [it] not.
For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
For wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together. - Matthew 24:21-28
Hahaha. I LIKE that, with or without the UN condiment added. Perhaps I will steal it for later use.
Well, no, that's untrue. If you really bother to look at it, she's espousing an almost Calvinist theology here. Look at what she said:
"It's caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus... 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."
I disagree with Schori on a wide range of issues, but on this central point she is correct.
Now wait a minute here. She seems to be saying that salvation is a collective thing. She will not be saved as an individual, but as a member of the church. She can therefore do whatever she wants and, as long as she’s a member of the church, she’ll be alright because Christ saves the church. Isn’t this concept a major feature of Roman Catholic theology?
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