Speaking about the future of ecumenism and dangers in the Sudan, the leader of the Episcopal Church takes a bizarre detour into pantheism.Jeff WaltonDecember 9, 2010
Note: the American Anglican Council offers a video segment responding to the Presiding Bishop's controversial comments that can be viewed by clicking here. This is the third of three articles covering the annual National Council of Churches General Assembly in New Orleans. For an overview of political and human rights resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, please click here. For the presentation of the Islamic Society of North America's Sayeed M. Sayyid, please click here.
Note: the American Anglican Council offers a video segment responding to the Presiding Bishop's controversial comments that can be viewed by clicking here.
This is the third of three articles covering the annual National Council of Churches General Assembly in New Orleans. For an overview of political and human rights resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, please click here. For the presentation of the Islamic Society of North America's Sayeed M. Sayyid, please click here.
Usually preoccupied with the promotion of alternative sexualities and liberal theology, the U.S.-based Episcopal Church does have a positive track record in one area: Sudan. Long before most American Christians had even heard of Darfur, the Episcopal Church was involved in nearby war-torn Southern Sudan, where an Islamist government in the North persecutes the predominantly Christian population in the South.
Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori commendably spoke about an upcoming independence referendum there during the recent General Assembly of the National Council of Churches (NCC) and Church World Service (CWS) held in New Orleans. Credibly, Jefferts Schori warns the gathered ecumenical leaders about an impending Rwanda-like escalation of the already unfolding conflict. However, the leader of 2.1 million U.S. Episcopalians missed the mark in her attempts simultaneously to promote a seeming Universalist theology with a decidedly pantheist-sounding message.
Saying that “the image born of chaos science that a butterfly’s wing beats in China my affect the course of a storm in the Gulf of Mexico is daily reality,” Jefferts Schori argued for a global interconnectedness that entails instantaneous communications, the spread of pandemics, oil spills and glacial melting.
The Presiding Bishop noted that the gathered ecumenical leaders “preach and teach frequently about the many and interconnected parts of the body of Christ.”
“There is an even deeper and more pervasive understanding of our interconnectedness, the whole of God’s creation, which Sally McFague has famously called the ‘Body of God’,” Jefferts Schori proposed.
Quoting author McFague makes sense for Jefferts Schori, since McFague is a Yale-educated feminist theologian who shares a strong interest in ecology with the Presiding Bishop, herself an oceanographer. In her book Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age, McFague asserted that "theology is mostly fiction", but that new metaphors can help conceive God appropriately "for our time." This emphasis on relativism and personal experience is strikingly similar to Jefferts Schori’s own past theological statements.
The Episcopal leader went on to claim that a second century of ecumenical cooperation must have “an expanded view ” concerned “with all of creation, all of humanity, and all people of faith.”
“This ‘Body of God’ has many, many parts,” Jefferts Schori noted. “The voices of people of faith must be a prophetic source for lasting change that moves toward healing the body of God. If we can begin to affirm our place in that body of God, in concert with other people of faith, both Christian and not, we will discover that the Holy One has been here before us.”
The mainline official suggested that God was “luring us into an unexpected and radically open future.”
“We must think globally, we must consider the whole body of God, not simply our local congregations or single denominations, nations or faith traditions,” Jefferts Schori said, making the case for expanding ecumenical work into interfaith work.
The Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop then attempted to cite the Sudan conflict as an example of seemingly pantheistic interconnectivity.
Jefferts Schori explained factually that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) negotiated five years ago expects a referendum on the 9th of January 2011 – a referendum to permit the Southern Sudanese to remain connected to the Khartoum government and Northern Sudan, or to gain their independence as a separate nation.
Noting religious and tribal difference compounding the divisions, the Presiding Bishop warned of environmental destruction, human displacement and two decades of war that have cause untold misery.
“At this moment, just two months before that scheduled referendum, there has been no preparation for it, and no one has been registered to vote,” Jefferts Schori said. “Religious leaders expect that more people will die, whether or not the referendum is held.”
“It is only as God’s body, reaching across not only Christian difference, but into the hearts and hands of our interfaith partners, that we have any possibility of joining with Jesus’ witness on behalf of the least of these,” The Episcopal official said. “We can look and not see, we can listen and not hear, or we can witness and act in solidarity with our sisters and brothers as part of the body of God.”
What Jefferts Schori seemed to miss was that neither her persecuted Anglican brothers and sisters in southern Sudan, nor their Islamist oppressors in the country’s north, share her all inclusive views of “the Body of God.” Notable oil interests aside, the North has sought aggressively to forcibly convert southerners to a strident version of Islam. Conversely, the Southern Sudanese churches do not share a syncretistic view. If they did, then conversion to Islam might be preferable to the frequently documented martyrdom or slavery imposed by Arab Islamists from the North. Sudanese Christians have no desire for martyrdom, but they are willing to die for a faith that proclaims the exclusivity of Christ.
Unfortunately, in her well-intentioned aims of a broad inclusivity that stretches over religious differences, Jefferts Schori seems to have lost sight of the exclusivity that makes her co-religionists willing to die in the face of such terrible adversity.