Is Presiding Bishp Schori a Christian?

Posted August 15th, 2009 by admin

Presiding Bishop Katherine Schori admitted to the General Convention in July what many already suspected, that she had never had a personal conversion to faith in Jesus Christ and considered the idea idolatrous. In her opening address to the Convention she said, “The crisis of this moment has several parts, and like Episcopalians,  particularly ones in Mississippi, they’re all related. The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy - that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use 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. 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 all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention.” Bishop Schori - opening address

A month or so later she managed to get a youtube piece up denying that Jesus Christ is God’s singular way to salvation  . . . as opposed say to Islam or Judaism or . . . .whatever.

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UCC - Goodbye honestly, Sacred Conversations?? and we don’t have WHAT??

Posted August 8th, 2009 by admin

UCC - Goodbye honestly, Sacred Conversations?? and we don’t have WHAT??

The June UCC Synod meeting offered little to prompt national headlines but in saying goodbye after ten years as President of the UCC, John Thomas pulled back the curtain to tell it like it is. In opening his farewell speech he said, “I do want to acknowledge that there are many ways in which reach exceeded grasp, hopes were not fulfilled, and challenges not met.  We are a smaller church than we were ten years ago.  Our national staff has shrunk with all the attendant pain that entails.  We have said farewell to one of our Conferences.  We are moving in painfully slow ways to acknowledge and claim a new fund raising environment with all of its challenge and opportunity.  We are closing more churches than we are opening or welcoming.  The ecumenical vision which has been my passion continues, but the organizations embodying that vision are more fragile than ever.  Much about our institutional life feels very vulnerable, and efforts to address those urgent concerns still meet denial and resistance.  You have been gracious not to lay the burden or the blame for this on me alone, and I have resisted doing that to myself as well.  But I do worry about our future, and I lament that we are not where I thought we would be when I began ten years ago.”John Thomas Farewell

The Grand Rapids Synod featured “Sacred Conversations on Race”, in which delegates shared their angst and revelations on personal racism. All very well until the power politics of still another restructuring revealed the reality of a racial angst that was anything but sacred. African American, Hispanic and Asian delegates spoke angrily about exclusion and a patronizing response by President Thomas provoked an old fashioned demonstration. Whoops!
Finally, during a treasurers report while most delegates and visitors were dozing or sending text messages, a youth delegate went to the microphone to ask, “does the United Church of Christ have a budget?”
There was audible chuckling in the room until the UCC treasurer responded, “actually we don’t. The UCC has not operated with a formalized budget since the last restructuring probably in 2000 or 2001″. Well what do you know folks - a major mainline denomination has simply been operating without a budget for nearly a decade? Go figure.
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