Episcopal Bishop: Reflect “Divine Glory in Fully Alive-ness” on Climate Activism

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Anders Werjyd, ELCA, Environment, Episcopal, Episcopal Church, Global Warming, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Jeff Walton, Julio Murray, Katharine Jefferts Schori, Lutheran, Marc Andrus, Mariann Budde, Mary Minette, Richard Cizik, Shannon Johnston, Willis Jenkins

Church of Sweden Archbishop Anders Werjyd and Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori present their signed climate change statement at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. on May 1. (Photo: Mariann Budde/Episcopal Diocese of Washington)

By Jeff Walton (@JeffreyHWalton)

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church encouraged a church climate change gathering to stand firm “in the face of those who would destroy God’s reflection in creation.”

Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s words came as Swedish Lutherans and American Episcopalians entered into an agreement on climate change in which the two churches committed to “serve as the hands of God in working to heal the brokenness of our hurting world.”

Release of the joint statement signed by Jefferts Schori and Church of Sweden Archbishop Anders Werjyd came during the event on “Sustaining hope in the face of climate change” held May 1-2 at St. John’s Episcopal Church Lafayette Square in Washington, D.C. The full statement can be viewed here.

The event featured panel discussions on international and local church responses to climate change, as well as a morning of lobbying Congressional and Administration officials on climate policy. The May 2 panels were heard by several Episcopal and Lutheran officials, including Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, Episcopal Bishop of Washington Mariann Budde, Bishop of Virginia Shannon Johnston, Bishop of Maryland Eugene Sutton, Bishop of California Marc Andrus, Anglican Bishop of Panama Julio Murray and New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good President Richard Cizik, among others.

In a noonday homily at St. John’s, Jefferts Schori recalled St. Athanasius and his opposition to the heresy of Arianism, which espoused a human Jesus fully distinct from God the Father.

“If Jesus were not fully God and fully human it would deny any possibility that beings who inhabit flesh and blood human bodies could have a real relationship with God, whom we call the Holy One,” Jefferts Schori intoned. “It is not only God in human flesh who images the Holy One. All parts of God’s creation must reflect their maker in some way.”

In reference to “the riotous diversity of the flowers of the field,” the creatures of the sea and the sparrows, Jefferts Schori noted that God intends that each should flourish.

“When Jesus says that ‘you will be hated because of what you teach’, well, watch out if you advocate for justice for all the world’s people and all the other parts of creation,” The Episcopal Church official warned. “But don’t be afraid to speak out and tell what you know, for your soul will find life in doing that.”

Quoting Saint Irenaeus, Jefferts Schori remarked “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

“Fully alive human beings know themselves made in the image of God. Created as brother to the sun and sister to the moon, friend to the deer and ant and sparrow as well as to the enfolding blanket of atmosphere and ocean we are one family, related through the one who created us to reflect the divine glory in fully alive-ness,” Jefferts Schori declared. “There is no room in that for misusing our brothers and sisters, human or otherwise. There is abundant hope for all given the image we reflect and the ever-creative one in whom we live and move and have our being.”

The Episcopal Church official declared that Athanasius “stood firm in the face of those who would deny God’s presence in human flesh — we must do the same in the face of those who would destroy God’s reflection in creation.”

The midday homily was followed later the same afternoon by a panel on international response to climate change with Murray, scientist Kevin Noone, Professor of Social Ethics Willis Jenkins of Yale Divinity School and Mary Minette, Director of Environmental Education and Advocacy for the ECLA’s Washington Office.

During the panel, Murray advised the church audience to “give the information” that people need to know, rather than answering “wrong questions” reporters may ask. This, he laughed, was risky as “they won’t give the microphone back to you.”

Minette also expressed dissatisfaction with media coverage of climate issues, asserting that reporters cover the issue as an argument, “give voice to dissenters” and elevate a position that she felt was not on equal footing with climate activists.

Asked about mainline Protestant response to climate matters, Minette observed that there was “little interest” in the media among what mainline denominations espoused about the climate, with greater interest directed towards Evangelical Christian responses.

Bishop Spong’s “Non-Literal” Good Friday

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Bishop Shannon Johnston, Diocese of Virginia, Episcopal, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Jeff Walton, John Shelby Spong, Shannon Johnston, St. Paul's Richmond

Departing orthodoxy?: Retired Bishop John Shelby Spong (foreground) leaves a Good Friday service at Richmond’s St. Paul’s Episcopal Church followed by Rev. Wallace Adams-Riley and Bishop Shannon Johnston (back).

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Less than a month after sponsoring an event for Virginia Episcopal clergy featuring a speaker who denies both the afterlife and unique divinity of Christ, Bishop Shannon Johnston of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia has presided over a service featuring a similarly controversial figure.

In a Good Friday service at historic St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, retired Bishop John Shelby Spong decried the Nicene Creed as “a radical distortion of the Gospel of John,” asserted that several of the apostles were “mythological” and declared that Jesus Christ did not die to redeem humanity from its sins.

The three hour service featured a series of six meditations by the retired Newark bishop interspersed with prayers led by Johnston and a hymn promoted by the Center for Progressive Christianity entitled “Welcome doubt: Refine our thinking.” Johnston’s promotion of Spong, whose Newark diocese famously declined by 40 percent during his tenure, further undercuts the Virginia bishop’s claim to be creedal and orthodox.

Spong has a long history with St. Paul’s, serving as rector of the onetime “Cathedral of the Confederacy” from 1969 to 1976, before his election as bishop of Newark. The Greek revival church across from the Virginia State Capitol, which once counted Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis among its worshippers, continues to draw prominent Richmond-area figures including a former Virginia governor and first lady who offered scripture readings on Friday.

Arguing that the Gospels were not historic accounts of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, Spong sought to isolate the fourth gospel, insisting it was not authored by John the son of Zebedee. Instead, the retired Episcopal bishop proposed that the Gospel of John was not a story of incarnation.

“This Gospel sees Jesus as a life lived so deeply that he reached mystical oneness with God,” proposed the author of the upcoming book “The Fourth Gospel: Tales of a Jewish Mystic”.

Spong argued that Jesus could say “I and the father are one” only because he was inviting his disciples “to enter a mystical reality of divine human oneness.”

During his first meditation, Spong quickly targeted the church’s historic councils and creeds. Charging that the Council of Nicea turned on an unintended and very literal reading of John, the Episcopal bishop asserted that the Nicene Creed was a “radical distortion of the Gospel of John.”

Instead of portraying the crucifixion of Jesus being about his sacrifice, Spong claimed the author of the book of John intended a “call to all of us to be whole people – to find yourself and give yourself away.”

“God does not need human sacrifice to forgive,” Spong declared. “John’s Jesus is not about saving sinners and rescuing the lost. It is about moving beyond self-consciousness to universal consciousness.”

Seeds of doubt: Spong as rector of St. Paul’s in the 60s and 70s.

Much of Spong’s material centered on an assertion that the gospel of John could not be read both literally and accurately.

“John wages a gospel-long campaign against literalism, or as we would say, fundamentalism,” Spong claimed. Describing the gospel writer as an artist regularly issuing warnings against literalism, the bishop asserted the author’s agenda was to capture “the meaning of Jesus” not to portray the passion narrative as history. Pointing out incredulous character responses to the use of “living water” and “born again,” Spong maintained that these “literalist” figures were initially unable to understand meaning, and that the gospel was warning against such literalism. The bishop went further, declaring persons like the apostles Thomas and Nathaniel (Bartholomew) to be mythical characters who “may have no more reality than Jane Eyre or Harry Potter.”

Spong also declared that the gospel’s portrayal of “the beloved disciple” was never intended by the author to be viewed as a person of history, rather to illustrate symbolism of one whose eyes have been opened.

“The beloved disciple is simply the last in a series of literary characters created by the author to tell a story,” Spong announced, pairing it with Mary’s presence at the crucifixion, which he asserted was a late addition.

“She [Mary] is there as a symbol of transition from Judaism while the Beloved Disciple is a symbol of new consciousness,” Spong interpreted. “See God as universal and embrace all human differences. These are Jewish gifts to the world,” the Bishop added, naming race, gender, and sexual orientation as the differences to be embraced. “Christianity has not embraced this fact, but it will, and it must.”

In addition to dismissing the historicity of biblical characters, Spong also attacked atonement theology, dismissing blood washing away sins as an “evangelical mantra” and a “barbaric theology” that turns God into an ogre who cannot forgive. Spong argued that God punishing his divine son to satisfy the wrath of the father “turns God into the ultimate child abuser” and Jesus into “the eternal victim.”

“John’s Gospel would never say ‘Jesus died for my sins,’” Spong insisted, instead proposing that Jesus was a “servant called upon to absorb the world’s anger and return it as love and wholeness.”

“Jesus does not die for your sins in this gospel; he dies to make you whole,” Spong announced from the pulpit as Johnston sat silently. “As evolving creatures, the problem is not that we have fallen, but that we are not yet fully human.”

“We are not sinners, the church got that wrong, we are rather incomplete human beings,” Spong concluded with an “amen” that was echoed by the congregation and clergy present.

“John’s gospel is about living life to fullness – not moral perfection or overcoming sin,” Spong concluded. “He [Jesus] did not die to save you from your sins. He died to free you – to empower you – to be all that you can be.”

Episcopal Church: I’ve Got 99 Problems but a Priest Shortage Ain’t One

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Diocese of Virginia, Episcopal, Episcopal Diocese of Washington, Falls Church Episcopal, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Jo Belser, Maryann Budde, Shannon Johnston

The Falls Church (Episcopal) recently hosted a service for the Diocese of Virginia in which nine new priests were ordained. (photo: Falls Church Episcopal)

On a Saturday morning earlier this month a gathering of 900 supporters from across the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia crowded into the main sanctuary of the Falls Church Episcopal (won from departing Anglicans in May through a court verdict). The special service celebrated nine transitional deacons ordained to the Episcopal priesthood by Bishop Shannon Johnston.

The service partly filled the role of using the reclaimed church campus for diocesan purposes (the diocese recently relocated its Northern Virginia office from Goodwin House in Alexandria to the Falls Church.) The service also showed how a diocese that has suffered a significant drop in attendance over the past decade is not lacking for new priests.

Unlike steep declines in membership, finances, and number of parishes that have negatively impacted the life of the Episcopal Church, the denomination has seen a more gradual decline in priests, maintaining – in some areas like Virginia and Texas — more than enough to meet its needs. While rural congregations do struggle to attract or support full-time paid clergy, an overall ample supply of priests is surprising, given that a recent report on the state of the clergy in the Episcopal denomination identified a 26 percent drop in ordinations over the past six years.

The Roman Catholic Church, in contrast, has faced a sharp decline in vocations for much longer. It would be tempting to link the Episcopal clergy abundance to a larger pool from which to draw: the Episcopal Church does not require its clergy to practice the discipline of celibacy, opening the priesthood to more men. But the number of new male priests has actually dropped by over half since the early 1970s. Probably a more likely explanation for surplus priests is that women and – increasingly – openly gay candidates for the priesthood are either commonplace or swiftly becoming so.

All of the Episcopal Church’s 11 accredited seminaries enroll women, and many have had majority-female graduating classes for years, often filled with second career aspiring clergy (the average age of Episcopal priests has steadily increased every year, with the typical woman ordained now in her 50s). As for gay clergy, some liberal dioceses of the church have openly ordained them since the mid-1980s, and once-moderate dioceses like Virginia have even begun doing so (the December ordination service at the Falls Church included one openly lesbian priest, Jo Belser, who is the first openly homosexual candidate to be ordained by the diocese).

The average age at ordination is now 44 (up from the early 30s in 1970) and the average age of active Episcopal clergy is 58.

In 2011, the neighboring Episcopal Diocese of Washington temporarily suspended the diocesan discernment process for those seeking ordination, citing an overabundance of priests. In January of 2012, Bishop Maryann Budde extended the suspension through December 2012 “and longer, if necessary.”

“Given the number of relatively healthy congregations and the appeal of our location, the Diocese of Washington has far more people interested in pursuing ordination than can reasonably hope to find employment in the Church,” Budde wrote in January 2012. “There are currently almost 30 people in the ordination process, a number that well surpasses the diocese’s current need for clergy for traditional parish positions. In addition, there is a significant number of unemployed and underemployed priests in the diocese who are seeking to be called to stipendiary ministries.”

To date, the diocese has not announced plans to resume discernment for ordination.

Even with declining numbers of new ordinations nationally and a corresponding increase in the average age of active Episcopal clergy, fears from 10-15 years ago that the church would suffer a clergy shortage seem unfounded. The overall decline in Episcopal Church attendance (down 23 percent in the past decade) has, quite simply, reduced a need for new priests. As Bishop Budde candidly wrote in her letter explaining discernment suspension: “A Roman Catholic colleague once asked me if the Episcopal Church was also experiencing a clergy shortage. ‘No,’ I said. ‘What we have is a shortage of lay people.’”

Historic Virginia Congregation to Begin Same-Sex Blessings

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Christ Church Alexandria, Diocese of Virginia, Episcopal, Episcopal Church, Institute on Religion and Democracy, Jo Belser, Pierce Klemmt, Same-Sex Blessings, Shannon Johnston, Ted Gulick

Historic Christ Church in Old Town Alexandria (photo: tripadvisor)

A historic Episcopal parish that counts President George Washington and Confederate General Robert E. Lee among its past congregants will soon begin performing same-gender blessings.

Rector Pierce Klemmt of Christ Church in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia revealed in an October 26 e-mail that Bishop Shannon Johnston has granted the parish’s request to begin using the blessing rite for same-sex couples.

“With great joy I share that Bishop Johnston has approved our request to perform same-gender blessings,” Klemmt wrote in the e-mail to parishioners. “In his letter to us, the bishop said: ‘The support from such an iconic place as Christ Church will be very helpful indeed for the witness of our Diocese in this matter of pastoral care for all of our people…I look forward to working with you for LGBT inclusion in every way that I can.’ More information will be forthcoming as we prepare to perform same-gender blessings.”

Telephone calls to parish staff confirming the arrangement had not yet been returned by the time of this posting.

The Commonwealth of Virginia recognizes marriage as between one man and one woman. The blessings, despite using a modification of the church’s marriage rite, will not be called marriage as they are in the neighboring Diocese of Washington. The “provisional” rite was approved by the denomination’s governing General Convention in July, with the option of local dioceses opting out, depending on the local Bishop’s decision.

Christ Church has a storied past: the Georgian-style church was designed in the mid-18^th century by James Wren, architect of the historic Falls Church in nearby Falls Church, Virginia. Both buildings were part of Truro parish, of which Washington was a vestryman (Washington’s family had a pew box at Christ Church). Lee was a member of Christ Church from an early age, and a silver plaque on the chancel rail marks the spot where he was confirmed.

Famed Virginia Bishop William Meade, who later went on to help found Virginia Theological Seminary, served as rector of the parish from 1811 to 1813. Meade later became presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church of the Confederate States.

According to statistics provided by the Episcopal Church, Christ Church has lost over one quarter of its Sunday attendance in the past 10 years, from over 800 attendees in 2001 down to less than 600 in 2011, the most recent reporting year.

The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, long regarded as a moderate-conservative jurisdiction of the Episcopal Church, has quickly moved to accommodate theologically liberal practices in recent years. Bishop Johnston’s granting of permission for same-sex rites follows the diocese’s first ordination of an openly lesbian clergywoman earlier this year. On June 2, Assistant Bishop Edwin F. “Ted” Gulick Jr. ordained Jo Belser of Alexandria, VA to the transitional diaconate in a service at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Burke, VA. As a layperson, Belser served as an official with Integrity Virginia, the diocese’s unofficial homosexual and transgender caucus.

In related news, the Diocese of Virginia announced October 23 that it has relocated its Northern Virginia Office from Goodwin House, Alexandria to the historic Falls Church campus. The Northern Virginia Office serves as a primary office for Gulick.

UPDATE: Staff at Christ Church have confirmed that the new policy has gone into effect immediately. A page of the Christ Church web site has been created with materials relevant to the process. According to a spokeswoman for the parish, there are not currently any same-gender couples seeking a blessing of their union at the parish.