Another disconnect in pecusaland

By Tony Seel

A few years ago I finished reading a book that was assigned as part of a continuing education course at Virginia Seminary.  I was on campus at the time and something about the book just didn’t sit well with me.  I couldn't figure out what it was, so I went to the library and started doing some digging and then it dawned on me – the book, written by an Episcopal bishop, had no doctrine of sin.

I mentioned this to the directors of the program at VTS.  They said that the author would be joining our group that week and I could ask him about that during his visit.

We met as a group with the author and there didn’t seem like a good time in the discussion for me to question him about his book.  I volunteered to drive him to the airport and along the way I mentioned what I perceived about his book.  He told me that he was on the Standing Liturgical Committee that fashioned the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.   It was the consensus of that committee that the revised prayer book would deemphasize sin in the liturgies of that book.

Wouldn’t you know that the same de-emphasis can be found in the writings of the current presiding bishop?  In a review of two of her books, author Jesse Zink critiques the presiding bishop in the same way that I critiqued my author/bishop.

Zink writes in the Living Church (4/28/13), “It is not that Jefferts Schori is silent on human fallibility… The sense one takes away from these books is that sin, if it happens, is something that other people – that is, people not in her audience – do.”

Of course, this one of the perennial problems of liberalism.   Liberal elites presume that they are on God’s course or the right course (if they aren't religious) and those who disagree with them are unenlightened at best and evil at worst.

Orthodox Christian belief has a healthy doctrine of sin that says explicitly that we are all sinners in need of God’s saving grace.

As with the Bishop of Central New York who told a story at a diocesan convention a few years ago and didn’t have the self-knowledge to understand that the story casts himself in a bad light, Zink observes the same dynamic in the presiding bishop.  Adams’ story was about the generosity of a holy man, obviously completely oblivious to his lack of generosity to the three churches that left his diocese after 2003.

The same presiding bishop who describes competition as “not really necessary,”  “has executed a legal strategy in relation to departing dioceses that she has elsewhere described as preventing the emergence of ‘competitors’ to the Episcopal Church.  As Zink says, Schori’s view on competition in view of her practice “rings hollow.”

There is another part of her writing that Zink seems to miss: "Christ as a crosser of borders."  Schori exhorts Christians to "keep crossing the boundaries."  This is the same women who has criticized the Anglican Church in North America for crossing the borders of pecusa.  This is just another example of the disconnect between liberal words and liberal actions.

The Christianity of liberal pecusa leaders rings hollow as they not only violate the teachings of Scripture on human sexuality, but they do so on other fronts as well like not suing fellow Christians.  Now, this injunction would only be a problem for liberal pecusa leaders if they are, in fact, Christians.  So, I ask you, what does their practice suggest about their standing with the Almighty?

Tony Seel is the rector of St. Andrew’s Church, Endicott, NY.  St. Andrew’s is a CANA parish under the oversight of Bp. Julian Dobbs, and Seel also serves as archdeacon for the parishes in upstate New York.