When The Blind Lead
A conservative diocese in California is on the verge of a vote that may make it the first in the United States to completely separate from the Episcopal Church. And with less than two weeks before the vote, newly installed presiding bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has asked the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield of the Diocese of San Joaquin to consider the hazard that he will be putting many people, including himself, in.
"Jesus calls us to take up our crosses daily, but not in the service of division and antagonism," she wrote in a letter. "He calls us to take up our crosses in his service of reconciling the world to God.”
While efforts to maintain unity within the body of Christ are indisputably encouraged by the Words of the Lord, so also is the cutting off of sin and those body parts which lead us to sin – as Jesus explains in his sermon on the mount. For “it is better to lose one part of the body than for the whole body to be thrown into hell.” (Mt 5:29)
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Jefferts Schori, on numerous occasions, has embraced sin rather than condemn it. When asked by CNN if it was a sin to be homosexual, she said, “I don’t believe so” and added that “[s]ome people come into this world with affections ordered toward other people of the same gender.”
In the days leading up to her investiture, Jefferts Schori further riled Christian conservatives, saying homosexuality is "how one is created" and that Jesus Christ is not the only way to God.
"The Episcopal Church has become an apostate to the point of heresy," Schofield told parishioners this month, according to the Bakersfield Gazetter.
No doubt.
If there is anyone who is putting their flock in a hazardous position, it’s the Episcopal Church’s new head, not the head of the San Joaquin diocese. A leader, more than anything, must follow and obey the commands of the Lord – not turning from them to the right or to the left.
Unless Jefferts Schori sticks to the Scriptures, the Episcopal Church is bound to fall into a pit – as is expected when the blind lead the blind.
