The Latest Chapter of The Incredibly Shrinking Church

Mark Steyn, in a comparison of four women, excerpted part of an interview with the new Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church The New York Times.

Up to now, I have been avoiding looking too closely at the Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori. Her predecessor famously said — several days after 9/11, in New York City, which is where these bishops “preside” – that he was “ashamed to be an American.” In other words, he got on the Leftie boat long before it pulled out of port. No doubt a number of his people died in the Towers. So given the drift of this ship called the Episcopal Church of the US, I didn’t figure the new captain would be any better than the old one.

Well, that’s what I get for reading Mark Steyn. His excerpt of Schori’s interview was so jaw-droppingly fascinating that I was compelled to google the original interview just to see her comments for myself.

She is even more extreme than his snip indicates, though he did manage to capture the essence of this newly elected Presiding Bishop. The choice of this particular person to lead this particular church at this particular time demonstrates to perfection how and why The Incredibly Shrinking Church is showing all the signs and smells of rigor mortis.

The Most Reverend Doctor has the rigidity and narrow viewpoint of many of the liberal Episcopalians I have met. She also has their narcissism; though her sentiments are disguised as an Al Goresque “concern for the earth” they betray a philosophy that aggrandizes the position of human beings in their potential to harm the earth just for being here. For Episcopalians, narcissism is not a characterological flaw, it’s a feature of the faith.

Here is the crux of Schori’s remarks, so full of hubris that even the interviewer was taken aback:

How many members of the Episcopal Church are there in this country?

About 2.2 million. It used to be larger percentagewise [sic], but Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.

Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?

No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.

Let’s fisk this gem. First of all, Episcopalians are better educated, and thus are wise enough not to have (m)any children — unlike the Catholics and the Mormons, tied as they are to their inferior theology and forced to procreate endlessly.
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Second, a la the Greenies, Episcopalians are good stewards of the earth, procreating as little as possible so as to protect the globe from the ravages of — ugh — people… You know: those horrible bipeds who wreak havoc on Mother Nature.

Did you know she had a PhD in science? Let that be an example of why you ought to protect your children from postgraduate education: they stop thinking because they believe they already know.

Do read the whole interview. Watch her dismiss Christian fundamentalists as inferior beings – a softball thrown to her by the interviewer. Observe her condescending attitude. Especially note her claim that Episcopalians are “comprehensive.” That’s liberal code for “whatever.”

Here’s her knee-jerk take on Muslims:

Have you met Pope Benedict?

I have not. I think it would be really interesting.

He became embroiled in controversy this fall after suggesting that Muslims have a history of violence.

So do Christians! They have a terrible history. Look at history in the Dark Ages. Charlemagne converted whole tribes by the sword. I think Muslims are poorly understood by the West, and it is easy to latch onto that which we do not understand and demonize it.

This is pedestrian, predictable, and contradictory “thinking.” Schori had to go back to the Dark Ages, while stridently ignoring the new Dark Ages that will descend as long as people like her are running things. Is she so insular that she doesn’t know what Islamic fundamentalism does to women and children? Or does she not care? Maybe it’s not in her job description to look too closely.

Schori demonizes Christian fundamentalists for their scriptural beliefs, but the sizeable minority of global Islamajihadists who use their scripture not to talk, but to act, to kill infidels… well, they are passed over. The failure to address the daily acts of murder, rape, and mayhem against her fellow Christians is resoundingly loud. This kind of one-eyed perception is perfectly acceptable in the crowd she runs with, and anyone who raises legitimate questions about Islam is waved off as a “fundamentalist.” In case you didn’t notice, that’s the major mortal sin in the Episcopal Church. In the old days, the big sin was pride, but we have to move with the times.

This woman is supposedly a Christian. She says of herself that she likes to use “shalom” a lot. Yet her condescension and narrow point of view promote anything but peace. She waves her blunt sword of outdated multiculti ecclesiology and cuts off the heads of lesser beings.

Besides not procreating, the Episcopal Church doesn’t evangelize either, and for two reasons:

• The conservatives are too ashamed to ask anyone to visit.
  
• The liberals are too busy tearing down the ecclesia brick by brick to have time to do anything as tacky as proselytize.

This may be a fitting end to a church founded on King Henry VIII’s very human determination to play God and impregnate someone who could produce a son to inherit the throne. He failed in his quest, though he destroyed much of the religious culture of England in the process. He set his people against one another and left this conflict as a heritage to his daughters. Elizabeth I won, but at what cost to England’s strong spiritual life?

The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. They have now ground out Katharine Jefferts Schori, and there she stands, ready to do her part in bringing down the temple around her.