NEW YORK (ABP) — The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church USA is defending a widely criticized sermon she preached at the group's recent general convention in which she labeled propositional Christianity a heresy.
In an Aug. 27 column in Episcopal Life the bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, said she believes parts of her controversial July 7 sermon were misunderstood.
Controversy erupted after Schori identified a common theme of various problems facing Episcopalians and the nation as "the great Western heresy — that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."
She went on to say the idea is "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 being," she said. That "heresy," she said, was one reason the convention chose as its theme an African word that means "I am because we are."
Many evangelical leaders took strong exception to those comments. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said the bishop "is simply not concerned with seeing persons come to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ."
In her new commentary, Schori said what she was trying to say is that Christianity is about more than going it alone.
"The spiritual journey, at least in the Judeo-Christian tradition, is about holy living in community," she wrote. "When Jesus was asked to summarize the Torah, he said, 'love God and love your neighbor as yourself.' That means our task is to be in relationship with God and with our neighbors. If salvation is understood only as 'getting right with God' without considering 'getting right with (all) our neighbors,' then we've got a heresy (an unorthodox belief) on our hands."
She said in her address she "went on to say that sometimes this belief that salvation only depends on getting right with God is reduced to saying a simple formula about Jesus."
"Jesus is quite explicit in his rejection of simple formulas," she said, quoting Matt. 7:21, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven."
Schori said both the Gospels and epistles insist "that right relationship depends on loving neighbors."
"Salvation depends on love of God and our relationship with Jesus, and we give evidence of our relationship with God in how we treat our neighbors, nearby and far away," she wrote. "Salvation is a gift from God, not something we can earn by our works, but neither is salvation assured by words alone."
Evangelical response to Schori's clarification was muted.
Ephraim Radner, professor of historical theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto told the British website Religious Intelligence the presiding bishop stopped short of addressing her claim that it was "heresy" to claim "we can be saved as individuals."
"God does save us as 'individuals,' as particular beings; and he creates us as such," Radner said. "We are created with and resurrected with particular bodies and beings and souls. This is a bedrock Christian conviction."
Mark Thompson, head of theology at Moore College in Australia added that Schori "still does not seem to get the point that the Bible is concerned about both personal salvation and the relationships in which we operate as Christians, with each other and with the world. It is always wrong to pit one against the other, from either direction."
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Bob Allen is senior writer for Associated Baptist Press.