The Witness: Katharine Jefferts Schori Takes Office on a Wing and a Prayer

Katharine Jefferts Schori Takes Office on a Wing and a Prayer
By Sarah Dylan Breuer
Monday, November 10, 2008

The 26th Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church
photo: ENS

The sound of nearly four thousand people speaking as one in an impassioned renewal of their Baptismal Covenant can be felt as much as heard. I felt it in my sternum as it echoed through Washington National Cathedral this weekend. Each rumbling affirmation was a powerful, visceral reminder of the potential of this moment to ignite a movement, of the power of the Holy Spirit present to heal and reconcile all.

The event was the investiture and seating of the Most Reverend Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, which thousands of us witnessed in person and even more via streaming webcasts on November 4th and 5th. I am certain that I am not alone among those thousands in thinking that within a generation we may well speak of those two days as marking the beginning of a tremendously important season in the life of The Episcopal Church and of the Anglican Communion -- a transition that headlines of "Woman Becomes Top Bishop" can't begin to capture. Katharine Jefferts Schori is not just the first female Primate of the Anglican Communion; she is a bishop who believes with all her heart that a church of empowered laity living intentionally into Baptismal ministry just might change the world, and that in itself could be revolutionary.

I first caught a glimpse of that conviction in her on the day we met in 2002, on the first day of meetings at the Camp Allen retreat center of the Diocese of Texas for the expanded 20/20 Task Force. As I was walking into the conference room where the New Congregations team was meeting, charged with brainstorming strategies for church starts to further The Episcopal Church's evangelistic goals, a fellow team member was asking her how she preferred to be addressed. "Call me Katharine," I recall her saying; "my Baptismal name is my highest title." This is a Presiding Bishop who has spent more of her adult life in active lay ministry than in ordained service. She described her formation in her interview in April with Louie Crew for The Witness by saying, "I don't bring the history of forty years in the same parish ... But I bring different life experience. I bring the training to see the world carefully .... The gift to me has been to be able to serve in a lot of different ways in the church -- as an active lay person and as a priest later."

Katharine Jefferts Schori is not just the first female Primate of the Anglican Communion; she is a bishop who believes with all her heart that a church of empowered laity living intentionally into Baptismal ministry just might change the world, and that in itself could be revolutionary.

Her strong background in lay ministry in the world as well as service in the church may account for something I've observed in our new Presiding Bishop. In her ministry her attention is never long and far removed from the world and its realities. Chief among those realities as she speaks are God's mission in the world and the work of the Spirit in furthering that mission. In short, "20/20" may not be the phrase foremost on the church's lips, but I expect our new Presiding Bishop to energetically and insistently move The Episcopal Church toward its goal of engaging more deeply with God's mission in the world, with tangible and transformative results.

That focus on mission and Baptismal ministry under the leadership of the 26th Presiding Bishop started publicly with the investiture service on Nov. 4th and her formal seating on Nov. 5th. The investiture service saw laity, deacons, priests, and bishops literally gathering and presenting gifts for ministry, starting with a gospel book and water to represent Baptismal ministries of proclaiming and sharing the Good News. Both the investiture and seating services continued by bringing the world and its concerns first to the Baptismal font, where prayers of the people were offered in Haitian Creole, Yoruba, and Mandarin as well as English, and then to the Eucharistic table. The comprehensiveness of this gathering, offering, and sharing came across not only through the participation of international, ecumenical, and interfaith visitors in the service, but also in the breadth of liturgical expression. The ringing of the carillon was joined by choral and organ music from the seventeenth through the twenty-first centuries, Native American drum and chant, the spirited St. Thomas Gospel Choir, and SOL, the astonishingly versatile band well known to any blessed to attend Episcopal Youth Event, which sung original songs and fresh takes on traditional music in Spanish and English. All the senses were incorporated with incense and sage-burning and truly excellent liturgical dance, as well as the splash of asperges and the sharing of bread and wine.

Throughout both services, our Presiding Bishop's orientation to ministry came across clearly in the centering of both services around the Baptismal font, raised at the center of the cathedral for the service. That was where all of the bishops nominated for Presiding Bishop (save for Charles Jenkins of Louisiana, who did not attend) joined Jefferts Schori to assist with Baptismal sprinkling, and it was where she stayed for well over 90 minutes following the service to greet any of the thousands present who wished to speak with her.

But that centering of ministry around the font in no way implies a focus directed exclusively inward on the church and its members. For Jefferts Schori, the Baptism and mission are inseparably linked, much as they are in the title -- One Baptism, One Hope in God's Call -- of the report of the Special Commission on the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion, on which she served. Indeed, that necessary link was the heart of her sermon at the Nov. 5th service celebrating the Feast of All Saints and her formal seating at the cathedral:

Katharine Jefferts Schori receives the primatial staff from Frank Griswold.
photo: ENS

Saints are those who are vulnerable to the gut-wrenching pain of this world. Some of us have to be seized by the throat or thrown into the tomb before we can begin to find that depth of compassion. And perhaps unless we are, we won't leave our comfortable narrow lives -- or our remarkably nasty ones -- to wake up and begin to answer that pain.

In the early church, baptism was meant to be that kind of life-altering encounter. New saints spent three years in the readying, and then were taken in the dead of night into the crypt, stripped naked, and drowned -- only to emerge filled with new breath, doused with sweet-smelling oil, and given a new white robe. What you and I do on Sunday mornings today sometimes seems a pale imitation, yet it can have every bit the same effect. ...

When we remember our baptisms in the sprinkling in a few minutes, most of us will probably cringe. We don't like to get wet. But I hope and pray that you and I can welcome those surprising drops as a tiny reminder of what is meant to happen to us, over and over again, day after day after day. Die to the old, be unbound, come out into abundant life in service to the world. Wake up, and notice the suffering around us.

It is the willingness to experience that pain which more than anything else marks us as saints. The pain of the whole world -- those who agree with us and those who might be called enemies. The pain of creation, abused for our pleasure. The pain of a six-year-old child in Ghana, sold into slavery, to bail a fishing canoe and repair nets for 100 hours a week so that his parents might eat.

Our Presiding Bishop has the heart of a true evangelist -- someone who understands that Jesus' "Great Commission" was to make not churchgoers but disciples, and that Christians living into discipleship have and are Good News for the world.

Perhaps most importantly, she is skilled at communicating what she believes is God's mission in the world in terms that the world can understand. Our Presiding Bishop has the heart of a true evangelist -- someone who understands that Jesus' "Great Commission" was to make not churchgoers but disciples, and that Christians living into discipleship have and are Good News for the world. And fortunately, she has the skill and the experience in ministry in the world to be able to say as much without being bound to insider 'churchspeak' that means little in our increasingly unchurched and dischurched culture.

Most concretely, that has been manifested in her emphasis on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Jefferts Schori has been criticized for responding to questions about the church's mission and focus in secular venues such as Time magazine with an emphasis on issues of poverty, health, education, and development, and with a minimum of explicitly religious language. Such criticisms frequently ignore the clear theological commitments she does make explicit in popular media; for example, while she was criticized for responding to Time's question of what her prayer is for the church with an answer emphasizing love of neighbor and not explicitly mentioning God or Christ, she had just finished explaining the roots of that commitment -- namely Jesus' theology of the reign of God as described in Luke 4 and rooted in Isaiah 61.

Comparing her communication style in church and secular venues, though, reveals noticeable differences, which I would suggest spring from another strength of the Presiding Bishop: She understands how audience should shape communication, and she is intent on using the attention her election has attracted in secular media to further God's mission. Needless to say, no other Presiding Bishop or nominee for the office would be appearing in Glamour magazine, as Jefferts Schori does as one of their "Women of the Year," and not many would be able to make use of the opportunity as she does.

In popular culture, someone labeled "The Believer," as the Presiding Bishop is labeled in Glamour's article, is often presented, however unfairly, as a person defined more by what s/he is against than what s/he is for, often coming across as irrelevant at best and hateful at worst. Jefferts Schori, however, has honed to a fine point how she presents to journalists. When they ask her about controversy, she talks about reconciliation, and when they come to write an article about her, they end up writing much more about her vision, taken directly from Isaiah 61 and Luke 4, but stated in the kind of terms that have captured the imagination of millions through the efforts of organizations like the ONE campaign and Make Poverty History. Her presence in popular media has begun in popular imagination to connect that appealing and compelling vision for the world with the life of the church; and when she links that in turn with Jesus' welcoming all who came to him -- as she does at every opportunity -- that tells the world that every person is invited to participate in the life of the church and the mission of God. In other words, we have a Presiding Bishop who is well placed and well prepared to engage in evangelism that those outside the church can understand readily and receive as Good News.

"We have to be willing to suffer with the people who disagree with us so profoundly, and until we're willing to do that cross-shaped work, we're not able to reconcile, not able to do that Anglican thing of living together in diversity."

I'm certain that Jefferts Schori's passion for evangelism was responsible at least in part for her being asked to join the 20/20 task force where I first met her. But that passion was far from the only strength that she brought to the task force and brings to this moment in our church's history. Our 20/20 working group was in many ways a microcosm of The Episcopal Church -- multilingual, multicultural, and with members from across the church's theological and liturgical spectrum, including David Roseberry, rector of Christ Church Plano and a leader among conservative dissidents in The Episcopal Church until his parish departed the denomination in September of 2006. Similarly, the Special Commission helping to prepare the church to respond to the Windsor Report included members from a wide variety of backgrounds and from across the theological spectrum of the church. Such different ways of looking at the world and the church's ministry in it provided ample opportunity for the groups to reach an impasse as communication broke down and conviction hardened. And when the groups seemed about to become halted at such an impasse, Bishop Katharine was consistently able to offer a creative "third way" forward -- not a mid-point between extremes that minimized immediate conflict, but a fresh and creative approach, usually related to the Baptismal theology always at the core of her thought, that all parties could receive with some enthusiasm.

Architecture Sanitary works Astrakhan

It may be needless to say, however, that a solution sparking such enthusiasm could not always be found. The work of the Special Commission in particular was at times costly and challenging as well as rewarding, and much work of that intensity and character lies ahead. For that reason, I rejoice that our Presiding Bishop is someone whose theology is grounded also in the Cross, and who is committed to following the way of Christ crucified in the conviction that it is the way of risen life.

When I spoke with her last week about that work and its cost, and about challenges facing the church in the weeks and years to come, she spoke clearly of the ways in which our shared Baptism compels us toward reconciliation and the real challenges facing that work.

"It takes hard, painful, suffering, really," she said. "We have to be willing to suffer with the people who disagree with us so profoundly, and until we're willing to do that cross-shaped work, we're not able to reconcile, not able to do that Anglican thing of living together in diversity."

It's another of her consistent messages. In her forthcoming book A Wing and a Prayer: A Message of Faith and Hope (Morehouse Publishing, with an expected release date of February 2007), she writes:

Members of the St. Thomas Gospel Choir rejoice at the Nov. 5 seating of the new Presiding Bishop.
photo: National Cathedral

Reconciliation takes a different kind of dying. If we want to learn to live with the folks who make us most angry, we have to learn to value the differences between us, and maybe even their hate toward us. Joseph said to the brothers who tried to kill him, "You meant it for harm, but God turned it to good." Joseph let go of his fear, maybe because he had some empathy for what his brothers were now experiencing.

She is clear also about how that empathy can be cultivated and reconciliation best be achieved. "I think that incarnate encounter is the best response," she said in our interview last week. "In places where people who disagree profoundly ... have been able to come together and sit at the table and listen to each other, there's been a willingness to continue in relationship despite the disagreements."

That last point is, I believe, key for those seeking to understand Jefferts Schori's approach to leadership in conflict. She was forthright in her pre-election interview for The Witness in saying, "As a church we have got to be better self-differentiated. We have to decide what it is we are going to stand for and be clear about it, and then say 'these are the consequences.' Yes, Anglicans don't much like to do that, but we do do it about some things .... We stand up over and over again for social justice issues in the government. So we're able to be clear on some things even when there is a variety of opinion across the church. I think we are getting there about the issues that are dividing us right now."

The letters recently sent by the Presiding Bishop's chancellor, David Booth Beers, to the dioceses of Fort Worth and Quincy and the letter the new Presiding Bishop sent on her first official day in office to the Most Reverends Akinola of Nigeria, Gomez of the West Indies, Nzimbi of Kenya, and Akrofi of West Africa make excellent cases in point. While Beers said at the Nov. 3 gathering in Washington of the Episcopal Majority network that the letters were sent at his initiative, the Presiding Bishop confirmed via telephone on Nov. 1 that she and Beers "have had conversations about this for the last couple of months, and the reality is that there are some decisions that dioceses believe they can make that are inappropriate, given the canonical structure and life in authority of this church." At the same time, Beers took exception in Washington to The Living Church's characterization of the letters as a "threat," framing them instead as a request for information and invitation to conversation -- indeed, one that commentator Simon Sarmiento of Thinking Anglicans characterized as "milk toast" in comparison to the picture of the letter painted by The Living Church and the response of Fort Worth's Bishop Iker.

Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori beginning asperges at the Nov. 5 service.
photo: National Cathedral

The letter from the Presiding Bishop herself to Archbishops Akinola, Gomez, Nzimbi, and Akrofi was nonetheless considerably warmer in tone, regretting that she had "not yet had the privilege and honor" of meeting them, and saying, "I very much look forward to working with you in the coming years as we endeavor to lead the Body of Christ in this portion called the Anglican Communion." One might have assumed under other circumstances that the letter was no more than a friendly response to congratulations her primatial colleagues had offered but not published were it not for a key paragraph near the letter's close, which makes clear that the Presiding Bishop's occasion for writing is the other Primates' impending visit to Falls Church, Virginia, for the board meeting of Anglican Relief and Development, an organization formed as an alternative to Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD) when a few Primates, most notably Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi of Uganda, began refusing grants from Episcopal Church-affiliated sources such as ERD and the United Thank Offering (UTO). But even at this point the letter remains warm and diplomatic in tone, hoping in light of "the difficulty and expense of such a journey" that the visiting Primates "might be willing to pay a call" on Jefferts Schori, who notes, "If that is a possibility, I hope you will contact this office as soon as possible. I would be more than happy to alter my schedule to accommodate you," before offering closing blessings for their upcoming travel and their ministries.

The effect of the whole is to communicate to all readers Jefferts Schori's hope "that we might begin to build toward such a missional relationship," as the letter says, and to observers (who could read the full text of the letter in an Episcopal News Service press release and see that the letter had been sent via mail, facsimile, and email -- a combination making it difficult to pretend it had not been received) that the Anglican Communion's newest Primate was treating the visitors' trip to her province not as an invasion from outsiders, but as an opportunity to build relationships between gracious colleagues. Those who would decline such an invitation issued graciously and publicly must understand that doing so makes the one refusing look at best considerably less gracious.

Clearly, such a move places pressure on the visiting Primates, as their response, whatever that turns out to be, has the potential to make clear the extent of their willingness to carry out the kind of listening for which Lambeth 1998's Resolution I.10 calls and to remain at the table for the lengthy process of discussing and crafting an Anglican Covenant. Does exerting that kind of pressure, however gently applied, undermine Jefferts Schori's stance as a reconciler? I would argue not -- but the hard work of reconciliation rarely gets universal applause, and every nuance, even from a skilled communicator, provides opportunities for a soundbite-conditioned and highly polarized culture to misinterpret and find cause to quarrel.

The Episcopal Church could have learned that well from reactions to Resolution C051 of General Convention 2003, which recognized "that local faith communities are operating within the bounds of our common life as they explore and experience liturgies celebrating and blessing same-sex unions" without going further to authorize rites for such blessings or even to commission a study of possible rites. As Bishop Paul Marshall said in a 2004 article in The Witness, "As the sole author of [that C051 resolve], which was discussed in public committee before coming publicly to the floor, I know that the text was designed to say that while this Church cannot now authorize such rites, it can tolerate their existence, giving the Spirit room to work and teach us one way or the other. To tolerate is different than to authorize."

Jefferts Schori in no way confuses the via media with the path of least resistance; clearly she holds that while it does not require agreement, it does require fellowship.

Nevertheless, the Windsor Report (paragraph 144) claimed that GC2003 had authorized rites for same-sex blessings. The Special Commission, on which Bishop Jefferts Schori served, responded by saying (in paragraph 53 of its report):

We wish to reiterate what did and did not take place at General Convention 2003, and regret the misunderstanding which has ensued from our adoption of Resolution 2003-C051. In acting to recognize that "local faith communities are operating within the bounds of our common life as they explore and experience liturgies celebrating and blessing same-sex unions,"we expressly deny that such rites were authorized. Our polity defines authorized rites as those set forth in the Book of Common Prayer (1979), the Book of Occasional Services (2003), and Enriching Our Worship 1 and 2 (1997, 2000). The Episcopal Church has authorized no other rites. We remain, however, committed to maintaining "a breadth of private response to situations of individual pastoral care."

Dr. Jenny Te Paa, one of the Windsor Report's authors, publicly noted this as a "helpful corrective," saying in the Diocese of Washington's Daily Episcopalian that "in hindsight I can see now how over time this misinformation became part of an extensive and still somewhat prevailing mythology concerning the extant actions and attitudes of the Episcopal Church." Jefferts Schori's position, and in effect the response of General Convention 2006, to requests for a moratorium on authorized rites of blessing for same-sex unions could arguably be summarized as "you can't have a moratorium on something you're not doing." And yet some continue to find that "prevailing mythology" compelling, as reflected in a recent Living Church article claiming that "sources close to the archbishop told The Living Church that Archbishop Williams intended to ask Bishop Jefferts Schori what her response would be as Presiding Bishop to the recommendations found in paragraph 144 of the Windsor Report."

The new Presiding Bishop took it all with characteristic good humor. "There weren't any 'sources' there," she explained to The Witness on Nov. 1, chuckling. "There was just Frank [Griswold] and Rowan [Williams] and I. It must have been someone's dream, I think." Her own assessment is nuanced but clear: "I understand Convention's response as saying, 'we're willing to pause for a season to attend to the needs of those who feel most aggrieved in the midst of this, but that we're not turning around and going back.' My sense is that the Archbishop ... understands what Convention did. I think he may have some perspective that others see it as inadequate, but I believe he understood that we feel we did the best we could," and, she adds, "he's got a panel working on the evaluation of that response, and I believe that's meant to come out early in 2007."

Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori is introduced to the congregation at the Nov. 5 service.
photo: National Cathedral

Archbishop Williams' outlining that "Windsor Process" for examining General Convention's response to the Windsor Report has not, however, prevented a rush to judgment from others, whether from self-declared "Windsor-compliant" bishops and bodies or from anxious talk among some progressives who seem to take for granted the extremely dubious proposition that taking the Windsor Report seriously means in effect establishing a magisterium or curia to rule formerly autonomous provinces by fiat.

The new Presiding Bishop holds instead to positions more in line with the classic via media. As she writes in On a Wing and a Prayer:

At its best, Anglicanism has always held up comprehensiveness as one of its highest values. We don't all have to agree. There can be more than one right answer. The turf is God's, not ours, and it's broader and more expansive -- even greener -- than we are capable of imagining. We have said, from our Celtic Christian beginnings, and explicitly from at least the time of Elizabeth I, that the middle way, the middle road, is the most important, because there is something vital to be gained and learned from the people on both shoulders. Gamaliel, the perennial pragmatist in the book of Acts, says, "Well, what you're about may not be right, but we'll just have to wait and see what comes of it. If it is of God, then there won't be any stopping it."

Jefferts Schori in no way confuses the via media with the path of least resistance; clearly she holds that while it does not require agreement, it does require fellowship. Early indications in her tenure as well as her speaking and writing prior to her election suggest that she will respond with clarity to efforts to break fellowship, to pull back from shared participation in God's mission, about which she is so passionate. And yet those who equate "clarity" with the sort of ideological purity in which those with differing views must go quietly along or leave entirely are bound to be frustrated by her approach, which places a strong and positive value on theological as well as cultural diversity:

Our new Presiding Bishop is someone not only with a theology that holds God's reconciling work at its core, but with creativity, insight, and skill to help The Episcopal Church find a way forward together that will extend grace to those on all sides.

It may be more comfortable to live where everyone agrees with us, but it also quickly becomes boring, stagnant, and dead. Living with people who disagree with us may be challenging, but it is the only route to creativity. The fruit of those challenging relationships will be far more than any one of us could accomplish in isolation. (On a Wing and a Prayer)

The vision our General Convention has embraced is that of ending extreme poverty -- the focus of the Millennium Development Goals -- as The Episcopal Church's top mission priority for this triennium. It is a vision that Jefferts Schori caught first from the Lambeth Conference of 1998, from which her bishop in Oregon returned with reports of an intriguing statistic: that just 0.7% of the gross national product of wealthier nations devoted to international development could end extreme poverty by the year 2015 -- coincidentally the last year of Katharine Jefferts Schori's tenure as Presiding Bishop.

"I was so intrigued to find out that this came from an almost forty-year-old conversation from economists about what it would take to solve world poverty," Jefferts Schori said on the telephone last Wednesday. "That was a piece of Lambeth '98 that nobody heard about -- but it was connected to Jubilee, the U.N. picked it up in 2000, and churches [and] individuals across this land have really been inspired by the vision of something that's concretely possible in our own day that looks like the reign of God. I don't think that most people in the pew get anything that's that big, that says, 'you can be a part of this; you can be a part of realizing the reign of God in our own day, and here's what it takes. It takes financial participation; it takes legislative participation; it takes encouraging the government of this country to step up and participate. It takes communicating with people across the globe. There's a piece for every Christian to play in this.'"

It's an audacious global vision, as challenging as it is inspiring. There are challenging times ahead for the church, and whatever else we may argue about, it is unarguable that we will need every bit of creativity that can be produced in those fruitful and challenging relationships Jefferts Schori is so gifted at cultivating. In many ways, her greatest strengths spring from her lengthy ministry in the world, far from the East Coast establishment and outside traditional corridors of power in the church, all of which give her a fresh outlook on the church, a passion for mission in the world, and language and experience to communicate that passion to spiritual seekers as well as longtime church insiders. It remains to be seen whether or how these will pose additional challenges as she navigates new labyrinths of church politics. But Katharine Jefferts Schori has the prayerfulness, vision, and good humor to remain centered and make navigating those labyrinths a spiritually enriching experience for the church. Our new Presiding Bishop is someone not only with a theology that holds God's reconciling work at its core, but with creativity, insight, and skill to help The Episcopal Church find a way forward together that will extend grace to those on all sides.

Sarah Dylan Breuer is editor of The Witness. In her spare time, she maintains a website with a lectionary commentary series and a blog, and works throughout the church on issues of liturgy and faith. Dylan may be reached by email at dylan@sarahlaughed.net.