I would agree with the Internet Monk (see the link below) that it seems she is directing her words against the new Anglican group formed against what they see as the degradation of the Anglican Church in the United States, namely because of the issue of ordaining gay clergy.
I have read about this statement all week – and it has struck me as something that I can nearly agree with (except for the slight against those in Mississippi, but at least she didn’t say West Virginia). I have a particularly high ecclesiastical view, believing in the Body of Christ universal (mystical) is the holder of salvational doctrine. So many like to sing the song ‘Me and Jesus… Have our own thing going’ and yet we are commanded to be in communion with our brothers and sisters. The Church is a community, an organism, a living unit filled with the Spirit. I do not believe that there is salvation outside the Church.
But the Church is made of up of individuals – with individual choices, calls, and accounts. We are apart of the Church, those of us who are saved.
The crisis of this moment has several parts, and like Episcopalians, particularly ones in Mississippi, they’re all related. The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s 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 all being. That heresy is one reason for the theme of this Convention. (Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Jefferts-Schori)
I do not believe that Christ died for you – but that He died for His Church, His people, His city. I do believe that we focus on the individual too much – leaving for the individual the choice of his or her own doctrine, well-being and worship.
The Church needs to be more of a community, to bear one another’s burdens, to share in heartaches, in poverties, and only then in praise and worship, together.
The Lord’s Prayer is not
‘My Father, who is in heaven, give me my daily bread’
But,
‘Our Father, who is in heaven, give us our daily bread’
HT.
