Jeffrey Kirk on Katharine Jefforts Schori's New Religion

He says: "The focus (in the 1979 Prayer Book Baptismal service) is insistently on the last of an additional list of undertakings. It commits the candidate 'to strive for peace and justice and respect the dignity of every human being'.

That commitment, couched in the code language of the leftist consensus of the 60s and 70s, has become definitive for revisionist Episcopalianism. It is the ethical a priori premise of all that it is and seeks to do. But it needs unpacking.

In the contemporary American Church, 'justice and peace' has been effectively equated with the United Nations Millennium Goals, which featured prominently in Mrs Schori's inaugural address.

'This church has said that our larger vision will be framed and shaped in the coming years by the vision of shalom embedded in the Millennium Development Goals - a world where the hungry are fed, the ill are healed, the young educated, women and men treated equally, and where all have access to clean water and adequate sanitation, basic health care, and the promise of development that does not endanger the rest of creation. That vision of abundant life is achievable in our own day, but only with the passionate commitment of each and every one of us. It is God's vision of homecoming for all humanity. [Applause]'"

Respect for the dignity of every human being has been translated into wholehearted acceptance of the entire lesbigaytransexual agenda. ('I am what I am / and what I am needs no excuses' - the torch song theme tune of La Cage aux Folles - has been elevated to a theological principle.)"

Very good post.