Dream along with God

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori addressed the recent convocation of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Basing her remarks on Isaiah 61:1-9 she encouraged the incoming class to “dream along with God.” According to Mary Frances Schjonberg and Daniel Webster in Episcopal Life Online:

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori told the incoming class … that they need to consider, how theological thinking is going to help to shape the rest of your life.

The task of theological education really is to help us learn to do theology — to relate our own stories, and the stories of those around us, to the great stories of our faith, so that we may be able to give an account of the faith that is within us. Theological education can bless us with the ability to see the need and hurt and injustice of the world, the ways in which God’s dream is not yet being realized.

In his introduction of the Presiding Bishop, Union President Joseph C. Hough, Jr. said that her election is “emblematic of the determination of the Episcopal Church to embody a new church for the 21st century and to forge a model for a prophetic church in a radically changing world.” … a “prophetic statement to the church and the world at a time when aggressive misogyny has reared its ugly head in many Christian communions, determined to restore the full grip of male hegemony in the leadership of Christian Churches.”

“She and her church in full view of the world have defied this trend and engendered hope for many of us Christians who abhor this sort of male exclusivism,” Hough continued.

Hough said that “since misogyny is almost always accompanied by homophobia, it is hardly surprising that she has been the object of virulent attacks for her openness to gay ordination from some of her fellow bishops and clergy in the Anglican Communion.”

“What is so wondrous for me to see is her refusal to engage in white hot polemics in response to this ecclesiastical skullduggery,” he added.

Read the news story here

Read the address by Katharine Jefferts Schori here

Watch a brief video of the Convocation and read more here

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