More from the Weekend of everything in Seattle: The Seattle Times has a Q&A on Katharine Jefferts Schori, noting that her participation in the “Healing Our Planet Earth” conference signals how she is merging her vocations as a former oceanographer and presently as Presiding Bishop.
Among the things the writer looks at are why Jefferts Schori left oceanography to become a priest, why she’s participating in the conference, what’s going on in San Joaquin, and other topics that bring some of the matters of the Anglican Communion to a more general news audience. An excerpt:
Q: Why are you participating in the “Healing Our Planet Earth” conference?
A: As a scientist and as a person of faith, I am interested in these issues. Faith organizations, faith traditions that have a concern for these issues have an ability to motivate their adherents to do something about caring for creation.
Q: What do you hope this conference will achieve?
A: Educate and motivate Episcopalians and other people of faith.
Q: You recently went to the San Joaquin Diocese in California (which voted to secede from the Episcopal Church) to speak with those who remain Episcopalian. You said that healing is possible. How, when the issues seem so intractable and the divide getting wider?
A: The experience of the people present at the convention in San Joaquin is that healing is happening there. In groups of people with a variety of opinions about some of these hot-button issues, it’s remembering what it is that originally calls them together.
Q: Property disputes with breakaway churches are a big issue and getting bigger. What do you say to people who feel it’s unbiblical to take fellow Christians to court over issues like property?
A: We have a fiduciary and a moral responsibility as leaders in this church to use and steward the gifts … for the purposes for which they were given. … Generations before us gave permission in the name of the Episcopal Church and intended them (gifts and properties) for the benefit of communities and generations to come. (The breakaway churches) are clearly saying they’re no longer part of the Episcopal Church.
You can read the whole thing here.