We generally hesitate to call attention to misinformation from those waving their arms for attention, particularly a journalist, but sometimes it’s necessary to call BS.
The journalist in question is Damien Thompson. Here’s what he writes in his blog:
The Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, has given a most revealing interview to the Houston Chronicle in which she says that Anglican churches in Africa have polygamous members and, um, that’s basically OK.
Here’s what the PB actually said in that interview with the Houston Chronicle:
Q: Obviously, a major issue has been the schism over the ordination of gay and lesbian priests and bishops. Can you keep the church together if some people don’t, in your view, respect what you see as full human rights?
A: The church has struggled with inclusion from the very beginning. The first Christian fight was whether gentiles could be followers of Jesus. The history of the Episcopal church has been confronting a series of questions about who can be a full member of the church, beginning with African-American slaves. Could you teach slaves about the faith? Eventually, most places they decided yes. … Could the church ordain women? That took longer. At the moment, we’re still wrestling with full membership for gays and lesbians. The church isn’t finished with that discussion.
Q: How does that play in more conservative parts of the world? Do you follow one set of beliefs here, and other cultural values in other parts of the world?
A: That’s really the name of the game with Anglicans. One of our primary issues during the Reformation was that worship had to be in a language the people could understand. We take context really seriously, because we take incarnation, the presence of God in the flesh, very seriously. He appears to us in different ways in places. I’ll give you a contrasting example. In the 1980s, the Anglican community started to wrestle with the issue of polygamy in Africa. Polygamy is not an issue here, except in very small pockets of Utah and Arizona, and the church has taken a very different position. We said no. In Africa, the church doesn’t officially recognize polygamy. They certainly have polygamous members of their churches. In some places, they say the man can’t take additional wives once he becomes a Christian, but he isn’t forced to divorce the wives he already has. The children generally are recognized as full members if they want to be baptized.
She is describing how African churches have chosen to deal with a very real problem in their context; where polygamy is legal and a polygamist wants to convert to Christianity, what do you do?
A side note concerning teaching the faith to slaves. From the laws of Virginia during the reign of Charles II:
An act declaring that baptisme of slaves doth not exempt them from bondage.
WHEREAS some doubts have risen whether children that are slaves by birth, and by the charity and piety of their owners made pertakers of the blessed sacrament of baptisme, should by vertue of their baptisme be made ffree; It is enacted and declared by this grand assembly, and the authority thereof, that the conferring of baptisme doth not alter the condition of the person as to his bondage or ffreedome; that diverse masters, ffreed from this doubt, may more carefully endeavour the propagation of christianity by permitting children, though slaves, or those of greater growth if capable to be admitted to that sacrament.
The law predates The Episcopal Church, but, as descendants of the Church of England, we’ll credit for this generous inclusion.