Episcopalian Leadership: Disturbing

This blows my mind...

"Rough waters aren't new to Katharine Jefferts Schori, 52, a former oceanographer who is the Presiding Bishop-elect of the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. Bishop Katharine, as she's known, takes over a denomination rocked by controversy at home and abroad for its liberal stance on gay clergy. She talked with TIME's Jeff Chu about her mission of social justice, the relationship between science and religion and whether faith in Jesus is the only path to heaven."

[excerpts from the interview with TIME magazine]

What will be your focus as head of the U.S. church?

Our focus needs to be on feeding people who go to bed hungry, on providing primary education to girls and boys, on healing people with AIDS, on addressing tuberculosis and malaria, on sustainable development. That ought to be the primary focus.
(Is this the Gospel Jesus preached? This is the Good News of God unto salvation? What good is it for man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? Hmm...)

What is your view on intelligent design?

I firmly believe that evolution ought to be taught in the schools as the best witness of what modern science has taught us. To try to read the Bible literalistically about such issues disinvites us from using the best of recent scholarship.
(What? Apparently Bible-believing, Christian scholars who oppose the theory of evolution aren't quite up to par with the "best of recent scholarship".)

Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?

We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box.
(I think Jesus may disagree with the Bishop on this one.)

*NOTE: In related news, the testosterone levels of male Americans has dropped significantly in the past twenty years.