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Dr Jefferts Schori: ‘We can get beyond sexuality’
by Rachel Boulding
 Conversation: Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori (left), the Very Revd June Osborne (centre), and the Rt Revd Kay Goldsworthy in Salisbury on Monday |
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IT IS “very awkward” that a “duly elected bishop” has been banned from the Lambeth Conference, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Dr Katharine Jefferts Schori, said this week. She was referring to the Bishop of New Hampshire, the Rt Revd Gene Robinson. She believes that the decision will backfire, as he will now be given greater media attention. Yet she believes that Lambeth will not be dominated by debates about sexuality, but by “issues of life and death”, such as poverty and suffering in the developing world. Dr Jefferts Schori was speaking at a press conference in Salisbury on Monday, sitting alongside the first woman bishop of the Anglican Church of Australia, the Rt Revd Kay Goldsworthy, an assistant bishop in the diocese of Perth, and the Dean of Salisbury, the Very Revd June Osborne, one of the most senior female clerics in the Church of England. The Presiding Bishop was questioned about what was described as a double standard over sexuality, in which Bishop Gene Robinson often refers to other gay bishops, but to himself as the only openly gay one. She saw this as partly the result of cultural differences in discussing sex in developing countries, where “they are uncomfortable about talking about these issues.” |
 Man of the moment: the Rt Revd Gene Robinson, Bishop of New Hampshire, preaches at St Mary’s, Putney, in London, on Sunday. A protester who called on him to “repent, repent, repent” was led from the church. Bishop Robinson said earlier that the Archbishop of Canterbury was in an impossible position. PA |
| She is looking forward to debating such points at Lambeth, she said, although “Most of the people aren’t worried about sex, but about people dying, and women suffering atrocities of war.” Dr Jefferts Schori had met bishops from the Church of the Province of the Sudan in Salisbury, and found that “We can always get beyond sexuality if we’re talking about alleviating human suffering.” She was confident about the future of the Anglican Communion, saying that it “has more and stronger relationships than it did ten years ago”. She regretted the absence of more than 200 bishops from the Conference. “We are all lessened when some stay away from the table. I know how painful it is to be excluded. . . We are diminished by their absence.” When asked about her own experience of exclusion, she referred to her career as an oceanographer, and recalled how the captain of the first research cruise where she had acted as leader refused to engage with her. “He wasn’t interested in talking to me, because I was a woman.” Referring to the C of E, she was asked whether the cost of ordaining women was a split in the Church, and, if so, whether it was worth this. “There’s a greater loss if women are excluded,” she said. She found aspects of the C of E strange, particularly its attitude to change. In the Episcopal Church in the US: “When we make decisions, it doesn’t take years to bring about. It happens very quickly.” The Episcopal Church’s General Convention has its next three-yearly meeting in 2009. |
