Katherine Jefferts Schori: The Heartbeat of God

A Brief Review[i]

There is a principle that theology should not be based on experience, but rather that experience should be evaluated on the basis of theology.  What is Schori’s theological method and what exactly is the basis on which her theology is formulated?

Schori’s theological method is: If I’ve experienced it and it agrees with my presuppositions it must be true.   Right at the outset she tells us, “We are all running down the same road, and our task is to break through the obstacles and make the road smoother for one another.  If you read the Hebrew Scriptures closely, you discover that God’s promise of full larders and planted fields and repopulated cities is followed by metanoia—a new mind and a new heart.”

She presents us with a naïve secular utopianism disguised in religious language.  It is naïve because it is based on an inadequate theological understanding of human nature.  Our job, the mission of the Church, is to usher in the Kingdom of God on earth.  What makes it difficult to comment on is that she is in part correct, but partial truth is a dangerous thing.  One wants to ask, “Are we indeed running down the same road?  And, if so, are we all running in the same direction?” [ii]

She clearly does not think that some are running down the same road.  She says, “Given the stories I’ve heard in the Dioceses of San Jaoquin and Fort Worth, leadership looked a lot like control and fear-mongering, and intimidation was used to keep people in line.  Bishops and clergy insisted that they had the fullness of God’s truth, and if anybody disagreed, well, then, they must be godless heretics.”[iii]  She makes a practice of vilifying those who do not agree with her, and at the least show herself no better than those she critiques, that is providing her assertion is correct. 

Please note that she bases this on stories that she has heard.  I know personally some of those she critiques so savagely, and while I do not agree with their separation, I would not call into question their orthodoxy, their morality, and is some outstanding people among them their love and charity.

She has in her opening introduction a misunderstanding, whether wilful or not.  She says that God’s promises of blessing are followed by metanioa—a new mind and a new heart.”  She is wrong.  Metanoia, is repentance, and as such precedes necessarily the gift of a new mind and a new heart, not the other way around.

Consistently through her book she evokes the questions preceding the baptismal covenant.  What she consistently ignores is the three renunciations of evil and the three baptismal questions that each adult candidate must answer for himself or herself, and each baptized child must eventually affirm at Confirmation.

What are those questions?  They are the expression of the very faith that she has condemned in a General Convention address as a Western Heresy, “Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?  Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?  Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?”

She is a secular utopian humanist with a predilection for the radical methodology of Saul Alinsky who felt that the greatest crimes in history have been perpetrated by religious, political and racial fanatics; and she is glad to identify her opponents as those very fanatics.

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[i] I actually read the book.  I bought it on Amazon for $4.95

[ii] Katherine Jefferts Schori: The Heartbeat of God, (Woodstock, Vermont:  Skylight Paths, 2011), p. xxxiv

[iii] Ibid, p. 163