207. Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori and the Smothers Brothers

 What's the quickest way to get a Christian blessing?  Go to a shallow preacher and be meek, mournful and poor in spirit in front of him or her.  If he doesn't respond get yourself persecuted and reviled.  He'll soon see that the blessing-words apply to you and raise his hand.  You're in.

If you want a deeper, more theological, blessing, and aren't in haste, go to a shallow Pauline Christian preacher.  Say to him, "I believe," or "I have faith."  He'll see that you've met Paul's condition for salvation.  You're in.

Outside of Christianity there are still plenty of people seeking a blessing the quickest and easiest way.  "I am different."  That's enough, often, to get a blessing from a shallow liberal.  "Diversity" is the blessing-word.  Cast it and those inside the net are forever saved. 

We teachers of English Composition have to mock the whole game — the shallow saving the shallow in a simplified world.  We try to get the young to look inside words, both blessing and cursing words, for what they refer to — how they connect to a devilishly complicated world.  You can say that we try to give the young a deep understanding, and claim that it "saves," but the depth lies only in verbal care and the salvation, if there is any, is only from mistakes.  It's the academic game as played in English departments.

The game requires that when we see the word "diversity" used to indicate a vaguely good thing we put "Ref" (reference) or "Mean" (meaning) in the margin and count on the student to look closely at the word. The idea is to get students to be more careful with words, and discriminate among their meanings. If they become lawyers (or jurors) they won't make (or accept) specious arguments.  If they become preachers they won't give shallow blessings.  If they do we're going to be disappointed.

Now a very prominent preacher, Katherine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States, has just (NYT 6-22-13) given a blessing that, judging by the response of some of her fellow churchmen, is about as shallow as a Christian blessing can be.  Speaking in a church in Curaçao she blessed a woman in the Bible (Acts 16:16-34) simply because she was different.  She ignored what the Bible said she was (a fortune-teller), she ignored what she was a vessel of (demons), she ignored what every good Christian listener, beginning with St. Paul, agreed on (that she spoke untrustworthy words).  Those things were to her (we guess) simply part of our "long history of discounting and devaluing difference, finding it offensive or even evil."  That history blinds us to "the spirit of God in her," the "glory of another human being."

The Christians who write the blogs and journals I have looked at can hardly find words for Jefferts Schori's reading of the Bible passage.  I can hardly find words.  This, this, from the leader of one of our most level-headed, most sophisticated, least emotional Protestant churches, my church.  Making the papers.   Just as we were making some progress loosening the label "fuzzy minded" stuck on Christians in universities.

"It's a small thing, a reading of one passage in Scripture."

Small, yes, but it's a window — into a mind, a denomination, maybe a religion.  Is this a reality we have tried to wish away?  Have we Christian academics been kidding ourselves?  About our religion?  The essentials?  Oooh, that's tough.  Let's say it's  the weaknesses of an era.  Better yet, the weakness of a person.  One looks for excuses.  "The poor PB was just trying to get some tolerance and fairness and understanding going and happened to say more than she should have said."  But nobody, at least nobody in my hearing, has offered even that, an excuse for a personal fault. 

Composition teachers deal with public faults, listed in their textbooks, waiting for their red pencils.  With them there can be no doubt.  Jefferts Schori's sermon, word by word, puts on their blackboards a classic case of liberal superficiality.

Is there anybody who would find this sermon acceptable?  I don't know of anyone one now but fifty years ago I knew of one.  His name was Tom Smothers, and for nearly a decade he jousted comically with his brother Dick on television.  What makes me put him at Jefferts Schori's side is just one exchange:

Dick:  Your shirttail's out.

Tom: Why do you hate me?

Tom pays no attention to what your words refer to; he is interested only in what they tell him about your feelings.  Do you hate?  Do you love?

That is essentially all Jefferts Schori wants to know about us when we look at the slave girl.  Look, not listen.  For signals, not substance.  What the girl is saying might be anything — demonic lure, polytheistic error, folk wisdom, animistic abomination, dark truth, soothing nonsense, who knows — but none of it matters for the blessing.  What matters is that she is different.  And how you feel about that.