One would think Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori had too many problems with the faith group she leads to pick a fight with evangelicals.
After all, the U.S. Episcopal Church, which Jefferts Schori leads, is sliding downward in membership and giving. The church is in trouble with the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which it is a member, largely for its ordination of a gay bishop and what appears to be its growing acceptance of homosexuality. Recently a group of about 800 Episcopalians attended the first meeting of a theologically conservative breakaway group calling itself the Anglican Church in North America.
That many problems should be enough to keep anyone busy.
But instead of focusing on her own problems and those facing the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori has leveled an attack on evangelicals. In a speech to the church’s triennial meeting July 8 in Anaheim, Calif., she called the belief that individuals can be right with God a “great Western heresy.”
According to a news release about the speech, Jefferts Schori said the overarching problem facing Episcopalians has to do with “the great Western heresy — that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.”
The bishop even tried to make light of evangelicals by saying some insist on repeating a specific verbal formula about Jesus, apparently a reference to the sinner’s prayer. She called the focus on individual salvation “a form of idolatry,” saying, “it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being.”
As shocking as her words are, the thinking behind them is not entirely original. Her belief is based on the Old Testament concept that God had a personal relationship with the nation of Israel, not individual Israelites. Today such thinking concludes God has a relationship with the Church and salvation comes by identification with the Church Jesus established. Outside of identity with the Church, there is no salvation.
Jefferts Schori is not alone in holding this theological position. She is joined by others such as some Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and members of Churches of Christ.
As Baptists and other evangelicals understand the Bible, nothing could be further from the truth. We understand that Jesus died for all who believe in Him and confess Him as personal Lord and Savior (Rom. 10:9–10). In Jesus’ own ministry, people made individual decisions to believe in Him (John 4:29, 42). The ministry of the early church was characterized by individuals making decisions to believe in Jesus (Acts 16:30).
Our own faith stories and the story of missions are about individual decisions to trust Jesus as personal Lord and Savior. Many times, those individual decisions severed relationships with family and friends.
Baptists understand that having Christian parents or being reared in a Christian environment or being a member of a local congregation does not make one a believer. That happens only in the human heart, one person at a time.
There are no “correct” words to say, as the bishop charged. There is only the desperate cry of the repentant for God to have mercy because that one accepts the death of Jesus on Calvary’s cross as the price for his or her sin.
Such a cry is not placing self at the center of the universe. Rather it is going to the One who is the center of the universe and “the Ground of Being,” to quote theologian Paul Tillich. There the repentant seeks mercy and grace from God Himself, not because the sinner has earned it but because a loving God has offered it through faith in Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:19).
Baptists would agree that only God can incorporate one into the Church. That is the universal Church, which is composed of believers through the corridors of time and from every part of the globe. The universal Church is not to be confused with any earthly institution subject to the sin and foibles of humanity. Some may be members of an earthly institution without ever being made right with God through a personal faith relationship.
Jefferts Schori said the problems Episcopalians face are all because of an emphasis on personal salvation. It may not be too strong to suggest the opposite is true. The problems the Episcopal Church faces may be due to the lack of an emphasis on personal salvation.
Still the bishop made a valid point when she talked about the importance of the Christian community. “There is no ‘I’ without ‘you,’ and in our context, you and I are known only as we reflect the image of the One who created us,” she said.
Baptists might express the thought differently. We understand that God’s Kingdom “is not about us,” to paraphrase Rick Warren in “The Purpose Driven Life.” It is all about God.
Jesus came preaching, “the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15). His message was one of repentance. His message was also one of commitment. He taught the disciples to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10). Before His ascension, Jesus commissioned His followers to “go and make disciples” (Matt. 28:19). As one writer has said, “Jesus came to embody God’s reign and to create a community (the Church) that would make as its mission the continued embodiment of God’s reign until Christ returns.”
As God incorporates the repentant believer into the Church, that one becomes committed to work in his or her part of God’s Kingdom. That means salvation brings more than a private faith for the sweet by and by. It brings a concern for God’s will to be lived out on earth. It is a concern for self, and it is a concern for others.
Even the institutional church is not an end in itself. The church becomes a means of helping believers demonstrate the love, mercy and righteousness of God for all to see. The church is to be an expression of God’s reign on earth.
Yes, Baptists believe in personal salvation. We believe that any individual can be rightly related to God. And that commitment empowers us to be concerned for others. That is what the Bible teaches (John 11:32–36). That belief is not a “great Western heresy” as Jefferts Schori said. It is the core of the Christian gospel.
We hope the bishop will come to understand this truth. It will certainly help her, and it could help the group she leads.
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