In this week's interview with The Boston Globe, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori stated:
“Where the protesters [against same-sex blessings] are, in some parts of Africa or in other parts of the Anglican Communion today, is where this church and this society we live in was 50 years ago, and for us to assume that people can move that distance in a year or in a relatively instantaneous manner is perhaps faithless,” she said. “That kind of movement and development has taken us a good deal of pain and energy over 40 or 50 years, and I think we have to make some space so that others can make that journey as well.”
Al Mohler insightfully characterized her comments in this way:
In other words, Jefferts Schori argues that time is on her side. The African churches will simply have to grow up and learn to play the game. They will have to learn to replace the authority of the Bible with the authority of modern therapeutic ideologies. They will have to learn to jettison biblical morality in favor of modern sexual “lifestyles.” They will have to learn to use interpretive techniques in order to make the Bible “mean” the opposite of what it states. They will have to get over their strange notion that the Creator has a design for human sexuality. They will have to denounce chastity and embrace sexual liberation.
Give these churches time, the Bishop suggests. After all, one can’t expect the Global South churches to go through this revolution in a day. Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori’s statement is a classic form of condescension. Allow those backward churches some time, she chides, in order that they will “make that journey as well.”
You can listen to Mohler's radio program on the topic. Of course, her statement is (unfortunately) totally in line with those of her predecessor, as noted in my blog entry on the New Dark Ages.
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