VOL: This “whirlwind of acrimony” has come about first by the canonically illegal action of deposing Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh and a number of other orthodox bishops in The Episcopal Church. It has been going downhill from there. What calm? Jefferts Schori has brought nothing but chaos to TEC ever since she took over. Frank Griswold, who hated acrimony and confrontation, ran in the opposite direction whenever he saw it coming. Jefferts Schori has reveled in ecclesiastical fun-n-games deposing bishops and spending millions on lawsuits.

CULLUM: This includes Jack Iker, the former bishop of Fort Worth. By elsewhere, he and the others mean a religious body that does not elect gay bishops, as Episcopalians did in New Hampshire six years ago or again, in early December, in Los Angeles, when they chose Mary Glasspool, a double-affront since some of the dissidents are not so high on women as priests, either, much less as bishops.

VOL: Yup. You’ve got that right. No pansexualists in the pulpit, non-celibate ones that is. The overwhelming evidence is that Robinson’s consecration has cost the church one seventh of all its practicing (ASA) members since 2003. What about this is Good News? And Nancy Glasspool’s consecration will see a sudden rise in church attendance? It must be all the freely available pot (marijuana) in California that has made its way to Dallas, Texas, that Cullum must be smoking.

CULLUM: Bishop Katharine, as she is called, has written a stream of letters to those who threaten her church, among them Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria. She urged him to stay out of Virginia and refrain from installing a breakaway bishop of that state as head of a breakaway group called the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). He came nonetheless. He may also think he saw and conquered, but I'm not convinced of that.

VOL: She wrote the letters and I am told they made great darts for hurling around the sacristy. Some were even used as toilet paper. CANA and its branch of the Anglican District of Virginia (ADV) is winning the legal battle for properties and seems likely to prevail at the Virginia Supreme Court level. They are already planting new churches in Virginia, while the diocese closes churches. "The fact that the Virginia Supreme Court is going to hear an appeal of this case was expected. We continue to be confident in our legal position and in the more than 200 pages of well-reasoned rulings of the Fairfax County Circuit Court,” say ADV leaders. Under Bishop Martyn Minns’ leadership, CANA is growing by leaps and bounds, there is no such evidence for the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

CULLUM: More recently, Bishop Katharine issued a warning about legislation pending in Uganda that could punish by death those who violate certain laws against homosexuality. Clearly, they play for keeps in that country, but in her statement Bishop Katharine noted with regret that "antagonism toward gay and lesbian persons in African nations has been stirred by members and former members of our own church." As for Anglicans in Uganda, they, she told me, have taken no stand whatsoever on this law, but, due perhaps, to her reaction and that of other religious leaders in the U.S., Uganda may drop the death penalty and life imprisonment from the bill.

VOL: Not because of anything she said. The Anglican Church of Uganda opposed the death penalty long before anything Jefferts Schori said, but they would like the West that is pining and whining over sodomy to stay out of their affairs. If not, the Ugandans should turn around and tell GM how to make cars that Americans actually want to buy. They should also tell Wall Street about the joy of Derivatives and how they brought the whole world’s economy to its knees. Furthermore, America’s abortion mills performed more than 1.2 million abortions between 2006-2007. In Uganda, where abortion is illegal, the figure was only 300,000. Since 1973, 50 million abortions have been performed in the U.S. the equivalent of NZ, Australia, Canada and Uganda populations put together. Finally, Uganda has 9.2 million practicing Anglicans, TEC has 700,000, why would Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi listen to anything Mrs. Jefferts Schori has to say to him!

CULLUM: Another intruder in the United States was Bishop Gregory Venables of the Southern Cone, based in Buenos Aires. Despite entreaties from Bishop Katharine not to meddle in affairs not his own, he came to Fort Worth even so, and lured Bishop Jack Iker and his diocese to renounce the Episcopal Church of America and instead join the group in Argentina. Bishop Katharine took it to mean that Jack Iker also had renounced his orders, and that was that. As she put it to me, "He is no longer a bishop in the Episcopal Church."

VOL: Actually, he’s an archbishop. Venables was no “intruder” and he did not lure Jack Iker to renounce TEC. He came to the U.S. at the express INVITATION of Bishop Iker and other TEC bishops. Venables and his fellow Peruvian bishop H. William Godfrey were reluctant debutants to the TEC ball. They did not want to come. They resisted coming for many months, and finally did so when they saw the chaos TEC was in. Furthermore, Iker did not renounce his orders he was deposed by the Presiding Bishop.

CULLUM: Now Fort Worth has a re-created diocese with a new bishop, Wallis Ohl, who quickly ordained two women priests, something Jack Iker never would have countenanced. Currently Bishop Iker, whose dissident congregations are under the aegis of Argentine after all, is loathe to give up his buildings in Fort Worth, which the newly reconstituted diocese claims as its own, historically and legally, All that will be settled in court, but however it goes, I suspect that those who take on Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will discover at some point that they have misread her qualities.

VOL: And those qualities are what exactly? She has denounced personal faith in Christ as a “Western heresy.” She has litigated against more bishops than any other presiding bishop in TEC history. She has reduced the gospel to the socio-political agenda of the Democratic Party and she is embarrassed to be telling anyone including Muslims that Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And Wallis Ohl thinks that ordaining women will suddenly make the church grow?

CULLUM: At St. Michael's, she showed herself to be reserved and modest, but also impressively strong and imperturbable willingness to withstand whatever comes, without flinching. While she seeks conciliation, if that proves impossible, she does not hesitate to say goodbye. Moreover, she has a powerful presence and firm convictions. Here in Dallas she made the most compelling case for social justice I have ever heard. That's because she gave it a fresh context-joy. If anybody can save the Episcopal Church of America, it is Katharine Jefferts Schori, the improbable bishop who now is indispensable.

VOL: What she did was tailor her message to her audience. It’s called PR 101. She figured out that conservatives didn’t want to hear any negative talk about salvation in Christ alone (she doesn’t believe it) or the rest of her non-existent theology, so she gave them a soft-shoe approach on being nice and social justice concerns. The audience fell for it because most of them are as theologically dumb as she is. Bishop Bill Frey should have nailed her ecclesiastical backside to the narthex floor, but failed to do so. She won because he failed to do Apologetics 101. Go figure. As for “social justice” that is ALL the Episcopal Church believes in. Its leaders are frightened to stand up for the life-changing Good News of the Gospel and so they have turned the Good News into political and economic agit-prop. More money is spent in lobbying in Washington DC’s corridors of power by TEC politicos than building up churches or preaching the Good News. And on at least one issue, immigration, the official stance of the Episcopal Church is NOT representative of the belief of the people in its pews, a survey conducted on behalf of the non-partisan Washington think tank, the Center for Immigrations Studies (CIS) reports. The legacy of Jefferts Schori might well be no faith and its political philosophy being trashed by ordinary Episcopalians.

Lastly, no one is indispensable. No one. As she slowly but surely drags The Episcopal Church down, she may well preside over its demise. By the end of her term, whoever follows her will inherit the wasteland of what was once a proud and viable church.

END