The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee,
meeting in convention Feb. 10, 2007, in Gatlinburg, Tenn.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori: Question-and-answer session following her address to the East Tennessee convention

Q: What do think the good news is? And how have you witnessed and experienced the gospel in these last few months?

A: The good news is that God is at work in many, many, many places that we can see - and everywhere, even if we can't see.

I think the great good news at this point in history is that the church is alive and well and vibrant and healthy and engaged in mission increasingly all across this land and the other places that the Episcopal Church exists.

We read in the media and hear on the news a loud story about a handful of congregations, but the reality is very different, as you exhibit. You know the health and vitality and the mission focus increasingly present in this church. That is the great good news - God is at work.

Q: Are there other ways in which you perceive the Anglican understanding of mission to have changed in the last 50 years, and for there a call to be coming to us?

A: Well, I can't remember 50 years ago!

My sense is that, at least in this church, that there is a greater willingness to be involved in the public sphere, that it's seen as a normative part of our mission as Christians, that we really are about transforming the society in which we live.

I think there's a far greater awareness of the rest of the Anglican Communion, which has been a gift in the last three or four years. I said to people in the summer of 2003, before that General Convention, that no longer will people say, "Episco-what?"

People know who we are, even if they don't completely agree with us, and they know increasingly what we stand for. I think our willingness to speak hard truths or to stand up and claim what we believe is a refreshing alternative, especially to many people in this country who see only one version of Christianity.

Q: What will separate the MDGs from the many attempts to eradicate poverty in the past, and also, a criticism might be that it takes attention away from the poverty, racism and injustices in our own back yards.

A: Our response to the MDGs is based on our understanding of our mission as Christians. It is a mission that interlaces with the mission of the great Abrahamic religions; shalom and salaam, Islam - the word "Islam" comes from the very same root as does shalom - they all talk about peace, the kind of peace that's only obtained when a society of justice is created, and a society in submission to God, which is what Islam means. So I think there're some real opportunities for cross-fertilization that we haven't entirely lived into yet.

How is this different from other approaches to poverty? It's based in the deepest, most central tenets of our faith, and I think it's the first time in human history when we really have had a vision of being able to resolve abject poverty across the world. It's achievable; all it takes is our will to do it.

Q: Would you comment on how smaller parishes in our area might be transformational parishes, especially in Sunday schools and with our youth?

A: One of the great gifts of smallness and leanness is that perhaps we begin to really believe what it is we pray in this prayer book - in the baptismal covenant, especially - that all baptized people are called to ministry and service to God's mission. We're still only just beginning to live into that theology as a church, to claim the reality that every person in this room is called to ministry in multiple parts of his or her life. That's the gift that smaller congregations know, because they have to live that way. They have to depend on the gifts of their members. And that is a gift we can offer children and young people.

I remember visiting a congregation in Washington state a number of years ago, and they said to me, "We don't let adults do anything in this church that children are capable of doing."

It takes very, very seriously the gifts of all members of the congregation. And I think that kind of attitude is a kind of natural witness and evangelism to the larger community: come and be part of us, and let us bless and celebrate your gifts and use them in service to God's mission in this place.

Q: Have you been invited to Lambeth, and what are the consequences of being invited or not?

A: Well, nobody has seen a paper invitation yet. The rhetoric that is coming from Lambeth Palace is that everybody's going to be invited.

When I met the Archbishop of Canterbury in late October, he said to former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and to me that he was going to say to the primates that if he began to make distinctions about who could be invited and who couldn't, that those distinctions would cut in ways that people didn't expect.

Sue Parks, who is the laywoman doing all the detail work around organizing that meeting, was in the office in New York a couple of weeks ago and acted very much as though everybody was coming.

Q: What is to done in regard to the Palestinian issue, especially in regard to the Christian minority in Palestine?

A: It's a tragedy. The Christian presence in Israel/Palestine is shrinking rapidly. It used to be, I think, 7 or 8 percent, and it's down around 1 percent of the population.

This church is clear; we believe a two-state solution is essential, one that respects the security needs of Israel and the rights of Palestinians to dwell in their ancestral homeland.

I was part of a delegation that went to see the Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice, I think two weeks ago. The Lutherans, the Catholics, two Jewish groups and a Muslim group in the U.S. were represented, and the group itself represents a much larger coalition of religious leaders.

We said, "we will mobilize our communities if you're serious about working on this." It was incredibly heartfelt to hear the Jewish representatives say to her, "we recognize that Israel is going to have let go of some land for this to happen," and the Muslim representative say to her, "we recognize that this is going to have to involve some limitation on the rights of all Palestinians to return." Each side is willing to give, in the search for peace.

She said to us that she wants to do something about this, and that the president wants to do something about this. They've got two years to work on it. You're not likely to see results immediately, but there needs to be some capacity for the Palestinians to govern, and the State Dept. is going to use its influence with the other members of the quartet to try to provide behind-the-scenes support before any more formal peace processes are initiated. We came away reasonably hopeful, but not expecting to see anything public in the next few months.

Q: All of the challenges in our great church over the past years have taken a toll in health and humor, on our leaders, especially our bishops. I think you've got a great sense of humor. What can we, the average Joe and Jane Episcopalian, do to care our bishops and for you in these stressful times?

A: I think you're absolutely right, that humor is essential. I said to your bishop last night that I think the House of Bishops needs to see your "Sister Act" [convention entertainment].

The Scots have a saying of which I'm very fond. They say that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly. If we're overly serious about who we are, we've missed God's great sense of humor.

Q: Do you have any plans for moving the process of selection for ordination and theological education toward a more united understanding of Anglican history and the breadth of Anglican theology?

A: What a great question. That very issue was the most creative piece of communiqué that came out of the Primates Meeting in Dromantine. And it's the part that's been ignored in the larger media coverage. There's a piece that comes at the very end that talks about Communion-wide focus on theological education. There's a group whose acronym is TEAC - Theological Education in the Anglican Communion - and they're working on that issue far more globally than just in this province.

I think it's absolutely essential to recover our roots, to be radical in that sense, as Anglicans, that we really are about breadth and comprehensiveness, and not insisting that any of us has the fullness of the truth. Only in community can we begin to even think about having a glimpse of the truth. Truth doesn't belong to any individual, one party or one strand of our tradition, but that the whole thing is necessary.

I have a meeting with the seminary deans later this spring, and I know that's an issue that's going to come up.

Q: What does the Episcopal Church do to help train military chaplains of all denominations to officiate at liturgical services? Military personnel are underserved.

A: I believe the same person approached me last night, and I suggested that she speak to George Packard, who is the bishop suffragan for chaplaincies, which includes the armed forces and prison chaplaincies, not educational chaplaincies.

We have a relatively small percentage of the total chaplains in the armed forces. Many of them are mobilized, and one thing I hear from George frequently is to remind their bishops about paying attention to armed forces chaplains who are overseas and other chaplains who are at work in dioceses. I don't think that our church has great influence on training chaplains in other denominations, but I will ask that question of Bishop Packard. Individual denominations certify that chaplains are recognized as ministers in their traditions, and then the military will employ them. We don't have control over the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and the Church of God folk, but I will ask the question.

Q: In this gathering, as in all Episcopal gatherings, the faithful have divergent views on actions taken by General Convention. Some feel that these actions have departed from scripture and tradition. Other feels that we haven't moved far enough, fast enough, in welcoming and including people in ordination and the blessing of unions. How can we be the church together?

A: I think the very fact that that diversity of opinion is expressed says that the community is healthy. I'm very fond of a farming metaphor; it can be applied to aquaculture as well. In situations where the same crop is grown year after year after year after year in a field, the only way to sustain that is with massive inputs of manure and insecticides.

We're not healthy as an organism, as a community, if we are only of one mind. It is the diversity of opinion that keeps the community healthy.

All biological communities, all biological organisms have to have that diversity - the division of labor among the cells of a body - in order to be healthy and functioning. Yes, it produces tension, but it's the tension that keeps us alive. Things that don't exist in tension are dead.

What can local communities do in wrestling with that? Get to know the people who disagree with you as human beings. You will discover something you share, and the difference becomes less important. Discovering that you share a common passion for mission is the usual Christian approach to something like that.

Q: Are there still absolute truths?

A: Only in God.

Q: Would you share with us the one characteristic of God that you know personally and feel strongly enough about, that you would accost a stranger on the street to share it?

A: Look at the beauty of this creation! Look at the beauty of this creation! God has created in such diversity and elegance and wonder and mysteriousness that how can we not kneel down in worship? And it applies to human beings, too.

Q: What advice would you give to those who are considering ordained ministry?

A: It is a great and glorious calling, if it is that to which you are called. It's hard work; it's going to the cross; it's a blessing - but the same thing can be said of every human vocation. Be clear and careful in your discernment, and make sure it involves a far larger community than yourself.

It's a blessing, in my experience. It took me a long time to say yes, but it's been a blessing.

Q: We all want to know, what is your favorite airplane of all time?

A: I think I've always had a secret wish to fly a Fokker tri-plane. I doubt that I'll ever get the opportunity.

Q: What did you learn as a student of squid and octopuses that is coming in handy now?

A: Beauty comes in many forms. Squids and octopuses, at least in the part of the Pacific Ocean that I studied, came in 80 or 90 different species, from an inch to more than 80 feet long, though I never collected one. … They live in all places, in all environments. They're all squids, as we might compare squids to Anglicans. They're all created by God, wondrous in their own way. Some of them can't survive in environments where others live, and that's the way they were created. There's blessing in that.

My husband's fond of telling the joke, "how did two squid go down the street? Arm in arm in arm in arm in arm." I think that's how we should go.

Q: Is there a question you wish we would have asked?

A: Well, we got to talk a lot about the MDGs, and you started by asking about the health and vitality of the church. I think that's where we most especially need to focus.

We need to focus on the blessing that's abundantly given to us, the grace of God at work in this world and in the people we know, not on what's broken in the sense of saying that's the only thing that's out there. We need to attend to it and try to heal it, but if some people need to go and find a home somewhere else, bless their journey, keep the door open and the light on.

It's all right. It's all right.