Troubling times indeed for the Anglican Communion. It is precisely during these times that we must remember and proclaim that Jesus is Lord.

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church (TEC), will receive an honorary degree from Oxford University. The award — announced last week (Feb. 6) — will be presented on June 25 in the presence of some of the world’s top scholars and fellow religious leaders.

“This award, richly deserved, affirms Bishop Katharine’s remarkable gifts of intellect and compassion, which she has dedicated to the service of Christ,”said Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.

Institutions like Oxford are certainly free to honor anyone whom they wish.  I have no argument with that.

But how can the Archbishop of Canterbury offer such fulsome praise for Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefforts Schori who, in defiance of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 (1998), has accelerated the unilateral innovations of same-sex blessings and consecrations of same-sex partnered clergy as bishops that have brought terrible division to the Anglican Communion?  How can Justin Welby say with any ecclesial integrity that she has “remarkable gifts of intellect dedicated to the service of Christ”  when the unilateral innovations she has championed have destroyed that deeper spiritual unity in Christ for which Anglicans pray—that spiritual unity which is the highest good of the Anglican Communion and the very basis for its mission?

How can Justin Welby ascribe “remarkable intellectual gifts dedicated to the service of Christ” to a leader who has been challenged time and again over the last ten years by the Windsor Process itself, who has ignored the moratoria begged of her and TEC, and whose acceleration of those innovations was the very cause for the response of the Anglican Churches in Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and elsewhere in the majority Global South which offered pastoral care and covering to those Episcopalians, now Anglicans, who would not submit to her innovations as a matter of conscience and fidelity to Biblical teaching and Lambeth Resolution 1.10?

Is such conduct really an expression of remarkable intellect in the service of Christ?

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