During her occupation as the titular head of the Episcopal Church for nine years, she uttered more heresies recorded by any sitting bishop, with the possible exception of John Shelby Spong and more recently Charles E. Bennison, Bishop of Pennsylvania, whose line that "Jesus was a sinner who forgave himself" might earn them both a place in the sixth circle (heresy) of Dante's nine circles of suffering located within the Earth.

But she did try hard and the Inferno might still be her reward.

Over the course of nine years, she variously denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus and the full deity of Christ, referred to Jesus as "mother Jesus" at one point, and said St. Paul should have listened to a demoniac girl for spiritual guidance.

She was the perfect ecclesiastical piñata.

Every time she uttered a heresy or two, I would whack her and the piñata would break open and more heresies would pour out of her. Her staff would patch her up again and on she would go.

One of her most memorable and public apostasies was the occasion at one general convention when she said that individual (personal) conversion (to Christ) was a western heresy and likened it to "work" rather than that of free grace. She has publicly said that Muslims do not need converting to Christ and that she would never tell them they do, and that Jews are saved under the first covenant. This got my attention, naturally, and I hit her hard. The piñata never stood a chance.

Her farewell speech this past week was a picture of subterfuge, lies and spin.

"I am deeply grateful for what God has been up to in the midst of our journey together."

That "journey" has cost the Episcopal Church a loss of nearly 200,000 ASA members and tens of millions of dollars in lawsuits for properties that the courts are now granting to those departing TEC. Her ultra-liberal, theologically-challenged credentials earned her the dubious title as the Church's first dictatorial female Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church who managed to alienate the entire Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church and most of its evangelicals. She is leaving a church in rapid decline with more than two-thirds of the church made up of women over 60. A third of TEC's rectors are women. None of the women priests and bishops have shown any ability to make the Church grow, preferring to sound off on the platitudes of social reform rather than the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Her latest and last fiasco was to get yet another woman in a miter, which came to a crashing halt...literally. Heather Cook, the wannabee Suffragan Bishop of Maryland got seven years in jail this week for killing a cyclist while texting and for leaving the scene of an accident. Of course, the Church had to disown her, but it was further evidence that Jefferts Schori, who knew Cook had a drinking problem, did nothing to stop the consecration from going forward. Political correctness cost the life of a young man and crippled his family for life.

KJS: The Episcopal Church has come a long way in the last 10 years. We are no longer consumed by internal conflict over various social issues. We are clearer about who we are--a multinational church, with congregations in 17 nations, worshipping in countless different languages, thriving in international, immigrant, and multicultural contexts everywhere, and discovering the abundant life that comes in turning outward to love the neighbors nearby and far away. For the record, the total ASA for all 17 nations is just over 33,000.

VOL: Yes, The Episcopal Church has come a long way in 10 years...downward. If TEC is no longer consumed by internal conflict over various social issues it is because most of those involved in the conflict have left TEC and now belong to the Anglican Church in North America, where conflict over sexuality is non-existent because everyone is on the same page. On other "social issues," ACNA followers are allowed freedom of conscience to make their own decisions regarding topics like Israel and Palestine, Islam and immigration. TEC has fixed views on all these issues.

KJS: We are far more conscious about our vocation as partners in the mission of God to reconcile and heal the world, particularly shaped by the Five Anglican Marks of Mission. We are holding our identity as Episcopal Christians a bit more confidently, even in the midst of our diversity. We are also more willing to hold that identity lightly and gracefully in engaging other Christians and people of other religious traditions, searching for what we dream of in common--shalom, the Reign of God, a more just and peaceful world, with abundant life for all creation.

VOL: If this was all true then one has to ask why the Archbishop of Canterbury has called a summit of the Communion's archbishops in January to discuss the future of the Anglican Communion! What is there to be confident about if Justin Welby says TEC is heretical and he will now recognize the ACNA as a legitimate Anglican province? Of course she won't be around to see how this plays out, but you can be sure her successor is now walking on eggshells, hoping for the best possible outcome.

Here are the Five Marks of Mission:

To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom. TEC has totally failed to proclaim the Good News about Jesus. Perhaps she thinks the "Good News" is about climate change. Clearly it is not about redemption through the blood of Christ at the cross.

To teach, baptize and nurture new believers. What new believers? TEC is hemorrhaging parishioners at a fast clip with no sign of a let up any time soon.

To respond to human need by loving service. Minimally true. TEC doesn't come close to agencies like World Vision, Food for the Poor, Food for the Hungry, the Salvation Army et al. in "loving service."

To seek to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation. Name an unjust society that TEC has transformed. She has steadily taken a lop-sided view of the Arab-Israeli conflict by promoting the Palestinian side, only refusing to sell stock in companies that do business with Israel. After all, you don't want to tick off the Republicans in TEC who pay the bills and who actually support the State of Israel.

To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth. I suppose tree-hugging, saving the whales, climate change and whatever other idea floats into TEC's vision isn't so bad. One doubts TEC will save the planet in any meaningful way or boost parish rolls. Those days are gone. TEC bishops had no problem increasing their carbon footprint flying off to Taiwan for a HOB meeting.

In a bi-lined story for VOL by Sarah Frances Ives, Ph.D. on a sermon delivered by Jefferts Schori at the United Thank Offering Ingathering, Festival Eucharist at General Convention in 2012, Ives described the false theology of the Presiding Bishop like this:

"On July 8, 2012, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori preached her brand of post-Christian religion while masquerading as a Christian bishop. She mocked most of the crucial doctrines of the Christian faith, including the God of creation, the Incarnation, and the Trinity. She accomplishes this through her demeaning use of rhetoric. She taunts the Lord by the use of the name "Big Man" and then points her finger at everyone listening and tells them that they have "missed the boat." Jefferts Schori then proclaims that she has the answer for this. We all need the "act of crossing boundaries" to become God after which our hands become a "sacrament of mission." In this sermon, Jefferts Schori continued her mission of destroying the Christian faith through her rhetorical device of dismissive ridicule.

"As seen in this sermon Jefferts Schori has decided that she is beyond the discipline of rational thought. She makes up fictional information about Jesus when she states definitively about his unknown earlier years, "He [Jesus] has never stood up in their synagogue before and said anything particularly challenging."

"Jefferts Schori continues her fictional theology that Jesus wants us 'to tend the garden we share with all the rest of creation.' She also demeans the Roman Catholic Church in her reference to the toy 'Nunzilla' that is a contemptuous stereotype of nuns as aggressive and mean. In a spirit of criticism, Jefferts Schori also lumps together without differentiation all members of the Senate and House of Representatives, saying that people speak of the "contempt and arrogance they hear from Congress and other politicians." Jefferts Schori's contempt for others seems to know no bounds.

"She began her sermon by destroying the idea of the eternal and omnipotent Lord of all creation by referring to him as the 'Big Man.' In an obviously critical reference, she understands our eternal God as a figment of the imagination of the patriarchs. Jefferts Schori also trains her guns on Jesus and demotes him from Son of God to a 'prophet.' Then she states, 'When Jesus is called a prophet, it has to do with erasing the boundary between God and human flesh.' To erase the boundary between God and humanity (which means that humanity becomes God) has always been considered a heresy. To become God was one original temptation in the Garden of Eden.

"Jefferts Schori asserted that humans are to boldly cross the frontier to become God and by doing so denies the truth of the once-for-all Incarnation. Instead, we all become God and 'start building the world that God intended at creation.' Jefferts Schori presents the reality of God as so weak that the 'Big Man' intended something and could not carry it out and so we becoming God are going to succeed where God did not.

"It is now apparent that Jefferts Schori draws inspiration from Darwin's destruction of boundaries between the human being and animals. Charles Darwin erased the boundary between humanity and nature in his Descent of Man in 1872 by blending these two distinct groups together. For those who follow Darwin's thought, humans lost their position of being created in the image of God with an eternal soul. As the boundary between humanity and animals was erased, humanity becomes only one more species of animal.

"Jefferts Schori leaves a wide wake of destruction behind with this sermon: the eternal triune God has been torn down, human beings are to boldly claim our place as God, and the sacraments of the Eucharist and Baptism have been turned into things our hands make. In other words, Jefferts Schori accepts that now humanity, animals and God are one undifferentiated blob. This is essentially a form of solipsism, the belief that self is all that is known to exist. Anyone can see that this is both pure heresy and utter nonsense."

The retired Bishop of South Carolina, The Rt. Rev. Dr. C. FitzSimons Allison, expostulated that Mrs. Jefferts Schori's remarks are not a distortion of Christology, the Trinity or even the Creed, but are the announcement of a different religion. "It doesn't measure up to heresy. She is trying to reduce Christianity to the blank space in the creed between the Virgin Mary and Pontius Pilate."

The outgoing Presiding Bishop, VOL has learned, will begin teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary next February. Perhaps she will teach a different, new religion as part of VTS's new curriculum and maintain TEC's ongoing tradition to stand for just about anything except historic Christianity while retaining the title of the Church's first and only female heretical piñata.

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