“I think it’s really very dangerous when someone stands up and says: ‘I have the way and I have the truth and I know how to interpret holy scripture and you are following what is the right way.’ It’s really very, very dangerous and I think it’s demonic.”
–Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC John Chane at the Lambeth Conference of Anglican prelates
July 18, 2008 at 8:32 am
Congrats. The good bishop just joined the Pharisees in accusing Jesus himself of being demonic.
July 18, 2008 at 8:46 am
Just who is this fellow following? Didn’t his leader say…”I am the way, the truth and the life.” Wasn’t it said of him…. “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” Dangerous and demonic…the Pharisees thought so, also…I concur with Jason!
July 18, 2008 at 11:17 am
The funniest thing about such statements is the lack of logic or even basic self-awareness. “Thou shalt have no absolutes” is…………an absolute statement.
July 18, 2008 at 11:26 am
Sure;ly worth of submission to the “You can make this stuff up!” department
July 18, 2008 at 2:57 pm
[...] –Episcopal Bishop of Washington, DC John Chane at the Lambeth Conference of Anglican prelates [...]
July 18, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Another’s horse’s rear end wearing a miter.
July 18, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I suspect that the Bishop is color-blind and cannot see the red letters in his bible! Why else would he dis someone who says: “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
July 19, 2008 at 4:15 am
He sees himself and those like him as the real heros, fighting for what God really stands for. Unfortunately, he is just repeating history and is one of the bad guys already depicted in the Bible. The rebellious Israelites who fell in with the nations surrounding them, the Jews who refused to acknowledge Jesus in order to keep their secular power, and the early Christians who forsook the teachings of the apostles and returned to their former ways.
Chane thinks he’s some kind of progressive, but he’s just the same ol’ same ol’.
As Solomon said, there’s nothing new under the sun. It’s very sad.
July 19, 2008 at 7:50 am
The worst part about it is that Chane is a mainstream fellow within ECUSA. He’s not at all controversial. I suspect that if most ECUSA leaders found this blog and read the posted comments, their response would be a genuinely perplexed, “What’s the big deal?” That’s the real problem in ECUSA. It’s not that folks like Chane hold positions of prominence in ECUSA. It’s that folks like Chane are the rule rather than the exception in ECUSA. Chane isn’t going off the ECUSA reservation at all with comments like this. And this is part of why the Anglican Communion is in such turmoil. It’s not just that the ECUSA folks are determined to do their own thing regardless of the consequences. It’s that ECUSA genuinely doesn’t understand how large portions of the Communion could take such severe exception to what they’re doing. That’s what’s so ironic. Schori talks about ECUSA being a place where ‘different understandings of belief’ are equally tolerated, yet they seem completely unable to understand viewpoints that differ from theirs in order to understand why they are pariahs in their own communion.