"What are you, a Unitarian?"

BB NOTE: Binky transcribes the pre-investiture NPR interview and what it reveals will knock your teeth out. Click on the headline above for the StandFirm posting of the entire interview. Got a note from ElfGirl last night and she couldn't believe it - and neither can we. So this is the person The Episcopal Church has chosen to lead "this current branch" of Anglicanism in the United States. The NPR interviewer exclaims in way we could not. Question: Is she trying to make matters worse?

Here's a major highlight:

RY: TIME Magazine asked you an interesting question, we thought, "Is belief in Jesus the only way to get to heaven?" And your answer, equally interesting, you said "We who practice the Christian tradition understand him as our vehicle to the divine. But for us to assume that God could not act in other ways is, I think, to put God in an awfully small box." And I read that and I said "What are you: a Unitarian?!?" [laughs] What are you-- that is another concern for people, because, they say Scripture says that Jesus says he was The Light and The Way and the only way to God the Father.

KJS: Christians understand that Jesus is the route to God. Umm-- that is not to say that Muslims, or Sikhs, or Jains, come to God in a radically different way. They come to God through... human experience... through human experience of the divine. Christians talk about that in terms of Jesus.

RY: So you're saying there are other ways to God.

KJS: Uhh... human communities have always searched for relationship that which is beyond them.. with the ultimate.. with the divine. For Christians, we say that our route to God is through Jesus. Uhh.. uh..that doesn't mean that a Hindu.. uh.. doesn't experience God except through Jesus. It-it-it says that Hindus and people of other faith traditions approach God through their.. own cultural contexts; they relate to God, they experience God in human relationships, as well as ones that transcend human relationships; and Christians would say those are our experiences of Jesus; of God through the experience of Jesus.

RY: It sounds like you're saying it's a parallel reality, but in another culture and language.

KJS: I think that's accurate.. I think that's accurate.

Hear the entire interview here (RealPlayer - right click download): Schori Interview

Special tip of the tinfoil hat to Elfgirl and Binky.