The Peace Corps in Ecclesiastical Drag

Fetching, no? That’s how Bill Murchison describes much of mainline Protestantism today:

The present presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, when asked by Time magazine a few years back to specify her focus as head of the church, replied, “Our focus needs to be on feeding people who go to bed hungry, on providing primary education to girls and boys, on healing people with AIDS, on addressing tuberculosis and malaria, on sustainable development.” And . . . and . . . On God, too? On Jesus? On sin and salvation? Not as the lady allowed. Not a word issued forth from her about those concerns for which the Episcopal Church—and all other churches—had supposedly gone into business.

The Peace Corps in ecclesiastical drag is what modern churches often resemble. You want to work for sustainable development? Well, then, off to church we go. It sounds a little silly, because it is silly. The government and a complex of secular organizations already address these concerns, often quite intelligently.

Which is not to say that the Church should not be engaged in feeding the hungry, but that she should make sure to provide the Bread of Life, too.

(via Strange Herring )