Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of Nevada, who was elected Sunday as the first woman to lead the U.S. Episcopal Church, says it's time to put away the divisive issue of homosexuality and move on to the urgent mission of ministering to people in need.
"Our primary emphasis needs to be feeding people, educating children and looking for healthcare for everybody," Jefferts Schori, 52, said in a telephone interview Monday from Columbus, Ohio, where representatives of the 2.3-million-member denomination are holding their annual convention.
But even as Jefferts Schori called on the church to move past the issue of gay priests and same-sex marriage, her election has put a new strain on a church wrestling with its identity and mission in recent years.
An oceanographer who studied squids and octopuses in the northeastern Pacific Ocean before going into the ministry in 1994, Jefferts Schori is considered a progressive. She supported the consecration three years ago of V. Gene Robinson, who is openly gay, as bishop of New Hampshire. She also has endorsed same-sex union rites in Nevada.
Jefferts Schori succeeds the Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold on Nov. 1 and will be invested at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., three days later.
The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion of which the Episcopal Church is a part, said in a statement Monday that the presiding bishop-elect had his "prayers and good wishes as she takes up a deeply demanding position at a critical time."
But at the same time, he noted that "her election will undoubtedly have an impact on the collegial life of the Anglican Primates, and it also brings into focus some continuing issues in several of our ecumenical dialogues."
Primates are archbishops of national Anglican churches or provinces.
In the U.S., Jefferts Schori's elevation was criticized by conservatives but hailed by liberals.
Conservatives said her election is another example of the U.S. church's departure from Scripture and from other provinces in the worldwide Anglican Communion.
"We feel sorrow for her, as she inherits the tragedy of a fractured church that has lost its sense of mission and lost touch with its grass roots," said the Rev. Canon David Anderson, president of the Atlanta-based American Anglican Council. "What signal does this choice send to the faithful in the pew and to the Anglican Communion worldwide? The election of Presiding Bishop-elect Jefferts Schori only intensifies the current trajectory of the Episcopal Church."
