Wednesday, July 15, 2009


This report literally sends shivers up my spine.

For a Christian leader to call "individual salvation" a heresy and idolatry... just remarkable verbiage coming from one with the given mission of handling God's Word.

To the jailer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, and your house." (Acts 16 and many other references...)


one news now

Episcopal Bishop calls individual salvation 'heresy,' 'idolatry'

Associated Press, ANAHEIM, CA - Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori says it's "heresy" to believe that an individual can be saved through a sinner's prayer of repentance.

In her opening address to the church's General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori called that "the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God."

The presiding bishop said that view is "caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus."

According to Schori, it is heresy to believe that an individual's prayer can achieve a saving relationship with God. "That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy."

Here is the quote from her presentation:
Episcopal site quote
The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being.

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