Last Friday, some recent remarks by Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori were reported:

JESUS is a way, but not the only way to salvation, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori has told members of the Diocese of Quincy.
[…]
In response to a question from the audience about her personal beliefs, the presiding bishop said that to insist Jesus is the only way to God is to “limit God.” She said that God was at work in the lives of other faiths. “God is, at the very least, a mystery,” Bishop Jefferts Schori said.

“God’s intention is for a restored relationship with all humanity. My job is to proclaim the good news of Jesus, but I cannot deny God is not at work in other ways,” she said, according to ENS.

Compare that with the opening words from this morning’s sermon by The Rev David Curry, Rector of Christ Church, Windsor, N.S.:

The uniqueness and the centrality of Christ is an undeniable and non-negotiable feature of orthodox Christianity. For Anglicans, not only is the uniqueness and the centrality of Christ constantly visible in the Liturgy, particularly, in the Lectionary, the traditional pattern of readings that shape the praying life of the Church, but it is also expressed formally and officially in the foundational and formative documents that define and describe the Anglican understanding of the Christian Faith. The only anathema in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion has precisely to do with denying the uniqueness and the centrality of Christ with respect to salvation (Art. XVIII).

What does this mean? It means that for orthodox Christianity, Christ is the Lord and Saviour of our humanity. It means that the wholeness of our humanity cannot be achieved and accomplished apart from our life in Christ. Are there not other ways to God? So ask the religious pluralists of our day. How to answer that question? By pointing out that a proper and principled dialogue with other religions has to begin and end with a respect for the differences between the religions of the world. What kind of dialogue can Christians have with Muslims or with Jews or with atheists if it means being silent about the centrality of Christ? Do we expect Islam to remove from the Qu’ran the passages that deny that God has a son? As the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu wonderfully put it, in addressing a Muslim audience, “I greet you in the name of Jesus Christ, whom you honour as a prophet and we as the Son of God.” I call that honesty, intellectual and spiritual honesty, and the proper way of engaging religious viewpoints. You don’t do it by denial or by woeful ignorance of the principle of your own position.

Since Fr Curry generally follows events in the Anglican Communion, I suspected that was, in part, a response to what Bp Schori had said. But, after the service, he said that he hadn’t heard about her latest theological words of “wisdom”.

The message, he said, jumped out at him from today’s collect and gospel reading (St John 20:19-23) from the Book of Common Prayer. The juxtaposition of his words and those of Bp Schori was purely providential.

In any case, it is hard to imagine two more starkly different understandings of the Gospel.