Episcopal Presiding Bishop says individual salvation is "heresy," "idolatry"

The Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori derided individual salvation calling it 'the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God.'

In her opening address to the church's General Conference in California, Jefferts Schori said it was a "heresy" to believe that an individual can be saved through personal faith and trust in Jesus Christ acknowledged in a prayer of repentance.

She 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."

Källa: Virtueonline.org  9 juli 2009

Katharine Jefferts Schori var hedersgäst vid Svenska kyrkans kyrkomöte 2008.