Dissecting Episcopal Schism

Re “Push to Be Inclusive Creates a Divide,” Sept. 5: The Episcopal bishop of Los Angeles, the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno, believes in a religion of inclusion; he does not believe that Jesus is the only way to an afterlife. What then, is this faith that he is so adamantly defending and preserving? Faith in his own interpretations?

Bruno’s understanding of inclusion means denouncing the breakaway churches’ interpretations as “literalistic and simplistic.” Perhaps those churches were right. If they want their views to be accepted, they cannot remain in the Episcopal Church.

Grace Huang

Monrovia

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Organized religion needs more leaders like Bruno and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who don’t presume to speak for God in matters related to Jews, Muslims and other faiths. No matter how blessed we Christians may believe we are to have made the right choice of religions, the true Christian is the man who recognizes and respects each man’s right to choose how he worships God. Those of our faith could better serve God by ensuring that less fortunate Christians receive the care they may need before setting out to convert those not of the faith.

Gary Goff

Brea

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The Episcopal Church and most of its Christian co-religionists have preached for some two millenniums that homosexuality is an abomination. Now the good bishop is shocked, shocked to find that some of his flock have taken the message to heart. His all-inclusive philosophy does not, apparently, include these wayward parishioners and priests; we are now going to be treated to the spectacle of a legal wrangling over the worldly goods claimed by both. Just what was Christ’s message?

Frank Louck

Cerritos

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In church circles there’s a name for what Ugandan Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi has done: “sheep stealing.” The Anglican Church has a more diffuse power structure than the Roman Catholic model. The word “episcopal” refers to ecclesiastical authority being vested primarily in the bishops. The worldwide Anglican Communion is steered by episcopal consensus. When a bishop disregards the very church polity that made him a bishop by wrongfully usurping parishes that are not in his diocese, or even on his own continent, he declares his own schism from the Anglican Communion. Orombi should be defrocked.

James Wallace

Los Angeles