The Heartbeat of God: Finding the Sacred in the Middle of Everything
The Episcopal Church’s first female presiding bishop’s third collection is of a piece with those in A Wing and a Prayer (2007) and The Gospel in the Global Village (2009). These homilies present what once was called the social gospel—religious commitment to helping the poor socially and politically as well as charitably—along with the more familiar injunctions of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless. By now, that gospel includes advocating environmentalism, economic reform, changing habits of consumption, universal health-care coverage, and a number of other things, such as gays in the priesthood, that the religious Right decries. As Schori preaches this agenda, however, it’s hard to quarrel that the Bible doesn’t support it. But the New Testament also emphasizes one doctrine she barely notices—sin—and another she never acknowledges—salvation. It may be galling to Christian social conservatives that Schori extends the olive branch to them, but that she does so confirms her Christian intentions. --Ray Olson