In Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, Pontius Pilate sings, “What is ‘truth?’ Is truth unchanging law?” Those are questions that the Right Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the former presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, will address this week on the University of Colorado Boulder campus.
Jefferts Schori will speak on “The Measure, Dimension, and Intersectionality of Truth” on Thursday, Feb. 1, at 5:30 p.m. in Hale Science 270 on campus. The event is sponsored by the CU Boulder Center for Western Civilization, Thought & Policy and by St. Aidan’s and Canterbury Campus Ministry.
Katharine Jefferts Schori, shown here lecturing on campus last fall, will speak again this week at CU Boulder. Photo courtesy of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought and Policy.
Jefferts Schori will talk about truth in relation to race, rights, reality, and relationships, and she said she plans to explore truth from a “special model.”
“We think of truth as something fixed,” Jefferts Schori said, “and yet once we look at it more carefully, we can recognize that there are different levels of truth, and I want to talk about it in terms of current challenges in the world around us.”
The description of her event lists these issues as “race, rights, reality and relationships.”
When asked what called her into the priesthood, Jefferts Schori mentioned sea creatures. Growing up in the Seattle area gave her appreciation for nature and, in particular, the ocean.
She spent a significant portion of her adult life working as an oceanographer, receiving her B.S. in biology from Stanford University and a PhD in oceanography from Oregon State University.
After governmental budget cuts in the mid-80s, she began to discern a call to the priesthood. She received her master of divinity from Church Divinity School of the Pacific and was ordained into the priesthood in 1994.
According to her official biography for the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori has been a strong advocate for “issues of domestic poverty, climate change and care for the earth, as well as the ongoing need to contextualize the gospel” throughout her ministry.
Jefferts Schori’s election as the first female presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church and a primate in the Anglican Communion in 2006 represented a time of change for the Episcopal Church.
“The challenge was dealing with the conflict and dealing with people’s different expectations of what the Episcopal Church is and should be,” Jefferts Schori said. “That is a natural process of growth and evolution for all creatures.”
Time Magazine named Jefferts Schori as one of the "Women Who Are Changing the World.” She is a continuing 2017-8 guest of the Center for Western Civilization, Thought & Policy and gave numerous talks and public appearances in October 2017.
This event is free and open to the public. Registration is not required, but is suggested. You can find information on how to register .
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