Stanford Grads In Unexpected Places

As some­one raised Epis­co­palian I tend to feel sor­row when­ev­er I read about the Epis­co­pal church in the news. The glob­al Angli­can com­mu­nion is doing okay, but the Amer­i­can denom­i­na­tion has real­ly jumped the tracks since I was born.

In case you haven’t heard, the Epis­co­pal Church in Amer­i­ca just elect­ed its first female pri­mate ever — Katharine Jef­ferts Schori. That’s not the source of my sor­row — I firm­ly believe in the min­istry of women (as does my denom­i­na­tion).

Here’s where the sor­row comes in: she’s appar­ent­ly an advo­cate of ordain­ing open­ly gay priests and bish­ops. So her elec­tion was sort of a slap in the face to the world­wide Angli­can com­mu­nion, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of which seems pre­pared to write Ich­a­bod over the door of the Epis­co­palian church.

After the usu­al sigh that escapes my lips when see­ing the Epis­co­pal church in the head­lines, one detail leapt out at me: Bish­op Schori grad­u­at­ed with a degree in biol­o­gy from Stan­ford in 1974. Thanks to pur­ga­to­rio for putting that infor­ma­tion where it caught my eye.

Those darn Stan­ford alumni–they just keep show­ing up in the news. Some­times for good and some­times for bad, but always mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.