c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is drawing fire for comments that some say demean other faiths, but a church official says the question-and-answer format didn’t capture the interview with “complete accuracy.”

Jefferts Schori’s interview was published in the Nov. 19 edition of The New York Times Magazine just two weeks after she was installed as the Episcopal Church’s top leader.

In response to a question about the membership of the Episcopal Church, Jefferts Schori said, “Episcopalians tend to be better-educated and tend to reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations. Roman Catholics and Mormons both have theological reasons for producing lots of children.”

Interviewer Deborah Solomon then asked: “Episcopalians aren’t interested in replenishing their ranks by having children?”

Jefferts Schori’s response: “No. It’s probably the opposite. We encourage people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”

Gregory K. Popcak, a Catholic pastoral counselor and executive director of the Pastoral Solutions Institute in Steubenville, Ohio, sent a letter to Jefferts Schori’s office expressing concern.

Popcak posted a reply from Robert B. Goodfellow, the bishop’s communications aide, on his “Heart Mind and Strength” blog.

“The reality is that media interviews do not always convey the whole nature of a conversation had between interviewee and interviewer,” Goodfellow wrote. “I can also assure you that the Presiding Bishop does not think other Christians uneducated, ignorant, illiterate, or somehow or otherwise not smart simply because they are not Episcopalian.”

Goodfellow confirmed to Religion News Service that he wrote the letter to Popcak but declined additional comment.

The interview has prompted a range of online chatter, including a column from Mark Tooley, a frequent critic of the mainline Protestant churches at the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy.

“True to Schori’s boast, the Episcopalians have done magnificently in reducing their numbers and, purportedly, sparing the earth the ravages of an enlarged Episcopalian presence,” Tooley wrote on The American Spectator’s Web site.

Jan Nunley, a church spokeswoman, said the bishop’s comments about birth rates were based on “statistical facts … that have been well-known in the public domain for a number of years.”

“Episcopalians, statistically, have fewer children and have a higher percentage of advanced degrees than a great many other denominations. That doesn’t make them smarter … but it’s a statistical fact.

“I’m certainly sorry if anyone takes offense at the facts, but that doesn’t change the statistics.”

(Kevin Eckstrom contributed to this report)

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