"I am both Muslim and Christian"

[Contarini]

What is your take on this Episcopalian-Priestest/Muslim?

It sounds like she had a heretical view of Jesus in the first place.

However, I think the really disturbing element in the story is the fact that she and many other African Americans seem to find Islam appealing because they perceive it as less “white.” I find it hard to understand this, given that the abominable practice of enslaving sub-Saharan Africans was practiced on such a large scale by the Muslims–arguably the Europeans learned it from the Muslims. But she is not alone in her reaction, and it’s something Christians need to take seriously.

Part of her problem may be the liberal Christian notion that the truth of a religion is to be judged solely by its ability to defend the oppressed and underprivileged. This of course is one important criterion by which a religion should be judged, but as this story shows, it’s a very subjective one. Many African Americans think that Islam meets this test better from their perspective, but many other people from other places and times think very differently!

Edwin

 

[Publisher]

Yes indeed…a loooooooong way to go.

 

[Fone_Bone_2001]

If one cannot be Christian and Muslim, then one cannot be Christian and Arab!

“Muslim” and “Arab” are not the same thing. What do you have to gain by deceptively redefining terms in ways that rob them of all real meaning?

However, if we were to take Jewishness and Muslimness are races, then yes, we have Jewish Christians (ie those people who are racially/ethnically Jewish) and Muslim Christians (ie those people who are racially/ethnically Muslims/Arabs).

People who are racially/ethnically Arab are not necessarily Muslim. There is no such thing as a “Muslim Christian.” What you mean is an “Arab Christian.” “Muslim” and “Arab” are not interchangeable.

A Muslim Christian has to believe Jesus Christ is Lord and God and virgin Mary is theotokos (Mother of God). A Muslim Christian has to confess the Nicene Creed and believe in all ecumenical councills, from the Nicea right up to Vatican II. All Muslim Christians have to reject Sharia and declare Muhammad to be a false prophet.

a) Once again, you mean “Arab Christian.”

b) If you do all of that - especially declare Muhammad a false prophet - then you are not Muslim in any sense. I will explain why below (otherwise my reply would be redundant).

The CCC says Muslims and Christians worship the same God, which can be interpreted as being truly Muslim means believing God is Trinity.

Uhhh… no. Believing God is a Trinity is about as far from being Muslim as you can get. The dogma of the Trinity is utterly incompatible with Islam.

That CCC quote does not require interpretation; it means what it says - that the God that Muslims worship is the same God that we do; they simply believe erroneous things about Him. For example, the Qur’an is wrong when it states that God has no Son. We know that He does.

So, vast majority of Islamists such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Shias, Sunnis, Ahmadis, Druse and Bahais are not really Muslims as they follow Muhammad’s concept of God.

The Arabic word “Muslim” just means SUBMITTER and so any Christian who submits to the Holy Trinity is a Muslim.

Yet for all practical purposes, a Muslim is one who follows the religion of Islam. The fact that the word means “the peace that results from submission to God’s will” does not justify what you’re doing - namely, redefining terms in ways which rob them of any practical meaning and simply compound confusion.

Your equivocation is not clever. It is not helpful. It is not profound. It is irritating and useless at best, and misleading and counterproductive at worst.

And as for this Episcopal priestess, she is not a Christian, no matter how she tries to slice it. And as long as she believes that Jesus Christ really was crucified (let alone rose from the dead!), she is not a Muslim, either.

Her lack of intellectual consistency and backbone makes her attempt to rationlize away the incontrovertibly unique and indispensable teachings of real Islam and Christianity an embarrasment to those religions’ true followers.

From the article, it sounds like this woman has had a difficult life. Alcoholism and sexual abuse are horrible things that I have never had to endure. She seems genuinely and deeply devoted to her Creator. I hope her faith life leads her closer to the one true God, the God that Christians, Jews, and Muslims share; but until she recognizes that the path she’s on is intellectually hollow and ludicrous, I doubt that either Christianity or Islam will be able to do her much good.

 

[BelFarfalla]

It sounds like she had a heretical view of Jesus in the first place.
However, I think the really disturbing element in the story is the fact that she and many other African Americans seem to find Islam appealing because they perceive it as less “white.” I find it hard to understand this, given that the abominable practice of enslaving sub-Saharan Africans was practiced on such a large scale by the Muslims–arguably the Europeans learned it from the Muslims. But she is not alone in her reaction, and it’s something Christians need to take seriously.

I find this curious also. I have heard black Americans say that they embraced Islam because unlike Christians they have never had black slavery…
This is of course anything but the truth. But they are unaware of the long history of Islamic salve trading in over a hundred million blacks. Actually most people are unaware of the Islamic history of slavery… they enslaved about as many white Europeans as they did Africans… about 125 million of each race. (This does not even address the millions of Hindus from the Indian subcontinent.) The sad thing is that most Europeans survived the trip from where there were kidnapped in Europe to the slave markets in North Africa and the Middle East. I have read that about 1 out of every 18 blacks that the Muslims slave traders took from southern Africa survived the trip. So if the existing records of Muslim slave traders show that 125 million black slaves were sold into slavery… multiply that by about 18 to get the number of blacks who they brutalized for the better part of 14 centuries. But black Americans seem to have no idea of this. And Muslims surely do not readily admit to it.

Part of her problem may be the liberal Christian notion that the truth of a religion is to be judged solely by its ability to defend the oppressed and underprivileged. This of course is one important criterion by which a religion should be judged, but as this story shows, it’s a very subjective one. Many African Americans think that Islam meets this test better from their perspective, but many other people from other places and times think very differently!
Edwin

You are right. What is interesting is that in Africa about 6 million are leaving Islam every year for Christianity. There large numbers who are also leaving Islam to no religion. There is basically a flocking away from Islam as the people are more and more seeing the brutality of Islam and find that it offers them little. Many Muslims have told me that this is just because of the Catholic and Christian ministries there helping the poor… they say that the people are leaving Islam ‘for a small crust of bread’? I think that what is getting them to leave Islam is that they are seeing the teachings of Jesus in action. It’s very compelling in a region that has known mostly only harshness.

 

[kentuckyliz]

OK, a touch of levity. Any Monty Python fans? Here’s a joke.
What’s brown and sounds like a bell?
Sponnnnnnnggggg!
Real answer to the joke is dung. Bp. John Spong (ret. – ECUSA) published books that denied every Christian dogma and doctrine, while a bishop.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Quaker Heretic: I worked at a Quaker boarding high school one year. I’d sit through long consensus decision making meetings, and finally had to give in on my opposition to keeping a student there who thought her mission in the community was to supply recreational drugs to the rest of the students. (Her supply was her mother!) Hey, no one violated their conscience—except me, I guess, for giving in for the sake of the consensus that existed except for me. Later I found out that the Quaker families that lived on the school property were actually doing drugs with students in their own houses. So that was a losing battle from the start. There was a lot of sexual weirdness going on among the staff and students, too. I quit as soon as I was able.

I am shocked, shocked at a Quaker forsaking their abolitionist achievements and endorsing and embracing the practitioners of slavery in the world today. Doesn’t sound very “Friendly” to me. St. Josephine Bakhita, pray for us!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Re Elaine Paigels, Lost Gospels, etc.: I know a Baptist lady who leads her women’s Bible study on Sunday night and she invited me to come. I asked her what they’re studying. The Gospel of Thomas. She gushed on and on about how it was a lost gospel…etc…she’s placing faith in it. She embraces Scripture as the sole rule of faith, and her ruler’s getting bigger. Her confusion illustrates once again that without the authority of the Church, you can’t even know what is Scripture!

These false gospel resurrectors claim that the Catholic Church suppressed these gospels, a la Da Vinci Code evil empire hysteria, and it fits in with the unhistorical “history” some separated brethren tell to themselves about how they’ve always survived as a remnant, clutching desperately for apostolicity; so the sheep are now being scattered. These are the suppressed gospels of the faithful remnant, our people back then, right?

I am going to get the “The Other Bible” which is a big fat book that collects ALL the writings that claimed to be Christian scripture; some of it is nice and inspirational and devotional, and other stuff is clearly wrong to the nth degree. Perhaps the ridiculousness of the whole corpus will wake her up.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Father Ann got interested in Islam after she saw the male religious leader prostrate himself on the ground. I know Episcopriestesses; what appealed to her was a man groveling on the ground on his face. Appeals to her inner feminist…that’s the right thing for men to do.

I believe Father Ann can fulfill a unique role. She should dress in her clericals, go to Mecca, and preach publicly about the love of God the Father for us, His children.* She can be a bold prophetic voice, speaking truth to power, calling for the end of the oppression of women (including female genital mutilation) and the end of holy murder and the end of slavery. She is an African American woman; the end of slavery should be high on her list. Episcopriestesses really dig social activism.

• God, Abba Father, is not our master and we are not his slaves! Islam claims Abrahamicity through Hagar, the banished slave, whose son Ishmael was denied by God to be Abraham’s son. Look at the sacrifice of Isaac where God says to Abraham: Take your son, your ONLY SON,…referring to Isaac as the ONLY SON. That’s why Islam has no sense of sonship and rejects the Son. It’s Master and Slave. That probably makes it why it is totally OK with practicing slavery in the world today.

 

[Publisher]

"I am shocked, shocked at a Quaker forsaking their abolitionist achievements and endorsing and embracing the practitioners of slavery in the world today. Doesn’t sound very “Friendly” to me. "

???

 

[BelFarfalla]

If one cannot be Christian and Muslim, then one cannot be Christian and Arab! This is especially true as Egyptians are Copts who have been Arabised, just as Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians and Iraqis are Assyrians who have been Arabised.

I have no idea where you get this nonsense from. Muslim has come to mean who follow Muhammad. Arabs are a race.

Muslims/Islam is a religion. There are indeed Arab Christians… Many in my family are Arab Christians… they have been since the dawn of Christianity. Don’t you dare call us Muslims. Muslims killed our people and drove us out of our homelands.
I’m not going to respond to much of what you wrote because the basis of your argument is flawed. You really do need to think about this more. Muslims want you and the world to believe that Arab = Muslim. It does not.

A Muslim Christian has to believe Jesus Christ is Lord and God and virgin Mary is theotokos (Mother of God). A Muslim Christian has to confess the Nicene Creed and believe in all ecumenical councills, from the Nicea right up to Vatican II. All Muslim Christians have to reject Sharia and declare Muhammad to be a false prophet.

All of this is against Islam . They consider this to be blasphemy and deserving of death.

The CCC says Muslims and Christians worship the same God, which can be interpreted as being truly Muslim means believing God is Trinity. So, vast majority of Islamists such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Shias, Sunnis, Ahmadis, Druse and Bahais are not really Muslims as they follow Muhammad’s concept of God.

The Arabic word “Muslim” just means SUBMITTER and so any Christian who submits to the Holy Trinity is a Muslim.

:hypno: :hypno: :hypno: :hypno: :hypno: (where is the twilight zone music)

 

[Hellisreal]

Kentucky Liz-

I have an excellent link for you that will tear to shreads the Gnostic thing your friend has fallen for. That Jesus Seminar poison is easy to refute.

I will look for it and PM you with it.

 

[tm30]

Yes indeed…a loooooooong way to go.

Road to hell, good intentions, etc.

 

[love4mary]

Destroying Christianity from the “inside”. Its a rather good military strategy to be quite honest about it. Take out the leaders and the rest will fall.

What she is doing is bad enough, but she will be held accountable for all the souls that she may lead Away from our Lord by her example, even more so for her bishop.

 

[BelFarfalla]

Destroying Christianity from the “inside”. Its a rather good military strategy to be quite honest about it. Take out the leaders and the rest will fall.

What she is doing is bad enough, but she will be held accountable for all the souls that she may lead Away from our Lord by her example, even more so for her bishop.

yes it is a good strategy… I’ve had the thought before that droves of Chirstians should ‘convert’ to Islam and then reform the religion bringing it into Christianity.

I wonder if the ‘inside job’ has something to do with why the Imam has not thrown her out of the mosque.

Unfortunatley I think that her Christian superiors are simply clewless.

 

[estesbob]

Destroying Christianity from the “inside”. Its a rather good military strategy to be quite honest about it. Take out the leaders and the rest will fall.

What she is doing is bad enough, but she will be held accountable for all the souls that she may lead Away from our Lord by her example, even more so for her bishop.

Just when you think the Epicsopal Chruch vould go no lower.

Reminds me of a time I had lunch with a Client who wan an elder at the Local Baprtist Church . He told me he was an" Old Testament Christian"-I said-Oh-you’re Jewish?". Needelss to say he is no longer a client!

 

[BelFarfalla]

Just when you think the Epicsopal Chruch vould go no lower.

Reminds me of a time I had lunch with a Client who wan an elder at the Local Baprtist Church . He told me he was an" Old Testament Christian"-I said-Oh-you’re Jewish?". Needelss to say he is no longer a client!

:extrahappy:

 

[Gardening_Mommy]

Episcopalians, always leading the charge… in the wrong direction.

Remember, Queen Elizabeth tried to make Anglicanism so wide that everyone (except obstinate papists, of course) could be Anglican, no matter where they fell on the spectrum of doctrine. Sadly, that seems to have left the Anglicans and Episcopalians completely unmoored to reality or any concept of ultimate truth… hence, why individual parishes and groups keep splitting off to form morally conservative branches or just come home to Rome!

 

[BelFarfalla]

Episcopalians, always leading the charge… in the wrong direction.

Remember, Queen Elizabeth tried to make Anglicanism so wide that everyone (except obstinate papists, of course) could be Anglican, no matter where they fell on the spectrum of doctrine. Sadly, that seems to have left the Anglicans and Episcopalians completely unmoored to reality or any concept of ultimate truth… hence, why individual parishes and groups keep splitting off to form morally conservative branches or just come home to Rome!

Which is why secular rulers should not be head of the faith.

 

[Gardening_Mommy]

However, I think the really disturbing element in the story is the fact that she and many other African Americans seem to find Islam appealing because they perceive it as less “white.”

I always find this impression very sad. Islam turns everything it touches into Arab culture. There was a show on EWTN about Bishop Macram Gassis in Sudan. The Muslim government was only allowing him to come home a few times a year; mostly, he lived in Kenya, I think. So there’s a scene of a village celebrating Easter. The Catholics are dressed in brightly colored clothes of what you’d identify as typically African cut and style. As part of the celebrating, the men are holding their walking sticks straight up in the air. There was obviously a vibrant culture at work here.

Then a neighboring village came to help celebrate Easter. They were Muslims, but came to rejoice with their neighbors. They were all wearing the long white robes you see in Saudi Arabia. No walking sticks. Muslim names. Except for their skin, you would’ve thought they were Arabs.

It was obvious that the religion that respected the local culture was Catholicism. Islam had wiped out the local culture and supplanted it with Arab culture. The Khartoum government has been trying to force the south of Sudan and the Darfur region to go under Sharia law and become Arabic. There’s a truce in place, but it remains to be seen if this time it will actually work.

St. Bakhita (my daughter’s namesake) was kidnapped at a very young age by Muslim slave traders. She lived in Darfur in the late 1800’s. They beat her so badly that she forgot her name, so they named her “Bakhita”, which means “fortunate.”

St. Josephine Bakhita, please pray for the peace of Sudan!

 

[quantumDeus]

Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill.

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.
She does both, she says, because she’s Christian and Muslim.

To put it kindly, the woman has “issues.” By definition of faith, one cannot be both: Christianity recognizes the divine nature of Christ, whereas Islam does not. Ms. Redding should seek professional help, for apparently she suffers from multiple personality disorder – at least on the theologic level.

 

[Gerry_Hunter]

…
Remember, Queen Elizabeth tried to make Anglicanism so wide that everyone (except obstinate papists, of course) could be Anglican, no matter where they fell on the spectrum of doctrine. …

Correct, pertinent, and insightful.

Right now, up here in Canada, the Anglicans are meeting to try and sort out blessings same-sex “unions.” And the saddest thing is that they have, as noted later in the post you made, absolutely no reference points, or moorings, to assist in the task. What they are trying to do, predictably perhaps, is to let each diocese decide the matter for themselves, but still claim to be of one mind in their faith.

Anglicanism has produced a Lewis, Newman, and Chesterton, but in the end, its fundamental flaws are coming to the fore. It’s not that errors arise. It’s that when they do, the Anglican “system” can do nothing about them, and the structure shatters into smaller pieces.

George Orwell should be revered among Anglicans for his lucid exposition on doublethink. And since I know a number of Anglicans who are actual believing Christians caught up in the mess, that is a very sad situation.

Blessings,

Gerry

 

[prv]

Road to hell, good intentions, etc.

Road to hell, the intentions are nothing but those of Satan himself. Nothing good at all about this situation.

 

[prv]

Correct, pertinent, and insightful.

Right now, up here in Canada, the Anglicans are meeting to try and sort out blessings same-sex “unions.” And the saddest thing is that they have, as noted later in the post you made, absolutely no reference points, or moorings, to assist in the task. What they are trying to do, predictably perhaps, is to let each diocese decide the matter for themselves, but still claim to be of one mind in their faith.

Anglicanism has produced a Lewis, Newman, and Chesterton, but in the end, its fundamental flaws are coming to the fore. It’s not that errors arise. It’s that when they do, the Anglican “system” can do nothing about them, and the structure shatters into smaller pieces.

George Orwell should be revered among Anglicans for his lucid exposition on doublethink. And since I know a number of Anglicans who are actual believing Christians caught up in the mess, that is a very sad situation.

Blessings,

Gerry

I’m sure there are plenty of good Christians among the Anglican Communion, and as a Catholic, I take no joy in the mess which is occurring in that church. I think it is most grievous before the Lord God Jesus Christ.