Muslim Priest and Buddhist Bishop-Elect Are Raising Questions About Syncretism

[SedesDomi]

Jesus saves, the Episcopal Church teaches, but a growing number of its clergy and leaders believe other faiths may lead to salvation as well. Long divided and distracted by questions of sexual ethics, the Episcopal Church (along with most mainline Protestant communities) are facing a cultural and theological shift towards religious pluralism—the belief that there are diverse paths to God.

The debate is not just academic. In two current cases, Episcopal clergy are under scrutiny for practicing and promoting other religions. On February 12 a devotee of Zen Buddhism was elected bishop of the Episcopal Church’s Northern Michigan diocese. Meanwhile, a Seattle-area priest has been given until March 30 to decide whether she is a Muslim or a Christian as her bishop will not permit her to profess both faiths.

Actually, the Northern Michigan diocese bishop-elect is a Christian who also practices Zen meditation, but he is not a Buddhist.

The Seattle-area priest, however, does see herself as both Muslim and Christian.

 

[Verisimilitude]

The Narrow and Wide Gates
Matthew 7:13-14
13"Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.
14"For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

John 10:1-5

1"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.
2"But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep.

3"To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.

4"When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.

5"A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers."

 

[The_Fool]

Ehh? I think I saw contradictions in the article, more than just the concept of hybrid faiths. Did anyone else get the impression that the article contradicted itself, or is it just me? Secondly, does Islam even have priests? I understood it to be a religion without priests, so I’m trying to figure out how the lady in question defines her “priesthood.”

 

[SedesDomi]

Ehh? I think I saw contradictions in the article, more than just the concept of hybrid faiths. Did anyone else get the impression that the article contradicted itself, or is it just me? Secondly, does Islam even have priests? I understood it to be a religion without priests, so I’m trying to figure out how the lady in question defines her “priesthood.”

She’s a priest in the Episcopal Church.

 

[The_Fool]

She’s a priest in the Episcopal Church.

No, no, I meant how does she define it to be compatible with Islam, which I understand to be a religion without priests. She might also define it differently from how Catholics on this board do, so I was just wondering if someone knew how to make them compatible… even if alternative definitions are involved. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[SedesDomi]

No, no, I meant how does she define it to be compatible with Islam, which I understand to be a religion without priests. She might also define it differently from how Catholics on this board do, so I was just wondering if someone knew how to make them compatible… even if alternative definitions are involved. Sorry for the confusion.

When she attends a mosque, she doesn’t attend as a priest, but as a regular Muslim.

The former director of Christian Formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle, Redding began to study Islam in the wake of 9/11, after hearing Muslim imams speak at interfaith events at the cathedral. A personal crisis spurred her onto a spiritual quest that ended with her publicly reciting the Shahada, the Muslim profession of faith.

A public symbol of conversion to Islam, the Shahada does not contradict anything in Christianity, Redding argued, nor did the professions made at a Christian baptism contradict anything in Islam, for the language of either creed was not to be taken in a literal sense.

“We Christians, in struggling to express the beauty and dignity of Jesus and the pattern of life he offers, describe him as the ‘only begotten son of God.’ That’s how wonderful he is to us. But that is not literal,” she said.

Redding’s faith mixes elements of Christianity and Islam to a degree that traditionalists of both faiths would reject, holding in tension the gospel accounts of Jesus’ death on the cross, resurrection, ascension, and divinity with the Koran and traditional Muslim teaching that Jesus was not the son of God, only appeared to have died on the cross, and was raised to heaven while still alive by God.

The Seattle priest’s superior, Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island, suspended Redding following the publication of her views, and gave her a year to reconsider. If she does not recant her profession of Islam by the end of March, she will be expelled from the Episcopal priesthood.