Friday afternoons find the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding at the Al-Islam Center in Seattle, reciting Muslim prayers.
Come Sunday, she heads about two miles south to kneel in the pews of St. Clement’s of Rome Episcopal Church.
“My experience and my call is to continue to follow Jesus,” said Redding, an Episcopal priest for the past 25 years, “even as I practice Islam.”
Redding says she is both Christian and Muslim, fully following both faiths. And for that, Redding expects to be defrocked soon by the Episcopal Church, which has warned the 57-year-old to renounce Islam or leave the priesthood.
Some Episcopalians are urging the church to take a similar stand against the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who was elected bishop of the sparsely populated Diocese of Northern Michigan last month. The only candidate on the ballot, Thew Forrester, 51, has practiced Zen meditation for a decade and received lay ordination from a Buddhist community.
Conservatives are outraged at the election of this “openly Buddhist bishop,” as they call him, charging Thew Forrester with syncretism — blending two faiths, and dishonoring both.
The bishop-elect and the Lake Superior Zendo that ordained him say the angst is misplaced. The ordination simply honors his commitment to Zen meditation, they say. He took no Buddhist vows and professed no beliefs that contradict Christianity.
“I am not a Buddhist, nor an ordained Buddhist priest,” Thew Forrester said in a interview. “I am an Episcopal priest who is grateful for the practice of Zen meditation.”
While people like Redding, who claim membership in two religions, are quite rare, scholars say the number of Americans who borrow bits from various traditions is multiplying.
Current sociological surveys, with their one-size-fits-all categories, don’t tell us exactly how many Americans hybridize their spiritual lives. Sociologist Barry Kosmin, co-author of the recent, massive American Religious Identification Survey, said “the tendency of academics and everyone else is to try to disabuse them of this syncretism.”
For sure, “syncretism” is a dirty word to many Western monotheists (in Asia, “multiple religious belonging,” as scholars call it, is common). The Rev. Kendall Harmon, an Episcopal theologian from South Carolina, argues that Thew Forrester is a greater threat to his church than the openly gay bishop whose 2003 election has led four dioceses to secede.
“It’s the leadership of this church giving up the unique claims of Christianity,” Harmon said. “They act like it’s Baskin-Robbins. You just choose a different flavor and everyone gets in the store.”
The store, in this metaphor, is that big ice-cream parlor in the sky.
But modern America is becoming a spiritual supermarket, teeming with everything from astrology to Zoroastrianism and propelling profound changes to religious beliefs and practices.
Less than three in 10 Americans claim their religion is “the one, true faith leading to eternal life,” according to data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and 44 percent say they’ve switched religious affiliations since childhood.
At the same time, traditional religious boundaries are falling and interfaith marriages are rising, meaning Americans are increasingly likely to attend a grandmother’s church funeral and a cousin’s bar mitzvah.
It’s little surprise then, that people who pledge allegiance to two traditions — your JewBus, Sufi Christians and Quaker pagans — are proliferating.
John Berthrong, a Boston University scholar whose book, “The Divine Deli,” explores multiple religious belonging, said: “While churches are still having formal discussions about religious pluralism, the laity has bolted down the street to a Buddhist temple where they’re learning meditation.”
Sometimes those temples house Jesuit priests or Catholic nuns like Sister Rose Mary Dougherty, who leads a multi-faith group of Zen students in Silver Spring, Md.
A nun for 50 years, Dougherty is also a sensei in the White Plum Lineage of Zen Buddhism, meaning she is entrusted to teach meditation to others.
Like many Christians who practice Zen, she uses its meditation techniques to clear the mind and focus on the present moment, but sets aside most philosophical questions. And she doesn’t consider herself a Buddhist.
“To be truthful, we don’t often examine doctrine or religious beliefs,” Dougherty said of her Zen community. “We talk about the practice of meditation in our daily lives.”
For decades, Catholics like the late monk Thomas Merton have sung the praises of Buddhism, and a number of Catholic sisters, priests, and brothers lead Zen communities. They’ve been aided by the ascendance in the West of a particular branch of Zen that focuses on meditation and downplays ritual and philosophy, said Jeff Wilson, an expert on Buddhism and an assistant professor at Renison College, University of Waterloo in Canada.
But at a recent conference in Boston on multiple religious belonging, theologian Catherine Cornille argued that it’s logically impossible to adhere to more than one religious tradition.
“It just doesn’t make sense to say you’re fully Buddhist and fully Christian — they make completing claims,” said Cornille, a professor at Boston College and editor of “Many Mansions? Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity.”
The same might be said of Christianity and Islam. While Muslims revere Jesus as a prophet, they deny his divinity and redemptive power, the cornerstone of Christianity.
Redding, the Muslim Episcopalian, said her two faiths “illumine each other much more than they collide” and that she “doesn’t feel called to spend a lot of time in theological disputes.”
But the God of the Bible calls himself a “jealous God” whose first commandment is “thou shalt have no other gods before me.” And some Christians accuse Redding of two-timing the Almighty.
“They say, `I think you’re being unfaithful, it’s as if you have two bedfellows,”‘ Redding said. She prefers to think of it as having two children who sometimes fight, but both of whom she loves.
The Episcopal Church says Redding must make a choice by March 31 or she will lose her cleric’s collar. “It will be a moment of heartbreak,”
she said, “but it’s not the end of the story.”
Thew Forrester, meanwhile, is trying to avoid a similar fate.
Conservative Episcopalians have launched a campaign to block his consecration as a bishop, which has even made news in London, the birthplace of Anglicanism. What is he thinking about when he meditates, they ask. Buddha? Karma?
The hubbub is unnecessary, Thew Forrester says. In his daily meditation, he doesn’t think about Buddhism, or Zen philosophy. In fact, he tries not to think about anything.
“My practice is simply sitting in the presence of God,” Thew Forrester said. “When thoughts arise I let them go and return to being in the presence of God.”
By Daniel Burke
Religion News Service
Copyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.
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posted March 12, 2009 at 6:35 pm
“The Rev. Kendall Harmon, an Episcopal theologian from South Carolina, argues that Thew Forrester is a greater threat to his church than the openly gay bishop whose 2003 election has led four dioceses to secede.”
Ah, South Carolina. Too small to be a country, too large to be an insane asylum.
Short of everyone turning atheist (which looks to take another hundred years or so), people becoming more accepting of other peoples’ religions is a very positive development. The “experts” who want to convince people to not do it are trying to protect their livelihoods, either as preachers or as experts on religions distinctions that are ceasing to matter.
posted March 12, 2009 at 7:23 pm
It’s hard to believe the Episcopalians in Thew Forresters Church don’t know about Zen meditation. Why do they even know what he does when he meditateds? It’s none of their business. The other Priest who also belongs to a Muslim church has a different problem. I wouldn’t think either religion would accept that, especially a Priest. They follow Doctrines, after all.
posted March 12, 2009 at 7:36 pm
What in the world is the Christian world afraid of when they have some of their ministers/priests,etc. following more than one set of beliefs? Personally, makes sense to me. I figure there are a heck of a lot of good things in all religions, so why not choose the ones you agree with to improve your life.
posted March 12, 2009 at 8:22 pm
“Redding says she is both Christian and Muslim, fully following both faiths.”
This is a theological impossibility. The only way to follow both faiths is to position yourself far outside of the historical mainstream of at least one of them. Jesus is God incarnate in Christianity, but such a thought is impossible within the Islamic framework. Even the Episcopal Church government has been able to recognize this, which just goes to show how silly the idea is.
posted March 12, 2009 at 10:40 pm
nnms dismisses South Carolina: “Ah, South Carolina. Too small to be a country, too large to be an insane asylum.”
Hmmm, the only diocese to have actually grown consistently in the past decade is…South Carolina. In contrast the pico-diocese of Northern Michigan has lost 31% of membership in the past decade. Average Sunday attendance now stands at 690 amongst the 27 parishes or an average of 25 per parish.
Mr Forrester had always previously described himself as walking the twin paths of Buddhism and Christianity. Now, he is denies being a Buddhist and states that he took no Buddhist vows. The “lay ordination” service, one pledges to take refuge in Buddha, dharma and sangha. He would go by his Buddhist name, Genpo.
Now he compounds the syncretistic heresy with prevarication.
posted March 13, 2009 at 12:03 am
If you think I believe having a state’s Episcopal (or any other) diocese grow is commendable you don’t know me. But that’s ok, why should you?
posted March 13, 2009 at 12:39 am
Disturbingly enough, the Dallas Catholic Diocese over three years ago, under the episcopate of Bishop Grahmann (no longer bishop of Dallas) had a ‘Zenmaster Jesuit priest’ speak at a parish on the enriching aspects of Zen meditation on Christians:
http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/kralis/060206
Included in the article is another link containing then Cardinal Ratzinger’s perspective on the dangers of Zen, Buddhism and transcendental meditation by Catholics as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith. Luckily Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas doesn’t share his predecessor’s outlook on the subject.
posted March 13, 2009 at 12:45 am
Zen I can see, it is pretty much without dogma. And the importance of spending time in the thoughtless state cannot be over-emphasized. It would help one be a better episcopalian I guess.
Islam on the other hand…if you really get what the (modern) Episcopal church is about, how could you ever tolerate the dishonest dogmatic assertions, and all the obsession with controlling other people. We have worked so hard to get away from this cruelty, and yet some walk right back into it.
posted March 13, 2009 at 2:23 am
If one is talking about meditation techiques, Zen or otherwise, there would be no contradiction in Christian practice, no sooner than there would be with Hesychasm, the prayer of inward silence as reflected in the Jesus Prayer…. both have the same goal, the silence of the heart, so to speak.
It should surprise no one that the loudest critics of such practices also consider the ordination of females to be the equivalent of ordaining dogs, so no one in the inter-faith community should take them seriously as bigots will always be bigots, whether they hide behind the religious tradition or not.
posted March 13, 2009 at 10:35 am
There are aspects of Zen philosophy that are diametrically opposed to Christianity. It’s not a judgement of Zen, it’s merely a statement that the Bishop-elect has a rather weak understanding of Christian Theology. Meditation is one thing. Christians encourage meditation. Zen meditation actually borders on gnosticism. Christian meditation requires meditation on Scripture. Zen meditation escews religious texts and seeks enlightenment from within. Christianity seeks enlightment from without – from the Holy Spirit in most cases.
It’s a rather significant problem in the Episcopal Church. If there’s one thing that is emphasized and re-emphasized is the singular role of God: not just any God, but Elohim/YHWH who has stated He is a jealous God. He is “echad.” He expects His followers to choose him above all others, and not share their heart with whoever comes along.
The Episcopal Church is trapped in the 1960s and trying to maintain their grip on a fleeting New Age image of spirituality. But 90% of the Anglican Communion is sticking with the traditional teachings. When challenged on the free-love approach in the American Church, they’ve resorted to ethnocentric and racist arguments. They patronise anyone who is not as “enlightened” as they claim to be.
Then there’s the problem with their own hypocrisy. While people like Jeffers-Schori preach tolerance, inclusion and compassion in the pulpit, she was quoted in the witness stand that she would rather see a building “converted to a saloon” than allow an orthodox congregation use the facility. That’s not love. That’s not Christian. That’s not productive.
That’s why the Episcopal Church is on a drastic decline that they haven’t been able to fix in 40 years.
posted March 13, 2009 at 11:48 am
” He expects His followers to choose him above all others, and not share their heart with whoever comes along.”
Plenty of reason right there to upgrade. Sometimes hybrid vigor is an improvement. The last thing we need, and we already have way too much of it, is belief in gods with all the answers. And since none of those gods has actually shown itself it should be easy enough to let them go. But sometimes a bad thing gets deep into your head and it’s hard to get rid of.
posted March 13, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Having been raised as an Anglican in Fond du lac, Wisonsin, one of the few dioceses that can still claim to be more “catholic”, it was the lack of stewardship that drove me from from the church — instead they seem more content on recrucifying Christ and have forgotten the Sermon of he Mount as if it never existed in the first place. Today, as a ch’an regent, my only words to the conservatives within the Anglican communion would be to echo the words of St. Benedict, “something for the strong to strive after and nothing to dishearten the weak”, but I fear even this would be lost on the majority of them because they play “catholic” and have no concept of what the word means.
posted March 13, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Robroy, thanks for making me go back and reread the article. I missed the lay ordination service. If he did indeed swear to take refuge in Buddah, what did he do with Jesus? My refuge is with Jesus, and I might be interested in Buddah, but take refuge, no. Your Name-10:35-3-13-09 Quote: Zen meditation echews religious texts and seeks enlightenment from within. Christianity seeks enlightenment from without- from the Holy Spirit in most cases. Can’t agree with the Christianity quote part. The Holy Spirit is not without, it’s always within, IMO.
posted March 13, 2009 at 9:04 pm
It’s all within.
posted March 13, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Taking refuge is not lay ordination and it has never been viewed as such within the history and practice of the Buddhist tradition. With the exception of the Theravada “anagarika” one might encounter in Sri Lanka, the closest thing to the concept of lay ordination is temporary ordination, where male children in some Asain countries undertake the monastic way of life for a set period of time, kind of like a rite of passage, especially in Thailand. There are only two levels of ordination… as a novice (sramanera) and higher ordination (upasamdada), but Forrester has received neither of these. If he had, then there would be a valid arguement against him being seated as a member of the episcopate, but what’s most peculiar is the fact that no one has mentioned that the priest who started the campaign against Forrester was originally a minister of the Continuing Church before being accepted as a member of the Episcopal Church. He might find the ECA quite an unwelcoming place if he continues to rock the boat. Or could it be he just feels he’s more qualified to be a bishop himself? Sadly enough, this is usually the case within the Continuing Church, where the majority of their bishops actually have a Pentecostal background and not Anglican to begin with.
posted March 16, 2009 at 11:16 am
Dharmakara — we’re talking about Zen here, and there is indeed a “lay ordination” in Zen Buddhism. The ceremony (called “jukai”) includes taking the refuges.