News Analysis
By Mary Ann Mueller
VOL Special Correspondent
www.virtueonline.org
3/13/2009
A protest against the confirmation of the "Buddhist bishop" in the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan is swelling as news of his non-Christian leanings reverberates around The Episcopal Church.
For too long the silent majority, those dedicated Episcopalians who faithfully attend Mass on Sundays and sometimes Wednesdays, has taken it on the chin. First, there was the ordination of female priests, then came female bishops. The "first mitered Mama"-- as she referred to herself in an early television news interview -– recently celebrated her twentieth year wearing the pointed hat.
Now there is a female presiding bishop, whom feminists praise for breaking through the stained glass ceiling, while she is out to dismantle the very church which raised her to such a lofty position - one diocese, one church, one bishop, one priest, and one parishioner at a time. No one is safe from her tentacled reach.
And of course, let us not forget Gene Robinson who became a "June bride" last year and helped to rend the very fabric of worldwide unity in the Anglican Communion, the bond which was holding nearly 80 million Anglican Christians together in brotherly love, respect, harmony and fellowship.
Each time a line was drawn in the sand and the powers that be in The Episcopal Church brazenly stepped over it, the silent majority quietly suffered and prayed in their pews. Many left in disgust leaving behind The Episcopal Church they loved -- The church of their forefathers. The church of their childhood and young adulthood...The church of their baptism, confirmation and marriage...The church they may have lovingly helped to build dollar- by- dollar, stone- by- stone and brick- by- brick... The church they hoped to live in and die in and be buried from.
Now The Episcopal Church has done it again. The only candidate for bishop in the tiny diocese in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, is claiming to be a Buddhist, as well as an Episcopal priest seeking his grab at the croizer.
This is not the first time an Episcopal priest has claimed dual faiths. In 2004, VOL broke the story that an Episcopal clergy couple, the Revs. Bill and Glyn Lorraine Melnyk who were in fact practicing wiccans, and whose pagan rites had crept into their "eucharistic" celebrations. As a result of David Virtue's aggressive reporting, Fr. Bill renounced his Episcopal sacerdotal orders and became a Druid; however his wife remains an ordained Episcopal cleric and is still at her church in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania.
A little more recently, there was the matter of the Rev. Ann Holmes-Redding, the director of faith formation at the cathedral in Seattle, who was pressured by the Rt. Rev. Geralyn Wolfe, the Rhode Island bishop, to give up her Muslim ties or cease functioning as an Episcopal cleric. The bishop rightly claims that Ms. Holmes-Redding "abandoned the Communion of the Episcopal Church by formal admission into a religious body not in communion with The Episcopal Church."
Could not the same claim be made for Fr. Forrester and his formal lay spiritual connections with Buddhism?
This time what's left of the silent majority in the pews is, at least, making itself known on the Internet.
Fr. Forrester's election to the bishopric is big news on the blogs and the faithful have an opportunity, they may not have had before, to make their voices known. Whether or not they will be heard by the diocesan standing committees and sitting bishops charged with confirming the Buddhist's episcopal election is another matter. Will their collective cry be understood by the House of Deputies, the House of Bishops or by the TEC Primate residing at 815 Second Avenue? No, perhaps not. But one can always hope and more importantly, pray.
Of course, the bishop-elect downplays his Zen Buddhist meditation practices. However, it was Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan's bishop, the late Rt. Rev. Jim Kelsey, who first announced, in his diocese's 2004 Annual Convention address, that Fr. Forrester had received Buddhist lay ordination and was "walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together."
It is Bishop Kelsey's episcopal shoes Fr. Forrester is seeking to fill. The former bishop was killed in an automobile accident in 2007. His See has been vacant ever since.
VOL researched lay Buddhist ordination and found that the commitment the Episcopal priest made was more than just to a meditative process. It calls for commitment to the Buddha as the One Teacher. (Is not Christ the One True Teacher?); the studying and practicing of the teachings of the Dharma. (What about the "Holy Scriptures which containeth all things necessary to salvation"?); and showing respect for all Buddhists, especially those who are "wearing the robe". (The robe here does not mean a monastic habit.)
Before his untimely death, the good bishop of Northern Michigan did not take the moose by the antlers and charge Fr. Forrester with Abandonment of Communion for mixing Buddhist meditation practices with the sacerdotal priesthood, as the good lady from Rhode Island did with her erring priestess in Washington state who was mixing her Muslim prayer-style with her priestly duties.
However, the rector of Trinity Episcopal Church in Pine Bluff, Ark. is not afraid to take a razorback by the tusks and charge his brother priest with Abandonment of Communion.
"The Rev. Mr. Forrester is a practicing Buddhist, "ordained" as it were, into their "lay order." While eccentricity of this sort is to be expected amongst some of our clergy, a bishop is the defender of the Faith, and in the line of the Apostles," writes the Rev. Walter Van Zandt Windsor in a letter he hopes to get into the hands of all the diocesan standing committees charged with affirming Fr. Forrester's election to the bishop's throne of the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan. "I believe the Rev. Forrester to have abandoned the Communion of this Church, and therefore unfit to be considered for the office of bishop."
Fr. Windsor's voice is not the only cry against Fr. Forrester's dueling religious commitments.
On VOL, the quiet voice of the silent majority has found a venue to say, "Enough is enough. No more. Our souls are in peril." They are tired of having their historic Anglican faith, as outlined in the Thirty-Nine Articles, marginalized and wrestled away from them and replaced with an outlandish hodge-podge of feel-good, all inclusive, no rights-no wrongs, anything goes pabulum of socialistic feminism being proclaimed as the Gospel message from the pulpit.
In reality, it is more important to receive the Body and Blood of Jesus in Holy Communion on the knees at the altar rail than it is to hand out a peanut butter and jelly sandwich standing on the street corner.
More and more traditional silent minority Episcopalians are having trouble dealing with yet another TEC spiritual blunder that is damaging to their very souls' health. They are afraid for their salvation, so they revolt with their feet and their pocketbook. While the Christian world looks on, the Internet is alive with observations about how the American church goes blithely on its way, spiritually decaying.
"When will this stupid church (a poor excuse for a church) realize that everyone's laughing at them," asks 'The Little Myrmidon' at another blog.
And just to prove that point, an e-mail to VOL from a Florida Presbyterian clergyman states, "Just when I think no church body could be any more faithless, rootless or thoughtless than the progressive wing of the PCUSA, the Episcopal church comes along and trumps us. A Buddhist Bishop - what a bunch."
Pulling no punches, a Missouri Synod Lutheran emphatically states, "He [Forrester] is a heretic, but then again this is nothing new in the TEC."
"The Episcopal Church (USA) has continued to act in ways that show its true colors (or should that be colors?) to anyone with 'ears to hear'", blogs the 'The Ugly Vicar' from his English vicarage about the American bishop-elect's Buddhist bent. "In the TEC, apparently, it does not--or at least not enough to make the powers that be in that organization think twice."
"More proof that TEC is without any theological content whatsoever," writes 'Allen Lewis' on the Midwest Conservative Journal website. "The leaders have sold themselves to the Zeitgeist and that is why a once Christian body is nothing more than a Gay Fashion Club. There is no health in TEC at all."
"TEC is a shrinking institution that is on the edge of catastrophic contradiction says 'JamesW' says on another blog. "I believe that many of the TEC's top leaders know this full well. They are also in a protracted civil war. ... there is an increasing intolerance for dissent from the "party line" (i.e. anyone who doesn't speak 'TEC Happy Talk' is a dissenter); and an increasing turning to mediocre, local priests to be bishop."
"In the non-Christian organization that TEC is fast becoming, anyone can be a bishop," blogs 'Floridian' on the Baby Blue website.
"The stamp of approval TEC places on Forrester and his ilk misrepresent the Christian faith. It's fraud, pure and simple. It amazes me these people can miss the point of the Gospels so completely. Can't they read?" wrote blogger Martin5.
Yes, although they are reading through blinded eyes. How else could they get through seminary? Also they read anything but from the Holy Scriptures and the Anglican Formularies which consist of the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, and the Ordinal.
Well, at least Fr. Forrester's reading material consists of the Dharma.
---Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline
No comments:
Post a Comment