The news story:
Ann Holmes Redding has what could be called a crisis of faiths.
For nearly 30 years, Redding has been an ordained minister in the Episcopal Church. Her priesthood ended Wednesday when she was defrocked.
The reason? For the past three years Redding has been both a practicing Christian and a Muslim…
…The Diocese of Rhode Island, where Redding was ordained, told her to leave either her new Muslim faith or the ministry. A diocese statement said Bishop Geralyn Wolf found Redding to be “a woman of utmost integrity. However, the Bishop believes that a priest of the Church cannot be both a Christian and a Muslim.”
For crying out loud, if you ordain women as priests you’re already pretty far off the Christian ranch; when you ordain as a Bishop a man who left his wife in order to have a gay love affair you’ve left Christianity waaaay the heck back there…and so what is the problem with this woman being a Moslem and a priest? She’s not supposed to be the latter, anyways, and if one is willing to violate the commands of God like that, what harm in denying God?
Oh, I know she believes she’s not denying God – but from a Christian perspective, she is: Christians believe that Jesus is God; God from God, light from light, true God from true God, as it were. To hold to Mohammad’s heresy one has to first deny the divinity of Christ. Its a rather curious thing for the Episcopalian Church to find this as the thing to stand firm on – go have an abortion on your way to the gay pride parade, and the Episcopal Church has no problem…become a Moslem, something no more heretical than the Episcopal Church at its inception, and that is out of bounds?
Very strange – but, also, a useful illustration as to just why “mainline” Protestant churches are in rapid decline.
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