The day before the Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops voted to confirm the church’s first openly gay bishop in the late summer of 2003, conservative humor website ScrappleFace satirized the move with a piece entitled “Episcopal Church Appoints First Openly-Muslim Bishop.” It was a fine example of reductio ad absurdum humor: If the Episcopal Church sacrificed a long-held moral doctrine, would it next have a bishop of another faith? The point worked as humor, but would not work as argument precisely because the possibility seemed absurd. Yet less than four years later, the Episcopal Church has been faced (albeit briefly) with its first openly Muslim priest.
** The Rev. Ann Holmes Redding, who was ordained in 1984 and has been affiliated with St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral in Seattle for the past six years, became Muslim in early 2006. Redding first became intrigued by Islam in the fall of 2005, when a local Muslim leader spoke at her cathedral. Her interest deepened after an interfaith class the following spring. Redding told the Seattle Times that her mother died around that time, and she could not cope with that death except by “total surrender to God.” In March 2006 she recited the shahada, the declaration of faith that makes one a Muslim.
** When Redding went public with her conversion fifteen months later, in June 2007, she felt that she did not need to relinquish her position at St. Mark’s. “I am both Muslim and Christian,” Redding said. “I’m 100 percent both.”
** Perhaps the true punchline to the joke ScappleFace made four years ago is how the Diocese of Olympia reacted. The diocese’s newspaper was actually the first to announce that Redding had become Muslim, and its bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, said that “he accepts Redding as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the interfaith possibilities exciting.”
Come on, people- this is classic stuff. A Muslim Episcopalean priest isn’t enough for you, though? How about this tidbit from “Spectrum,” a magazine attached to the Yale Divinity School:
“One of the most dynamic new student groups at YDS draws from a long unrepresented constituency at the divinity school: nonbelievers. They are the Left Behind, a group of agnostics and atheists who aim to provide ‘a caring and inclusive atmosphere to those who subscribe to our beliefs.’”
Why can’t she also convert to judaism so she can be in eternal conflict with herself?
Seriously, the process to convert to some Christian faiths (Catholic) is quite involved and does not allow for dual beliefs. I doubt muslims are welcoming her double beliefs. Mainly, she sounds like she needs theraphy to help her with her confusion.
My late mother was Episcopalian, though I was raised Roman Catholic in accordance with my father’s (and my mother’s, surprisingly) wishes. Even my mother could see, all those years ago, the coming absurdities the Episcopal church would engage in, and sought to shield her children from them.
