TruthBook Religious News Blog

Smorgasbord religion on the grow throughout United States E-mail
By Daniel Burke, Religion News Service
Published: April 03, 2009

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Friday afternoons find 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 insists she is both Christian and Muslim, fully following both faiths.

And for that, Redding expects to be defrocked 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 Kevin Thew Forrester, who was elected bishop of the sparsely populated Diocese of Northern Michigan in February. 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 him 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.

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.

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.

The store, in this metaphor, is that big ice-cream parlor in the sky.

Fewer 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 increasingly are 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 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 Catholic nuns like Sister Rose Mary Dougherty, who leads a multifaith group of Zen students in Silver Spring, Md.

A nun for 50 years, Dougherty also is 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 she doesn’t consider herself a Buddhist.

Labels: Buddhism, Christian, Daniel Burke, Episcopalians, Islam, religion, syncretism

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Thursday, December 25, 2008

‘This is what Christ had in mind … a church without walls’

Services in Woodruff Park break down barriers to reach those who are in need

By Drew Jubera

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Saturday, December 20, 2008

They just showed up. On foot. From all directions. As if risen right out of the same downtown streets that many of them live on.

About a dozen homeless men and women, joined by volunteers and other churchgoers, sat shoulder to shoulder in the cold last Sunday in front of the fountain at the north end of Woodruff Park. They wore hats and gloves and heavy coats. They toted backpacks and black plastic garbage bags. One guy chewed on a cheese sandwich.

They were ready for church.

“I appreciate all you huddled people,” began Carole Maddux, the Episcopal deacon leading the service. “Let us take a moment to be silent and claim this place. And call on God … to make his presence known.”

Surrounded by downtown skyscrapers, she stood in front of a folding table topped with a silver cross, a chalice, a plastic bottle of grape juice to be served with communion —- “Some of our people don’t need to drink wine,” Maddux said.

The Church of the Common Ground was in session.

“We’re Episcopal, and we have a liturgy,” Maddux explained earlier. “It can cause us to try to control every little thing: The acolytes should stand here, the candles should be lit there.

“But here, you have to go with the spirit. I’ll be talking about the firmament, and a flock of pigeons will go by. Or someone will chime in with an opinion.”

A homeless ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta, the Church of the Common Ground convenes in Woodruff Park every Sunday at 1 p.m. (January through February, it moves indoors to the ministry’s nearby rented storefront at 170 Trinity Ave. S.W.) It was started about two years ago by the Rev. Bob Book, a Lutheran minister for almost two decades, and his wife, Holly Book.

After years in traditional churches, the open-air, come-one-come-all ministry felt to them like a return to Christianity’s roots.

“This is what Christ had in mind —- a church without walls,” said Holly Book. “The [Episcopal] church has strayed from this. The bishop is recognizing the importance of us to be out there and with people who are poor.”

Rick Hutchison, 58, lives in a shelter. He often attends the Sunday service and volunteers at the ministry’s indoor space on Trinity Avenue. A variety of services are offered there during the week, including a health clinic, addiction recovery meetings and a weekly movie (recent showing: “Prancer”).

But it’s not viewed by the homeless who come there as a traditional soup kitchen. Its most important service, Hutchison said, is spiritual.

Bob Book, 59, was ordained an Episcopal priest in October at a ceremony at the park.

“People will say to me, ‘Someday, pastor, you’ll be blessed with a church,’ ” Book said. “And I say, ‘We already have one. It just doesn’t have walls. And I don’t want any walls. Once you erect walls, you start keeping people out, either by accident or intentionally. I want to be visible to everyone.

“Within the Christian community, none of us feels like the Earth is our home,” he added. “And part of the journey is finding our home in Christ, our eternal home. So in that way, all of us are homeless. Some of us just have shelters.”

Labels: Bob Book, church, Drew Jubera, Episcopalians, homelessness