One of the things I find most irritating about some religious pluralists is an arrogant solipsism that says they get to define, not only what their own religion teaches, but what everybody else’s religion teaches as well. Exhibit A for this mindset, on view now in the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan, is Bishop-elect Kevin Thew Forrester. The Diocese of South Carolina, meeting yesterday in convention, went on record as opposing his confirmation as bishop, and quoted from a sermon of his as an example of why he should be turned down. According to Titusonenine, the swami said:
…One of the amazing insights I have found in the interfaith dialogue is that, no matter what you name that source, from which all life comes—you can name that source God, Abba; you may name that source Yahweh; you may name that source Allah; you may name that source “the great emptiness;” you can name that source many things, but what all the faiths in their wisdom have acknowledged in the interfaith dialogue is that, you and I, we’re not the source. We receive from the source, and what we are asked to do is give back to the source. In other words, what the interfaith dialogue has recognized is that there is a Trinitarian structure to life. That’s what I’m driving at this morning. We make the Trinity much too complex. The Trinitarian structure of life is this: is that everything that is comes from the source. And you can name the source what you want to name the source. And our response to that is with hearts of gratitude and thanksgiving, to return everything back to that source, and there’s a spirit who enables that return. Everything comes from God. We give it back to God. And the spirit gives us the heart of gratitude. That is the Trinitarian nature of life. And you can be a Buddhist, you can be a Muslim, you can be a Jew, and that makes sense. And we all develop more elaborate theologies, but the truth is we live and have our being in a God who asks only one thing of us: to grow into people who give thanks that God is our center, God is our life, that we are one with God. And as we grow into realization, that we are one with this God who lives in us, and the only thing God asks us is to give back everything in thanksgiving, we live. It’s what the Syrians said, “we will know what redemption truly is, we will come alive, we will be made to live,” because we will know—not because someone told us—because we know that God gives us life. And all God asks of us is “give it back to Me in return.”
“What the interfaith dialogue has recognized is that there is a Trinitarian structure to life.” What utter nonsense. I’d love to hear him say that to a Muslim or a Jew and find out how much agreement he gets. I think this passage from one of Forrester’s sermons demonstrates quite thoroughly that he not only doesn’t deserve a pointy hat, he shouldn’t be in a Christian pulpit at all. But what do I know–I’m still laboring under the delusion that a Christian preacher ought to be, you know, preaching Christ, rather than playing at his own make-believe game of religion.
