The Reformed Pastor

Well, not in so many words, of course. That would be sooooo tacky. Instead, a recent statement on the Middle East by the United Methodist Church’s General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) couched it in the language of rights:

Israel’s invasion of Gaza reminds us of the critical need for a just and durable resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We pray that new U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell can facilitate a peace settlement. It is our conviction that an accord must ensure the following: a safe, secure Israel; a safe, secure viable and contiguous Palestine; an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory; a recognition of Palestinian refugees’ right of return; and a shared Jerusalem.[Emphasis added.]

If there has been any issue on which Israel has been absolutely uncompromising, it is the so-called “right of return” (which isn’t actually about “return,” since the vast majority of present-day Palestinian refugees have never lived in Israel). Allowing millions of Palestinians to move to Israel would effectively destroy that nation as a Jewish state. By using the mechanism of Israeli democracy, it would be possible for the Muslim Arab majority to eventually reduce the Jewish minority to dhimmitude, or else to simply expel it, as has happened in most of the Arab world since the founding of Israel. By calling for the right of return, the GBCS has effectively said that Jews are not entitled to a homeland of their own.

Of course, that’s not at all surprising, since the United Methodist Church as a whole has made the same call. I suspected that the GBCS had gone off on a crusade of its own, so I started looking to see if there were any other United Methodist agencies that had taken a similar stance. Imagine my surprise when I found that the entire denomination, meeting in General Conference in 2004, had passed a resolution stating:

WHEREAS, the church continues to work with ecumenical and interfaith bodies to advocate for Palestinian self-determination and an end to Israeli occupation; to affirm Israel’s right to exist within secure borders; to affirm the right of return for Palestinian refugees under international law; to call for region-wide disarmament; to urge Israelis and Palestinians to stop human rights violations and attacks on civilians, such as targeted assassinations and suicide bombings; and to urge the U.S. government to initiate an arms embargo on the entire Middle East region; [Emphasis added.]

I missed this at the time of its passage, and I’ll bet most United Methodists did as well. So my former denomination (1983-1992) is on record as supporting the demise of Israel as a Jewish state. Who’d a thunk it?

It’s that time of year again. I go on record with my forecast for the major league baseball season. If you’re a betting person, my suggestion would be that you take my predictions and bet heavily on someone else. Here’s how I see it:

National League

East: Philadelphia Phillies
Central: Chicago Cubs
West: Los Angeles Dodgers
Wild card: New York Mets
NL champion: Chicago Cubs (!)
MVP: David Wright (Mets)
Cy Young: Dan Haren (Diamondbacks)

American League:

East: Boston Red Sox
Central: Cleveland Indians
West: Los Angeles Angels
Wild card: New York Yankees
AL champion: Boston Red Sox
MVP: Grady Sizemore (Indians)
Cy Young: C.C. Sabathia (Yankees)

World Series: Cubs over Red Sox in 6

Greg Griffith of Stand Firm continues his investigation of the Buddhist bishop-wannabe in the Episcopal Church’s Northern Michigan diocese, and comes up with a whopper. The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester’s syncretism apparently isn’t restricted to mashing together Buddhism and Christianity; Greg discovered that he’s not above bringing Islam into his church’s worship as well. In the worship insert for January 20, 2008, we find the following in place of the New Testament (in this case, 1 Corinthinians 1:1-9) reading:

The Quran Quran 13: 20-23

Reader: A reading from the Quran

In the name of God most merciful most compassionate. Is he, then, who knows that what has been revealed to those from thy Lord is the truth, like one who is blind? But only those gifted with understanding will reflect. Those who fulfill God’s pact and break not the covenant. And those who join what God has commanded to be joined, and fear their Lord, and dread the evil reckoning. And those who persevere in seeking the favor of their Lord and observe prayer and spend out of that with which We have provided them secretly and openly, and repel evil with good.  It is these who shall have the best reward of the final Abode. Amen

Reader: Hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
Assembly: Thanks be to God.

The preacher for that Sunday was a Muslim scholar named Mohey Mowafy, and apparently Forrester wanted him to feel at home.

Of course, this isn’t all that’s being done to acquaint the folks of St. Paul’s, Marquette with other spirits. Among the announcements:

ENNEAGRAM INTERVIEWS
Kevin Thew Forrester offers Enneagram Interviews.  The interview takes approximately one hour. Please call the office at xxx-xxxx to schedule.

SUFFERING FROM GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER?
Participate in the Yoga-Stretch Research for free. It is a combination of Hatha yoga and conventional stretches that focus on natural healing methods. Explore the effects of this new mind-body healing modality. Informational Meeting: January 20, 2008 3-5:00 p.m. at the Marquette Arts and Cultural Center.

The Enneagram is an ancient symbol pf perpetual motion that has been adapted to symbolize personality types, but it also has 20th century connections to strange forms of mysticism and numerology. Hatha yoga is a system of physical practices and meditation techniques rooted in Hinduism. I begin to suspect that there is no religious tradition that Forrester is not willing to plunder or recommend to his congregants. No doubt similar spiritual and intellectual chaos could be expected if he were confirmed as a bishop of the Episcopal Church.

Courtesy of T19 comes one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time. It’s a list of some of the things students have written on science tests. Make sure you aren’t drinking anything:

•Water is composed of two gins, Oxygin and Hydrogin. Oxygin is pure gin. Hydrogin is gin and water.

•Blood flows down one leg and up the other.

•The moon is a planet just like the earth, only it is even deader.

•The pistol of a flower is its only protections against insects.

•The skeleton is what is left after the insides have been taken out and the outsides have been taken off. The purpose of the skeleton is something to hitch meat to.

•The body consists of three parts- the brainium, the borax and the abominable cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs, and the abominable cavity contains the bowls, of which there are five – a, e, i, o, and u.

Read it all, but be careful of that screen.

Remember that speech of the Rev. Katharine Ragsdale’s that I linked to earlier this week? The one where she proclaimed abortion a blessing? Well, it’s gone down the memory hole. Alerted by Stand Firm, I checked her site this morning and, poof! It had magically disappeared. It is now an un-speech–except on the who-knows-how-many sites that have saved it for anyone to see.

While I was there, I found myself looking at some of the sermons she’s preached, and discovered that she’s actually perfect for the position she’s been called to as president of an Episcopal seminary. Seems that to her, it doesn’t matter whether the resurrection of Christ actually took place or not:

So, off they went to the tomb – and they found it empty. They must have been outraged as well as grief-stricken. The authorities had removed the body to keep it from becoming a rallying point. Without a by-your-leave or even a by-the-way to the family, they had taken even his corpse. All things, even common decency, had been made subservient to the needs, or fantasies, of the Empire.

Except they hadn’t.

He hadn’t been removed; he’d been resurrected. He had Risen.

Now, this is the point where I always expect to lose some of you. I’m sure there are at least a few folks in the room who are saying to yourselves right now, “Well, that’s a lovely story. Very sweet. But surely I’m not expected to actually believe in the Resurrection – that someone rose from the dead. It’s all a misunderstanding or a manipulative fiction.” So, should you be one of those people, let me say to you that you’re in excellent company. There are many people, respected scholars, faithful church-goers – bright people of strong faith and good conscience who don’t believe in a literal Resurrection – as there are bright, faithful people who do believe in it. Good, bright, faithful people who disagree. So, either way you go, you’re in good company.

And thinking about whether the Resurrection literally happened or not can make for an engaging academic exercise – but it’s not the point. There’s a danger of becoming so obsessed with the facts that we lose sight of the truth.

Here’s what’s true:

Out of dust and ashes – utter defeat – God created something new and beyond our imaging. And 2000 years later it still shapes our world. Those fear-filled men came out of hiding to proclaim what they had come to know – the power of Resurrection. And, as they had feared, some of them were killed for it. Some of them were killed horribly. And they did it anyway. Because the power of the Resurrection was too intense to be ignored.

Resurrection – those amazing times when things work out, not in spite of all that has gone wrong but somehow through, even because of, the very wrongness.

Now, I’m not suggesting that Ragsdale doesn’t believe in the resurrection–it sounds from this sermon like she does. But what she told her congregation on Easter Sunday morning in 2005 is that it doesn’t matter whether they believe it or not. The important thing isn’t that they believe in the resurrection, but resurrection as an idea that simply means that “things work out.” To my mind, that’s homiletical and theological, not to mention pastoral, malpractice that puts Ragsdale in direct contradiction to what St. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:14–”if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.”

But then, that simply puts her in the long line of liberal preachers who thought they knew what Christian faith was about better than the Apostle Paul. She should fit in perfectly at the Episcopal Divinity School.

If we’re talking about a basic human right [to abortion], why should we discourage people from exercising that right?

–Dan Schultz, United Church of Christ minister, author of the blog “Street Prophets,” and pro-abortionist, explaining the Religious Left position on abortion reduction in U.S. News and World Report

Anne Holmes Redding, the extraordinarily confused cleric who claims to be both Muslim and Christian, has been deposed from the Episcopal priesthood by her bishop, Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island. The Seattle Times has a story today about the expiration of the dealine that Bishop Wolf had given Redding to recant, and the result of her failure to do so. The most interesting part of the story, to me, was the defense of Redding’s religious experiment offered by–who else?–a local academic:

In Christianity and Islam, while “there are streams of tradition that are mutually exclusive, there are also streams that are not mutually exclusive,” said Eugene Webb, professor emeritus of comparative religion at the University of Washington. “Ann is exploring those.”

It would be a good thing, Webb said, if more churches allowed for such exploration since it’s “going to take place one way or the other. It might be better to wait and see what comes of them, rather than decide in advance that it wouldn’t be fruitful.”

Woe unto those who ever sat under the teaching of this particular professor. There is, to my knowledge, no strain of Islam that accepts the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the atoning death and resurrection of Christ, or the finality of the written revelation of God in the Old and New Testaments. Likewise, there are no strains of Christianity, except those that are so liberal as to have forfeited all right to the name, that reject these doctrines. Do Islam and Christianity agree on some things? Of course–they agree that there is a Supreme Being who created the universe, for instance. But when two systems of thought disagree on the central beliefs the define them, there’s no way that one can seriously say they are not “mutually exclusive” except by using those words in such a way as to drain them of all meaning.

It is true that “such exploration[s]” are “going to take place one way or the other.” But that doesn’t mean that any church should willingly sow the seeds of its own destruction, and that of the souls under its care, by allowing a person to continue in a position of spiritual authority at the same time they are treating the teaching of the church like Silly Putty. Kudos to Bishop Wolf for doing the right thing.

There is an acknowledged sadness, because if it were not for the limited vision of one particular bishop I still might have been able to function as a priest.

–The ex-Rev. Anne Holmes Redding in the Providence Journal, expressing regret that Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island has prevented her from continuing her ministry of apostasy within the Episcopal Church

(Via T19.)