Strange Episcopalians
Dean
Did you ever get the feeling that some people just go out of their way to antagonize traditionalists?
As an outsider to these affairs, I can only laugh at the absurdity.
(Via Andrea.)
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Interestingly enough, the Christian Saint Brigit probably evolved from worship of the Druidic Brigid.
Now the Anglicans are giving her back I suppose.
I wonder what the next step will be? Human sacrifice - which was popular with pre-Christian Celts?
Now I'm just confused. I've always thought of Episcopalians as a Christian denomination, kinda like Catholic-Lite. Yet, to not only abandon the teachings of the Bible, but to actively EMBRACE things that the Bible specifically prohibits (such as paganism and druidism)!?!
While I'm offended at the disrespect for the Bible by a group that professes to hold it in the highest esteem as a holy text, I'm almost equally offended by the lack of logic or reason. By definition, a Christian can not also be a pagan. A Christian is one that believes and tries to follow the teaching of Christ. Some of those teachings are that there is one true God and that the Bible is the holy word of God.
Maybe this is some kind of joke, and I just didn't follow enough links to figure it out.
Sorry for ranting; raw nerve hit here.
As an Episcopalian, I cringe.
The leadership of the church has been on a forced march to the left for years. I'd like to say I'm surprised by the paganism, but I'm not. I really don't understand it - the "You will have no other Gods" part really didn't sound optional to me.
This is an example of why I, who used to be an active parishoner, Senior Warden, etc., haven't been to church in years.
It's long dead, and the scent of the decay fills the air.
As a theologically traditional Presbyterian, I'm appalled. Though from what I've seen of the leftward fringe of Liberal Protestantism over the years, I can't say I'm surprised in the least.
2 Tim 4:3-4
3 For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
(NIV)
If I were still a member of ECUSA, I would be getting out right now. Mike, you might want to look into some of the organizations like AMiA or other back-to-the-Bible Anglican organizations in North America. (AMiA is the only one whose name comes to my mind right now). But please do find a truly active church and come back. There are still some in North America who have not soiled their garments.
The irony, as I've pointed out here before, is that many of today's Christian conservatives, the traditionalists, the orthodox Catholics, the fundamentalist Protestants, are the closest equivalent of those who, a thousand years ago, held fast to the Gods and Goddesses of their ancestors and refused to accept a new religion from the East. They are like the Egyptians who opposed Akhenaton. I admire that. I'm a reactionary.
It does sound like they are deliberately trying to provoke people, though, doesn't it?
Unfortunately, their statement isn't very credible. There are only a few rituals on that site, and there are no disclaimers. There is no place to submit new rituals that does not involve vetting.
And the Divorce Ritual is still there, although it is no longer linked from the main page.
While all the time you protestants whom I sometimes extol as the salt of the American earth (sort of) are back to worshiping little wooden dolls. Of the kind you can buy at garage sales.
"Christianity Today", they call that publication?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Jeff: Judging the Episcopal Church leadership by it s actions, I am extremely skeptical of the 'oops' explanation. They have become so fad-happy...They have a beautiful liturgy and a rich tradition, a history of rigorous scholarship and some of the most beautiful music - and they toss it all away. Just not enough. Maybe it's too much for them. Gah, I don't know anymore. All I do know is that this moonbattery is an insult to both pagans and Christians alike.
You may hate these people's beliefs and you may argue against them, but at least give them the simple dignity of acknowledging that they believe something. These mish-mashers don't really seem to believe anything.
Except fuzzy bunnies. And rainbows. Oh! And unicorns! Let's all worship the unicorns of the baby Jesus!
I;m rambling again, got to get some coffee, wake up for the last stretch.
--|PW|--
No. Is there anything inherently wrong with incorporating elements of pagan rituals prohibited by the Old Testament? Yes.
Yours,
Wince
You can grab a copy of the 10 Commandments and check them off as they're broken in that article.
It's kinda fun.
Don't get mixed up. Christianity Today is the magazine that's condemning the practice. The ECUSA (Episcopal Church USA), which used to be the U.S. diocese of the global Anglican church, is the organization that put up the neopagan ritual on their Web site.
By the way, note my language: "used to be the U.S. diocese of the global Anglican church". I fully expect the other Anglican provinces to announce that the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada are no longer in communion with the global Anglican church. They've been very hesitant to do so because a schism like that is a step of absolute last resort, only to be used when all else has utterly failed. But as long as the Anglican dioceses in the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada refuse to base their beliefs solidly on the Bible and insist on wandering off into apostasy, that last resort is going to be reached, and I'm expecting it to happen pretty soon now.
Just to expand, though, for a moment. What about the early Catholic Church? As I understand it, the Catholic Church, as it expanded across Europe, tended to incorporate oldline paganism into its local doctrine. Is that legitimate?
--|PW|--
Rituals to mark life passages? No, there is nothing wrong with that. What's wrong is this ritual that's been made up. The Eucharist is one of the sacraments of the church. It's really, really important; it and Baptism are the two most important sacraments that the laity are involved in. So important that playing fast and loose with it shows a complete disdain for the religion. It goes beyond disdain, it's utter contempt, if not hatred.
A secular example might be this: imagine a military funeral and the soldiers bring the coffin to the grave, put it down, slouch, and amble away.
It's just one of those things that is so not done, and for some reason the Episcopal Church leadership thinks it's fun to mess about with. They may be in a state of arrested adolesence for all I know, but it's just not right.
"The Catholic Church ... tended to incorporate oldline paganism into its local doctrine."
What are you referring to here? I need examples.
Adding something to doctrine that's completely contradictory to the Bible? Definitely not legitimate.
Looking for the good in local beliefs, and using that as a stepping-stone to point people to God? Very different, and completely within Biblical tradition. For example, when Paul was in Athens, he looked at their traditions and used them as a starting point to help them understand his message: "I see you're very religious -- you even have a altar here that's dedicated "To the unknown god"! Well, that unknown God, the one that you're sure exists even though you don't know much about Him, He's the one that I'm here to tell you about." (My summary of Acts 17:22-23).
So before I can tell you my opinion, I need to know the specifics of what you're talking about.
--|PW|--
However, this controversy isn't really about the physical ritual on its own so much as its about what that ritual represents. This ritual is about worshipping/honoring a female pagan god. Its very clear. This is about spitting in God's face, the defiance of scripture as holy guidance, denying mono-theism. It is an alteration and destruction of fundamental doctrine, not the addition of a ritual.
1) The early church fathers set up Christmas as sort of a christian competitor for the attention of the Romans, whose pagans celebrated the Saturnalia in late December. Jesus could in fact have been born on any of the 365 days of the year.
2) St Valentine's day, February 14, was the Roman holiday Lupercus, the celebration of the wolf-hunters. Nimrod, the pagan hunter, was sort of transformed into St Valentine.
3) Christins for a long time have been trying unsuccessfully to transmogrify Halloween into a christian holiday. But they can't quite make it escape from its serious heavy-duty celtic pagan heritage.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
You don't steal from what you explicitly acknowledge.
That would be like accusing Jean Rhys of stealing from Charlotte Bronte when Rhys wrote, Wide Sargasso Sea. It's explicit that Sargasso is based on Jane Eyre. [It's also quite a beautiful book.] But you wouldn't accuse Rhys of stealing.
The New Testament is seen as a fulfillment and a re-enactment of the passover story, but this time the Egyptians don't die, and more than just the Jews are saved. By accepting Christ, the wrath of God and his demand for justice for our sins passes over us at our moment of our death. Much as the angel of death passed over the Israelite houses that contained the blood of a lamb, but slew the Egyptian first born.
The Easter story also has connections to the story of Abraham and Isaac. But that's another story.
Pax.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
The hip'n'modern church, that's what'll bring people into the pews.
(Heh. Sorry guys. I know this is annoying some of you, but.. heheh.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb
Are you trying to get us all struck by lightning??
In all seriousness, though ...
A few years ago, when one of my hats at the local paper was "Religion editor" (don't ask), I found an AP story about a movement on among some quarters to "modernize" Christianity. Churches featuring string combos and an opening invocation of "Please rise and groove with us." As a favor to a friend, my girlfriend and I actually attended one of these newfangled modern churches.
I disliked it intensely, and not just because I'm atheist. Also because I was brought up Episcopalian.
I was looking for a pipe organ. A minister. I would have even been satisfied with a small choir singing hosannas. But there were no hymns. I couldn't abide music. It was all modern stuff, upbeat. "I will praise You." That sort of thing.
I'm not trying to bust too much on modern worship, but I think there's a certain tragedy to the way some churches are. I didn't sense any reverence in that church. None of the mystery or reverence that transmutes mere spiritual acts into sacred acts.
Am I way off-base here, or has modern Christianity strayed a bit from its roots?
--|PW|--
pennywit, what you witnessed was one phase of a really nasty phenomenon. What's happened to contemporary Christian music is . . . well, "really sad" is about the best face I can put on it. I can at least understand it in the case of the newer, big evangelical churches; they aren't working from a musical tradition, and this may be what the
audiencecongregation actually wants to offer to God (God help them).But the state of Catholic music is something else again, because there there's no excuse; a lot of the best music in the history of the world was designed explicitly for the Catholic liturgy, and not all of it is difficult to sing. And what do we get? Well, Thomas Day's Why Catholics Can't Sing gives the gist. (I especially like his observation that the popular "Here I Am, Lord" takes its first four bars more or less literally from the Brady Bunch theme. It does, it does!)
If I attend a service at many of these churches, the hymns are meaningful. That church? Not so much. It felt more like a group sing.
I could tell a lot of the people around me were really into the music. Maybe they encountered something transformational with the music and surroundings that seemed (to me) to be mundane.
But I think there's some value in the older rituals. Something much more sacred.
--|PW|--
1) Christmas being celebrated around the time of the old holiday of Saturnalia - Yup. And some of the traditions that are now Christmas traditions are direct carryovers from old pagan traditions -- like holly wreaths. I wonder if most people even realize that those holly wreaths had a whole different meaning back then? Anyway, the timing of this one looks deliberate, to give people a Christian holiday to celebrate instead of the pagan holiday.
Jesus' birth probably occurred in the springtime, not winter. There's mention in the second chapter of Luke of shepherds who, on the night of Jesus' birth, were sleeping out in the fields with their flocks, watching over their sheep at night. From the little I know of sheep herding, it's usually safe to leave the sheep alone at night as long as they're locked up in a pen; but the one time of the year when you dare not leave them alone for even an hour is lambing season. If a ewe has a difficult birth, you need to be right there to help or both the ewe and the lamb are going to die. So based on the fact that the shepherds were camping out in their fields all night long, Jesus' birth most likely happened during lambing season, in the springtime.
2) St Valentine's day - it looks like there was actual reason for placing its date on February 14th, and the fact that Valentine had been executed for marrying a couple in secret against the Emperor's wishes made it a natural fit for a holiday based around romance. This one I'd say wasn't so much deliberate as it just naturally happened.
3) Halloween - Indeed. And the very fact that Halloween still carries a lot of its pagan meaning is what has many Christians today saying, "Christians shouldn't celebrate Halloween." Their kids still demand a chance to dress up and get candy, though, which has many Christian churches putting on things like "harvest festivals" as, basically, replacements for Halloween. Just celebrate it on the same day, and let the kids have their dress-up -- but no witch costumes, or devil costumes, please. :-) It's an interesting dilemma: do you go through the forms of dressing up and asking for candy and say "Oh, I know this used to have a pagan meaning, but it doesn't anymore"? Or do you say, "Well kids, I know you want to go trick-or-treating like the other kids, but you really shouldn't, and we'll explain when you're older"? Five-year-olds really don't like that one...!
As for what I think of these attempts at co-opting pagan holidays into Christian traditions: none of them strike me as being anti-Biblical and therefore to be automatically rejected. They strike me much more as falling into the second category: finding what's good in the social and cultural traditions, and trying to keep the good, while using it to point people to God. Whether they completely succeed at that is a point that could be argued very successfully one way or another, but that seems to me to be what they're trying to do. As such, I don't have a real problem with it.
Yeah, what Michelle said. There's a lot of contemporary Christian worship music being written that's pretty insipid and doesn't measure up to the standards of many of the old hymns. They're not horrible mind you, just mediocre. But it's sad, because there's better songs out there; more rich and meaningful -- and much less likely, in my case, to get in the way of my actually worshipping God. Some -- not too many, thankfully, but some -- of the modern worship tunes actually get in the way of my worshipping, because they manage to take my focus off of God's character and His love, and instead I'm thinking, "You know, I wish the author hadn't chosen this particular melody; it's really boring." They're counterproductive, at least for me.
But when you compare modern worship music to the really great old hymns, you actually end up comparing apples to oranges without even realizing it. The old hymns that we now have in our hymnals are the ones that were remembered, that stood the test of time because they were good. I'm sure there were plenty of hymns back in the day that weren't good enough to get passed down through the years to today. I've occasionally looked through old hymnals full of songs from the 19th century, and I found that many of the hymns that were popular in the 1800's are ones I find pretty insipid and boring. But there are a few gems that stand out, and those are the ones that get remembered.
And I do know of a few gems in modern worship music, too. There's "Beautiful Scandalous Night", for example:
This blog post about The Passion of the Christ has the entire lyrics. It's beautiful; I'd encourage you to read the whole thing.
And my all-time favorite hymn came from the same 19th century that produced so many insipid ones. Pardon me for typing in the whole thing, but I just can't stand not to:
If there's a more beautiful summing-up of the message of the Gospel in music, I have yet to hear it.
You merely asked for some examples of christianity copping various none-christian holidays for its own use, implying, I assumed, that no such thing happened. But obviously it did.
Not that it matters much to someone like me. I simply study all these religions and their practices as bits and pieces of social and cultural phenomena. No, I don't mess with the minutiae of theology. Because all it does for me is mystify me as what it is all supposed to be about.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Christian theology is and should be immutable. The expressions of true Christian worship can change and expand to meet the cultural needs of the believers. My non-denomination church met for 8 years in a highschool gymnasium while our congregation grew to over 500 per Sunday. We have guitars, keyboard, drums and talented musicians, singers and beautiful contemporary music.
We now have our own building and the church is crowded with young families and the presence of the Holy Spirit is palpable. We do not speak in tongues or cast out demons but we do sing our hearts out and lovingly welcome all who pass through our doors. Most people do not come just once. They return and become active participants most often. Our worship is infective and joyful and is centered around meeting with and worship of the one true God. The music draws the heart to God in a powerful way. Don't knock it even if you don't like it.
That's news to me. When you get to the actual data, all extant evidence points to the Crucifixion happening during Passover, 30 A.D. If you have some cites to the contrary, I'd be interested in seeing them.
Just think of it this way: the world of theology has its Dan Rathers too, complete with memos.
"All I do know is that this moonbattery is an insult to both pagans and Christians alike."
Yes it is.
You may hate these people's beliefs and you may argue against them, but at least give them the simple dignity of acknowledging that they believe something."
Precisely.
"These mish-mashers don't really seem to believe anything."
Precisely.
"Except fuzzy bunnies. And rainbows. Oh! And unicorns! Let's all worship the unicorns of the baby Jesus!"
I'm against that nonsense. Give me that Old Time Religion, i.e, real paganism, the eternal Gods and Goddesses of my Celtic and Viking ancestors, who were ready to sacrifice, to fight, and to die for their ancient faith, as real Christians are today for theirs. And if you can't give me that, then give me Mel Gibson ("The Passion of the Christ" was a great film in my opinion). Or Jack T. Chick. He, at least, is a worthy adversary. Or give me the honest atheism, the hard, cold realism, of Arnold Harris.
I personally think men stripped the Gddess from worship thousands of years ago. I also firmly believe stupid women let them do it. Now, after all these years she's making a come back. I don't find a problem with this, as I strongly believe in a God and a Goddesss.
That's nothing like trying to force it into an organized, Man-run, Man-God only, church. I was raised Southern Baptist, but never bought to "subserviant" bullshiite from their interpetations of the Bible.
There is historical proof that Juedaism used to have a feminine, but she was smashed, along with all her images and statues long before Egyptian slavery.
I find it commendable to include the Goddess, but I am a biased reader. What I don't appreciate, or support, is forcing this issue into a known belief system, and damaging the standing of a sect with their own members.
Realism isn't always hard and cold. Sometimes it's warm and cuddly, like a man or woman (depending on your tastes) that you can depend on absolutely every time.
Just so long as you use it carefully and accurately to the best of your ability and integrity.
And realism, like that man or woman, is something you never want to cheat. Unless you want events to fool you. And I don't think any good man or woman wants to be fooled.
Now how's that for a home-grown philosophy?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
It was my understanding that the claim that Christ was crucified during passover has been questioned, and is considered by most to be merely a widespread misunderstanding.
An excellent resource to consult on the nitpicky chronological issues, especially if you have some acquaintance with Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, is Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus.
Excellent! Thank you.
("Webinars". Is that really a good term for this sort of thing, and do folks use it?)
And one final thing to remember. We are each of us free men and women. Or at least we were intended to be. So make up your own individual minds about your personal cosmology and the philosophies and faiths that stem from it or are influenced by it. That's a key difference between all of us over here, and those pathetic slaves of islamo-fascism, who have no choice at all.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Yes. That IS the difference. As for me, give me liberty or give me death. And I'll gladly share the latter with my terrorist enemies.
Webinar is a term used for a kind of on-line class. This comes pretty close.
Yours,
Wince