Of all the stories written about the defrocking of Ann Holmes Redding, an Episcopal priest who converted to Islam, the most widely disseminated seemed to be this one from CNN. That’s unfortunate, since it was remarkably shallow and one-sided. No one from The Episcopal Church, much less the diocese that disciplined her, is quoted:
Redding said her conversion to Islam was sparked by an interfaith gathering she attended three years ago. During the meeting, an imam demonstrated Muslim chants and meditation to the group. Redding said the beauty of the moment and the imam’s humbleness before God stuck with her.
“It was much more this overwhelming conviction that I needed to surrender to God and this was the form that my surrender needed to take,” she recalled. “It wasn’t just an episode but …. was a step that I wasn’t going to step back from.”
Ten days later Redding was saying the shahada — the Muslim declaration of belief in the oneness of God and acceptance of Mohammad as his prophet.
But Redding said she felt her new Muslim faith did not pose a contradiction to her staying a Christian and minister.
“Both religions say there’s only one God,” Redding said, “and that God is the same God. It’s very clear we are talking about the same God! So I haven’t shifted my allegiance.”
Later, CNN reporter Patrick Oppman quotes Redding as follows:
“When I took my shahada, I said there’s no God but God and that Mohammed is God’s prophet or messenger. Neither of those statements, neither part of that confession or profession denies anything about Christianity,” she said.
On a day when Redding has just been defrocked, why would the reporter rehash these old quotes about her decision made years ago? Isn’t the, you know, newsy portion of the story about what Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island has to say about whether there’s any conceivable contradiction between being a Muslim and an Episcopal priest?
The reporter does quote a chairman of a comparative religion department at the University of Washington. In setting up his quote, the reporter notes that there are “many contradictions” between the two religions, but only points out one: Islam recognizes Jesus as a prophet while Christians believe Jesus to be the son of God. Of course, traditional Christians believe Jesus is God and you can read more about this concept of the Trinity in the Athanasian Creed.
Anyway, other than these minor bits, the entire story is from the perspective of Redding.
A much better and infinitely more interesting story came from Seattle Times reporter Janet Tu, who broke the original story of the conversion a few years back.
Contra the CNN.com story, Tu begins with the official announcement from Bishop Wolf. The story has the response from Redding, a local, as well as some basic background on the story. And then we get more perspective from those in the church that disciplined her:
Redding’s defrocking — formally called deposition — comes almost 21 months after Bishop Wolf first told the priest to take a year to reflect on her beliefs.
After Redding remained firm in her belief that she was called to both faiths, Bishop Wolf said in fall 2008 that a church committee had determined that the priest “abandoned the Communion of the Episcopal Church by formal admission into a religious body not in communion with the Episcopal Church.”
Wolf barred Redding from functioning as a priest for the next six months, and said that unless Redding resigned her priesthood or denied being a Muslim during that time, the bishop would have a duty to defrock her.
Since Redding has neither renounced her orders nor withdrawn from the Muslim faith, Wolf decided to depose her, effective today.
The article puts Redding’s story in context and notes how some people view her conversion to Islam as a call for the church to be more open to syncretism while others think its emblematic of how far the church has strayed from its doctrinal and historical center. Here’s how someone from the latter group is quoted:
The Rev. Kendall Harmon, the canon theologian with the Diocese of South Carolina who also runs the traditionalist blog TitusOneNine, said Redding should be commended, on one level, for having the integrity to be upfront about what she believes.
But what’s at stake is central to the church, he said. “To be a Christian is to be a Trinitarian and worship Jesus. If we’re not clear on that, we have nothing to offer in our witness.”
Though Muslims regard Jesus as a great prophet, they do not see him as divine and do not consider him the Son of God.
Redding does not believe that God and Jesus are the same, but rather that God is more than Jesus. And she believes that Jesus is the Son of God insofar as all humans are the children of God, and that Jesus is divine, just as all humans are divine — because God dwells in all humans.
It’s nice to have both the perspective of the traditional Christian and the response from Redding. It also makes the story so much more interesting. One of the other treats from the story is the way it highlights the difference between Wolf’s discipline of Redding and the way the former bishop of the Olympia Diocese in Western Washington handled it. He’d said the dual faith track was exciting:
“We are internally incoherent on a massive scale,” Harmon said. “What does it say about a church that you can be in Rhode Island and have that treatment, and be in Olympia and have another treatment, if it has to do with something this central?”
Tu also notes, however, that the current Olympia Diocese Bishop supports the defrocking. Finally, we learn that Redding has already published a book: “Out of Darkness Into Light: Spiritual Guidance in the Quran with Reflections from Christian and Jewish Sources.” And she’s working on her memoirs and seeking a book contract.
All in all, there’s just a ton more information and much more balance on all sides than we saw in the other reports. One problem with all of the news stories is the lack of perspective from Muslims. Only one story even bothered to get a quote from a Muslim and I’m not sure it was representative of Muslim teaching on the adoption of multiple religions.
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Comments (18) |
April 4, 2009, at 6:38 pm
The type coverage CNN gave is typical of what orthodox Christians usually face in the media. A while back I read an article by a communications professor asking the question: Can any religion maintain its integrity and orthodox doctrines when under constant barrage from biased reporting from all sides in the national media???
April 4, 2009, at 7:40 pm
When I read through the Seattle Times report (prior to reading this blog post), it struck me that one of the grafs you quoted ought to be up higher in the story:
“Redding does not believe that God and Jesus are the same, but rather that God is more than Jesus. And she believes that Jesus is the Son of God insofar as all humans are the children of God, and that Jesus is divine, just as all humans are divine — because God dwells in all humans.”
This is a clear rejection of mainstream Christianity, and putting it up high helps the reader realize that though Redding claims she is still a Christian, her definition of being a Christian is not what most of us would think.
April 4, 2009, at 8:18 pm
So we, who worship Jesus Christ and are not Trinitarian, are not Christian? Buddhists, perhaps?
Watch it, or we’ll take Swedenborg back out of the cathedral. (Where he was reburied as a hero by the established church that tried to silence him while he was alive.)
April 4, 2009, at 10:00 pm
Will, this is the basis on which the Unitarians were not allowed to join the National Council of Churches many years ago.
April 5, 2009, at 1:12 pm
I have a slightly perverse take on this kind of reporting. Arguably, it comes from a false dichotomy journalists assume because they see conservative evangelical Christianity as paradigmatic religion.
According to this picture, religious folk say: “If you don’t belong to our outfit, you’re damned.” So, excluding someone from a church or defrocking a priest just because she happens to be a Muslim, is to say, in effect, “You’re beyond the pale.” Conversely, in the interests of inclusiveness, churches should be thoroughly syncretic, permit every doctrine and swallow every contradiction.
But this is a false dichotomy. The third option, the one in fact embraced by most religiously affiliated people in the US, is what I think is called “denominationalism” —the idea that different religious organizations are just different consumer products. You buy into one to express your “religious preference.” You pick the church that suits your tastes, and is more or less in harmony with your religious beliefs. If your tastes or beliefs change, you switch to a more congenial church.
This may sound crassly consumerist but there’s a good deal to be said for it. On this account while an individual may believe that the doctrines his church espouses are true, he recognizes that religious claims are controversial: no one knows, and intelligent, informed people of good will may disagree. There’s a niche for everyone: pick the religion that suits you.
On this reading, putting it cynically, when the bish defrocked this Muslim priest she was saying in effect, “Now look, Ann—no offense: we’re operating the Trinitarian, Real Presence smells-and-bells club here. This is our brand: what our customers expect from clergy and what they’re paying for. Take a year off and think about it: if you aren’t into this kind of thing you might consider going somewhere else. Muslim’s fine: it’s just not what the Episcopal Church does.”
April 5, 2009, at 1:20 pm
So how did WE get into the NCC, Dave?
We were even in the New York organization back in the bad old days when it was still the “Protestant” Council…. while people like the Christadelphians, who are at least as “Protestant” as we are, seem to be excluded.
April 5, 2009, at 1:22 pm
On the other hand, when Kung was told he could not purvey his teaching under the brand name “Roman Catholicism”, we had a fanfaron about how he was being “silenced”.
April 5, 2009, at 2:54 pm
Will (#6), I dunno, maybe the Unitarians quit trying after one rebuff. It was well before my time.
April 5, 2009, at 4:30 pm
Will,
I don’t understand your point based on what you said on your home page I am a professed member of the Michaeline Order and following the link to http://www.michaelines.net/ which indicates that is a trinitarian organization.
April 5, 2009, at 8:59 pm
Jerry,
if you read further, it says that:
Although we pray within a Trinitarian, Christian framework, all who seek the Light are welcome to participate according to their conscience and the inspiration of the Spirit. We believe that every man and woman must be free to seek the most appropriate individual expression of his or her relationship with the Divine, and we hold the greatest respect for intellectual liberty and individual conscience.
In other words, we allow belief in everything, thus we stand for nothing.
The footer gives this: The Order is a voluntary association. Membership may be ended at any time. The Order is not connected to any other organization or group that may use the name St. Michael.
April 5, 2009, at 9:20 pm
I’m sure more than one reader of this blog agrees with you when you write that albeit from a very different perspective.
Also, I had read that statement before I made the post. I took it to mean that the group you are affiliated with opened its doors to all, not that you “stood for nothing”. From what you said that was an error on my part.
April 5, 2009, at 11:31 pm
What’s interesting here is what is missing from both “press” as well as “blog” treatment of the Redding story. Throughout there is literally nothing about what it means to be anything other than a cleric. The press doesn’t get that “religion” is about what people believe, not just people in collars. The “clericalism” of both the reporters and their audience is amazing.
Not one reporter or blogger seems to have asked this question: What does it mean, now that Redding is a layman? Is it now perfectly OK to be a Muslim and a full member of the Episcopal Church? The same questions should have been asked when the other famous Episcopalian, Gene Robinson, was up for bishop. What does it mean to say a priest who is shacked up with a man shouldn’t be a bishop….But no comment on being a priest and doing so? Or a layman? The big religion story seems to be that what laity do matters not at all, but what a cleric does is “really important”. In what religion is that true?
It’s interesting how many times Redding has been described as being full of “Integrity”. What would it look like if she had been just a plain infidel, an apostate? What would it take to get an article to describe her as lacking in intellectual dishonesty? Wow, the things you can get away with.
April 6, 2009, at 12:59 am
A core issue in the media failure to understand religion is viewing it politically, which means viewing the “political” leadership of religious groups, i.e., the clergy. It’s all of a piece, or so it seems to me.
The most interesting person in this story remains Bp. Geralyn Wolf, who, from all accounts, is a kind, decent, and generous soul. I would really like to seem more about her theological approach and pastoral method.
It might also be interesting to get more information about Ms. Redding’s relationship to Seattle University, a purportedly Catholic school claiming a “Jesuit tradition”.
April 6, 2009, at 10:01 am
bob, this exaggerates something that’s real and reasonable. Clergy are religious leaders. If I take my wedding vows before a minister who later breaks his or hers, and those of another couple in the congregation, that throws a shadow over mine, in a manner that two couples in the congregation breaking theirs does not.
April 6, 2009, at 12:35 pm
H.E.Baber: you’re right, a denomination is a brand, more accurately an organization, and can set its own rules of membership. What’s wrong with that, and when did that become something to scorn?
Further, when did it become controversial for a church to believe one cannot be a Christian and at the same time a member of some other major religion? We’re truly living in a different Age when saying “no” to that proposition is somehow controversial.
Clearly, the CNN report accepts the rather post-modern view that the one trying to snycretize her faith with another is the “victim” and is being punished wrongly for trying to mash up her faith with another in a way that was never acceptable to the Church hierarchy before. In that, the CNN report (among others) doesn’t “Get” the Christian Faith and the piece is, in a sense, rather laughable.
In one sense, however, if this woman is a Unitarian in her theology, and sees Jesus as just a man, and one of God’s prophet, then indeed, she has no barrier to becoming a Muslim. But she’s then a Muslim by definition (and perhaps a Unitarian Christian) but surely not “Episcopalian”, at least in the traditional and widely-understood definition of that word, which includes trinitarianism.
That is, if words mean anything.
These news stories should also check with Muslims to see if they accept this duality as casually as the US media seems to, as should she.
A quick search of the Qur’an online will show that in Islam, Allah “is much too high above needing any partners” (as in Christ as a co-partner with God) Surah 39:67, and Christ was probably not even crucified according to one account (see: 4:157)
http://quranbrowser.submission.info/search.html
April 6, 2009, at 8:37 pm
The point Mollie brought up at the end of her commentary and that Stephen just mentioned is perhaps the most significant one about this story. Why is there so little response from Muslims about Ms. Redding’s declarations. Stories about prickly Christian theological issues routinely quote several theologians and their views on the issue. Why does this story not quote several Muslim theologians and their views on Ms. Redding’s profession? I for one know very little about how Muslim theologians feel about someone who claims to be simultaneously a Muslim and a Christian (though I somehow doubt they’d be very keen on it), but I’d certainly like to know, especially in the context of this article.
April 7, 2009, at 2:18 pm
Jerry, you would understand more if you followed the link to “New Church”. Michaelines are not the ones who tell me I am not a “real” Christian. (And usually have the sense to realize that he who tries to please everyone, pleases no one.)
When the NYCC refused the application from the Unification Church, the excuse given by the official spokesbeing was “They can’t be Christian, because they deny the Trinity and claim a special divine mission for their founder.” But the New Church does both of those thing, and it was not a problem. Clear as Gowanus Canal.
If there is anything which irks me more than heresy-hunters, it is heresy-hunters who persistently fail to follow their own alleged standards. And I can not help suspecting that the real difference is that Swedenborg is safely dead.
April 7, 2009, at 7:12 pm
I think these questions should have been asked:
- Which Islamic sect did Redding join?
- Who officiated her conversion?
- What’s the Islamic position syncretism?
- What’s the Islamic position on conversion?
- Can a female Muslim actually be a cleric?