Remember the Episcopal priest who became a Muslim? We discussed coverage of her story here and here last year.
The other day I mentioned my fondness for follow-up stories. And I’d actually been looking for a follow-up on the story of the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding. I knew her bishop had given her a year to figure the conflict out. I was curious what happened but hadn’t seen any information.
Well, Janet Tu, the reporter who did such good work with the initial story, filed a follow-up last week. The story has two main functions. The first is the news about what the Episcopal Church is doing with regard to their Muslim priest:
In a letter mailed last week to national and local church leaders, Bishop Geralyn Wolf of Rhode Island, who has disciplinary authority over the Seattle priest, said a church committee had determined that Redding “abandoned the Communion of the Episcopal Church by formal admission into a religious body not in communion with the Episcopal Church.”
Wolf has affirmed that determination, barring Redding from functioning as a priest for the next six months.
According to church law, unless Redding resigns her priesthood or denies being a Muslim during those six months, the bishop has a duty to defrock — or depose — her, as the process is formally known.
Redding, who served as director of faith formation at Seattle’s St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, said she has no plans to resign or to renounce Islam, any more than she would renounce Christianity. She does not believe she has abandoned the communion of the Episcopal Church.
Tu did a good job of getting the news out in a straightforward fashion. (Incidentally, she later mentions that Wolf gave Redding 15 months to figure things out.) And it’s great that she is updating readers on the saga. The other purpose of the story, I have to assume, is to paint a remarkably sympathetic portrayal of Redding.
“I’m saddened and disappointed that this could not be an opportunity” for the church to broaden its perspective and talk about what it means to adhere to more than one faith, Redding said.
“The automatic assumption is that if I’m one of ‘them,’ I can’t be one of ‘us’ anymore.” But “I’m still following Jesus in being a Muslim. I have not abandoned that.”
The sizable story has tons of quotes from Redding but no response from the orthodox Christian position. And while I think Redding’s personal views are interesting, I’m not sure if they’re more interesting than a discussion of why the church is deposing her. Perhaps a bit of a mixture would have been better. The reader who sent us the story said it well:
The author hints that not everyone is thrilled with Ms. Redding’s activity (and I’m sure MANY notable people are not), but she offers no quotations or views from the other side. It could be a case of sympathy for Ms. Redding, but it also looks like a case of not doing one’s homework.
Whatever the case, it is an awfully sympathetic treatment of Redding. We hear she has no regrets in going public about her embrace of Islam but that she feels she was naive about the controversy her announcement would stir up. Here’s one provocative quote:
Getting to know Islam was “like falling in love,” she said. “You want to share it, you want to get on a rooftop and start shouting.”
And then Tu goes into more history of Redding’s announcement. I think a response from the church would have fit perfectly there. We learn that Redding feels she didn’t break her ordination vows but we don’t get a discussion of why she feels that way and why the church disagrees. We learn that Redding has had trouble finding work, only getting a part-time, temporary teaching position at Seattle University.
Her one regret is that she didn’t reveal to her parishioners that she was a Muslim when she was leading them in a formation of Christian faith class. She will miss the collegiality of her fellow priests. And, also:
As one of the first African-American women the denomination ordained, Redding was sometimes the first female or African-American priest some parishioners had ever seen. “My symbolic role has been an incredible honor.” Now she fears that some “will think I’ve somehow let them down.”
Again, this is interesting. And really asks for some questions to be answered. Do people feel she has let them down, either as one of the first African-American women the denomination ordained or otherwise? We don’t find out. It’s a shame because this story provides a great opportunity to learn more about how the Episcopal Church handles discipline and where it feels doctrinal differences cross the line.
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Comments (11) |
October 12, 2008, at 7:31 pm
What struck me about this story was the complete lack of quotes from Muslims as to how they feel about her claiming membership in their religion. Presumably Redding is connected to some mosque. Couldn’t the reporter have asked around among its members?
October 12, 2008, at 7:54 pm
Joel:
Amen. Islam is not a Universalist religion, to say the least. What is that quote on the Dome of Rock about God not taking a Son?
October 12, 2008, at 7:58 pm
I’m with Joel on that one. There’s no way that any mainstream flavor of Islam is going to be okay with an Episcopalian woman priest claming that she’s just fine being both Muslim and Christian. On the other hand, maybe her flavor of Episcopalianism includes a Jesus that’s no more than a morally upstanding guy, in which case, there’s little to quibble over. That, too, is a failure in the report.
Likewise, is there a possibility that she’s just “interested” in Islam and not really a convert? The complete lack of contact with the Muslim side of the story is maddening.
October 12, 2008, at 8:34 pm
I do agree that it’s rare to see a followup. I also agree that it’s too bad this was not a well-constructed one.
To those that expressed a question about whether or not she’s a convert: To convert to Islam that sole requirement is a simple ritual that one could even do privately http://islam.about.com/c/ht/00/07/How_Convert_Islam0962933372.htm gives the details. So if she in all sincerity said the shahadah, then she’s a Muslim.
October 13, 2008, at 7:56 am
[…] Ms Redding returns to the news. […]
October 13, 2008, at 9:57 am
Oh good, I was going to come in and comment on the lack of any muslim view other than Ms. Redding’s.
Since there isn’t an official heirarchy like the episcopal church, it would be harder to find someone credible/official sounding for a quote, but not impossible. Find a professor at a university, someone, anyone.
I’m also interested in how the people at her mosque react, cuz I know this would drive the people at mine up the wall.
October 13, 2008, at 10:34 am
A Muslim cannot believe that Jesus is ‘God’. This comes under the category of the worst kind of evil: idolatry.
Neither can a Muslim believe in the doctrine of ‘vicarious atonement’, which is a clear violation of the Doctrine of the Righteousness of God.
But, once again, all such stories by the media are merely entertaining gossip and triviality.
The fundamental issue here is that one cannot follow the Teaching of Jesus or the Revelations in the Koran and, simultaneously, be either a Christian or a Muslim.
Jesus taught the Doctrine of “resurrection” as a Doctrine of ‘Rebirth’ (this is what got him eliminated by the Jewish priesthood, which was threatened by such a Doctrine.); whereas Paul, the Pharisee, taught the doctrine of a physical raising of a dead body from the grave.
Similarly, the Revelations in the Koran imply that Mohammed was Elijah and John the Baptist ‘raised from the dead’, confirming previous statements of Jesus, whereas Muslim theology also teaches the doctrine of a physical raising of a dead body from the grave.
One cannot believe the Revelations received by Jesus and Mohammed and, simultaneously, be either a Christian or a Muslim.
October 13, 2008, at 4:51 pm
The discussion that is obviously missing here is the action recently taken by the Episcopal House of Bishops regarding a cleric who was deposed for “abandoning the communion” of the Episcopal Church. In that case it was Bishop Robert Duncan of Pittsburgh, for urging his diocese to secede from the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in South America (a province of the Anglican Communion in good standing with the Archbishop of Canterbury). Regardless of what you think of either the Rev. Redding or Bishop Duncan, it would have been a bizarre case of inconsistency to say that a someone who realigned with another branch of Anglicanism had abandoned the communion, while someone who became a Muslim had not.
I am nevertheless glad for Janet Tu’s update. Because this case is so often mentioned in the Anglican Wars, I had been curious to know what had become of the Rev. Redding. This is useful information, and we don’t know how long Janet Tu had to put this story together. Sometimes when something breaks late in the day, the people that you make calls to for context don’t call you back. My recollection is that she had a wide range of voices in her earlier stories.
October 13, 2008, at 9:18 pm
As a retired American History and government teacher I would be very interested in what a cultural historian would have to say about Redding and her syncretistic (or would it be bifurcated) religious views. Would such views pop-up in any other culture around the world? Or is Redding’s potpourri really a bizarre version of the American Civic Religion????
October 14, 2008, at 11:17 am
[…] On the blog GetReligion, Mollie asks exactly where the doctrinal lines are. Judging from these two articles, it seems that Christians draw a clear line but Muslims may not. Is this the case? And if so, what does that mean for Christian-Muslim dialogue? […]
October 15, 2008, at 5:29 pm
If apostasy to another religion is not abandonment what is? Wolf has been extremely kind, doing only the minimum required here, which of course is her right. Interestingly IIRC she was originally Jewish so of course she doesn’t buy the ‘I can be of both faiths at the same time’ argument.
This incident is also educational about Islam. Sunni Islam, the larger or mainstream version of the religion, has a spectrum as wide and decentralised as Protestantism’s, from the conservative Saudi version to the Westernised liberal local version Redding has joined.