Posted on 10/27/2004 4:40:19 PM PDT by kaehurowing
Beyond the Episcopal Church's Pagan Eucharist Compiled by Ted Olsen | posted 10/27/2004
Guess what's no longer linked on the Episcopal Church USA's page for Women's Worship Resources? Both items highlighted in yesterday's Weblog: "A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" and the "Liturgy for Divorce." You can actually still read both, but they're now orphan pages, apparently unlinked from within the Episcopal Church website. (Though Weblog should add that they're now linked from just about every conservative Anglican weblog in the country.) One of those liturgies remaining is a "Station of the Cross," which includes these lines from Jesus:
I do not want to die I was not born for this — to die a shameful, lonely death. This was not my calling. Yet, it is not death itself that I reject. I die because all creatures die though it is very hard to leave this world I love; And even harder still to die like this — because my love was not received. New, however, is an introduction to the worship resources:
This resource section is intended to provide a space for women to share their voices with one another. It is a work-in-progress and its shape will continue to emerge as we move forward. These are not official liturgies of the Episcopal Church—rather, they are a gathering of voices. Our hope with this section is to simply begin a conversation around women and our liturgical tradition as it is now. Please use them for study, dialogue, questions, ponderings, and gathering communities of worship.
These are liturgies, litanies, rituals, rites, prayers, and more—for women, by women (mostly). They are an offering to open the awareness of the many voices and needs that exist among people in the church as we all strive to find expressions of our life, love and faith in God. Some are reciprocal responses to liturgies that currently exist, others are created in reply to aspects of women's and men's lives that are left unrecognized in our life of worship.
This is a grassroots, organic, interactive process in which we want to help lift up the voices of women who are creating liturgies, rituals, and rites for one another and their communities.
That's quite a bit different from yesterday's language, which said that the resources, including the "Women's Eucharist," are "currently available to be downloaded and used by all."
That said, phrases like "a gathering of voices" and "begin a conversation" are very common in the Episcopal Church, and are usually used when it's about to do something very unorthodox.
But in this case, we're not talking about something that's merely unorthodox, or even heresy. We're talking about pagan worship of Old Testament idols. We're talking about a mock Eucharist, the center of Christian worship, that directly references a biblical text about idolatry—and stands proudly, "defiantly," with the idolaters.
It goes without saying that such a ceremony is incompatible with Christian worship. But if you need Scripture to know for sure, start with Deut. 12. If you're really in doubt about whether they're compatible, however, you probably won't be swayed by Scripture.
And here's where we need to make an important correction to yesterday's Weblog. Yesterday, we said that the "Women's Eucharist" (how we hate even to call it that) was "taken almost completely (without attribution) from a rite from Tuatha de Brighid, 'a Clan of modern Druids … who believe in the interconnectedness of all faiths.'"
Yes, it was taken from Tuatha de Brighid—but it wasn't plagiarized. As it turns out, the Episcopalian rector who submitted the ceremony to the Episcopal Church's website is the same woman who wrote it for the neo-pagan site. In her Episcopalian life, she goes by the name Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk. For her neo-pagan stuff, she's Glispa. Folks over at Titus One Nine, the weblog of theologian Kendall Harmon, put the links together. One explains:
This link identifies the druid "Oakwyse" as being Bill Melnyk. This one identifies Bill Melnyk and Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk as a couple. This one links the two again and gives Melnyk's email address as being oakwyse at aol dot com. And several links such as this one link Oakwyse and Glispa.
One piece co-written by "Oakwyse" and "Glispa" is the "Wiccan Lunar Ritual," which may come in handy for tonight's eclipse. (The particularly sensitive may want to skip past all this.) It contains such bon mots as: "In the Face of the Moon we honor Our Lady, who was of old called among humankind Isis, Artemis, Astarte, Aphrodite, Diana, Mary, and by many other Names," instructions as "Priestess makes the sign of a Pentagram in the air in front of [priest]." There's also a liturgy where the priest and priestess take off all their clothes, and the priest says to the "Goddess," "Dwell now in the body of your servant and priestess." Then he gives the priestess "the Five-fold Kiss," and says:
Blessed are your feet, that have brought you in these ways. (Kisses both feet) Blessed are your knees that shall kneel before the sacred altar. (Kisses both knees) Blessed are your loins that bring forth life. (Kisses her above the pubic hair) (Priestess opens into Goddess Blessing position, arms and legs spread.) Blessed are your breasts formed in beauty and strength. (Kisses both breasts) Blessed are your lips that shall speak the sacred names. (Kisses lips) (With this final kiss, they embrace full length, feet touching.) Let's be clear: Unlike the "Women's Eucharist," this ritual never made it onto the Episcopal Church's website, so it doesn't bear the imprimatur of the denomination. But it was written by an Episcopal priest.
Will Ruppe-Melnyk's bishop have anything to say about this? Will she undergo any kind of discipline? Will the Episcopal Church USA, or even the Office of Women's Ministries, publicly repent for posting the "Women's Eucharist" in the first place?
Don't be fooled into thinking that nothing will happen. Something will happen. In Jeremiah, after the people of Judah in Egypt defied God and worshiped the Queen of Heaven with their raisin cakes, God was not silent. Here's what he said:
You and your wives have declared with your mouths, and have fulfilled it with your hands, saying, 'We will surely perform our vows that we have made, to make offerings to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings to her.' Then confirm your vows and perform your vows! Therefore hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judah who dwell in the land of Egypt: Behold, I have sworn by my great name, says the LORD, that my name shall no more be invoked by the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying, 'As the Lord GOD lives.' Behold, I am watching over them for disaster and not for good. All the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by famine, until there is an end of them. And those who escape the sword shall return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number; and all the remnant of Judah, who came to the land of Egypt to live, shall know whose word will stand, mine or theirs. This shall be the sign to you, declares the LORD, that I will punish you in this place, in order that you may know that my words will surely stand against you for harm. As Paul said, some of us (including Weblog) are former idolaters. But woe unto those who, rather than repent for their actions, "express regret for the consequences of their actions" and persist in evil.
Is the Episcopal the equivalent of what we call the Anglican Church in Canada?
Yes. It seems we have only scratched the surface with the homosexual bishop episode.
Who are these people?
Is this the same church that gave us the Book of Common Prayer? I think it is, but in name only.
Is this the same church that gave us the Book of Common Prayer? I think it is, but in name only.
No, The Episcopal Church as it was is dead. What is left in it's place is a hellbound, "un-church".
We are struggling with this in Canada. Many, if not most of Canada's Anglicans do no support Homosexual bishops. Not being Anglican, I don't know it operates as a Church.
Yes, Bill and Glanda Melnyck are ordained episcopal priests. They are also very pagan - they are literal Druid witches. This is no joke. As somebody else noted here, the gay clergy in ECUSA is only the tip of the iceberg.
Well, sort of. They're the kind of "pagan" that gives the rest of us a bad name. For instance, by making up a silly fake-Druid ceremony out of whole cloth. There are enough genuine descriptions of the theoxenia - the pagan ritual that the Christians adapted into the eucharist - that there is no need to invent stuff.
Well, that part was plagiarised, and very badly. Here's the source, in an old but accurate translation:
"...my name, my divinity is adored throughout all the world in divers manners, in variable customes and in many names, for the Phrygians call me the mother of the Gods: the Athenians, Minerva: the Cyprians, Venus: the Candians, Diana: the Sicilians Proserpina: the Eleusians, Ceres: some Juno, others Bellona, others Hecate: and principally the Aethiopians which dwell in the Orient, and the Aegyptians which are excellent in all kind of ancient doctrine, and by their proper ceremonies accustome to worship mee, doe call mee Queene Isis."
[Apuleius, The Golden Ass, Book XI, translated by William Adlington, 1566]
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