Posted on 04/07/2005 1:27:14 PM PDT by sionnsar
You folks might like to know that I have renounced by ordination vows, and formed the Llynhydd Grove of the Druid Order of the Yew. You might want to take my forced letter of ‘recantation’ off your website.
OakWyse
(Bill Melnyk)
Follow up: Lauren called Bill Melnyk to confirm this note was true.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. The letter:
To the IRD,
I have today sent this letter to my Bishop. My wife [The Rev. Glyn Lorraine Ruppe-Melnyk] has sent a similar letter:
Dear Bishop,
Recently it has been brought to light by several agencies and individuals that I have been involved in work with Druid organizations in the United States and England, exploring the relationships between Christian and pre-Christian Druid spirituality and theology. These individuals and agencies have presented you with pages of documentation of my activities from the internet. You and I have discussed this material, and you have pointed out to me that it is the opinion of the church that my involvement, writings, and activities go beyond the bounds expected of a Christian and a Christian priest.
I affirm to you with all my heart it was never my intention to engage in such error, but only to help others who had lost connection to the Church to find a way to reconnect. I also thought that there was much in our early British heritage that could help those of us in the Church to broaden our understanding of Anglican tradition.
I was wrong. I repent of and recant without qualification anything and everything I may have said or done which is found to be in conflict with the Baptismal Covenant, and the historical Creeds of the Church. With God as my witness, I reaffirm my belief in the historical creeds of the Church, and the Baptismal Covenant, and reaffirm to you my faith, as expressed in that covenant. I am resigning my membership in the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids, as a sign of my repentence.
I have been a follower of Jesus Christ since my Baptism in 1947, and a faithful Deacon and Priest of the Church, with the exception of the error admitted above, since 1981. It is my desire to continue as such, and I ask for the mercy of the Church, and of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Sincerely,
The Rev. W. William Melnyk
.........I thought the Episcopal Priesthood has ALWAYS been a Druid Order!
?
DENOUEMENT
If thou shalt hear say in one of thy cities, which the LORD thy God hath given thee to dwell there, saying, Certain men, the children of Belial, are gone out from among you, and have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which ye have not known; Then shalt thou enquire, and make search, and ask diligently; and, behold, if it be truth, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought among you; Thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, destroying it utterly, and all that is therein, and the cattle thereof, with the edge of the sword(Deuteronomy 13:12-15).
They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us(1 John 2:19).
The Institute on Religion and Democracy got this note recently:
You folks might like to know that I have renounced by ordination vows, and formed the Llynhydd Grove of the Druid Order of the Yew. You might want to take my forced letter of ’recantation’ off your website.
OakWyse
(Bill Melnyk)
Chuck Bennison! Reaction!
He lied...
.......... .........I thought the Episcopal Priesthood has ALWAYS been a SECRET-OCCULT Druid Order!
??????
Hmmmmmmmmm...............still 'is'......
/sarcasm?
(sarcasm) This is a sad day for all Episco-Baalians in the United States. For years we strove to accept the fact that there are many paths to the great ground of being spirit person we tradtionally identified as the spirit person Jesus Christ. ONly recently with the ascendancy of our imam in christ-buddha-jehova-cali frank griswold and our other oriented buttery Gene Robinson have we been able to overcome the pernicous effects centuries of superstitious and legalistic theisim. I am deeply saddened that our brother has felt compelled to take his personal spiritual journey of Druidism outside our open tent, the Episco-Baalians USA. After all diverse Christian communities suffered persecution from the dictatorial Roman regime along with the Druids; the Druids only crime in the Romans' eyes was their desire to seek God's overflowing powerful gifts through human sacrifices, not unlike our recent disposing of Terri Schiavo. I hope this will cause all thinking Episco Baalians to reflect on our tolerance for others.
Did they put a gun to his head to force him to write and sign the previous letter?
Oh, they threatened to remove him from his job. He thought it was OK to lie about his faith to keep his job, but then he got a better offer from the druids he has been working with, so now he doesn't need the job.
So he wants to take back his lie, but rather than own up to lying to keep his job he wants to play the victim.
OK, I admit, I don't know if he actually got a paying job with the druids, but it sounds from his note like he did.
And his wife also left the church. She was also a priest. Odd isn't it that two separate individuals who were each qualified to be priests of a church simultaneously decided to renounce their faith? Is it possible that one of them was under the influence of the other?
The nice thing about Christianity is its absolute nature. We know that it can't just be seen as an evolution of some prior belief (such as druidism) because it is based on the life of a single individual who lived within recorded history and claimed to be God come to earth to save us.
Believe it, or don't believe it, but the concept of God being made man to die for man is not something you find in any other religion (lots of them claim men become god, or men are god).
If this priest truly believes his prior christian faith was merely an extension of the "truer" belief in the druidic precursors, he must not have had a good understanding of his christian faith before.
Hah. As a PK I can only assure you that if it was, they left my father out of it.
He chose this day whom he would serve.
He chose wrongly.
At least he renounced his vows first. You have to look on the bright side.
If he's deranged, can he collect on his disability insurance? We can't have a mad priest, now can we..only mad Bshops..
"At least he renounced his vows first. You have to look on the bright side."
There've been some comments on other Episcopagan sites that he didn't give up his ordination because of his views, but instead was fired by the vestry for improperly diverting parish funds to his druid organizations without the knowledge or approval of the vestry.
If it were just heresy and bending the knee to Baal, that probably would have been ok. It seemed ok with his bishop.
A PK! YOU?????
You know what the Greeks say...son of the priest, grandson of the devil! :)
You did see this coming, didn't you all?
Yup, I'm a PK. (I thought I'd told you -- oh well.) And (hopefully) the exception that proves the rule.
I will quite agree, the track record of the other PKs I've known is generally not very good, but a few make it.
You did see this coming, didn't you all?
I'll just say I'm not surprised.
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