Posted on 02/24/2009 4:23:10 PM PST by PAR35
Washington, DC—An Episcopal priest who has received a Buddhist lay ordination has been elected bishop in the Diocese of Northern Michigan. The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who has served in the diocese since 2001, was elected on the first ballot and received 88 percent of the delegate votes.
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Forrester, who has been identified by his former bishop Jim Kelsey as ‘walking the path of Christianity and Zen Buddhism together, is not the first Episcopal clergyman to practice dual faiths. In 2004, Pennsylvania priest Bill Melnyk was revealed to be a druid; while in 2007 Seattle priest Ann Holmes Redding declared that she was simultaneously an Episcopalian and a Muslim.
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(Excerpt) Read more at theird.org ...
Well, how about “how to win friends and influence people”?
Heretical as well?
Well, given that I even have some problems with that fine Baptist Sunday School Teacher, Zig Ziglar, I'll admit to some concerns about the book, but it does have some usefulness, and doesn't have the New Age poison that many books of that type have.
May as well close the night with a hornet's nest! I don't have a horse in this race, I'm Catholic.
“Since entering Islam,” she said, “I have been, by my own estimation, a better teacher, a better preacher and a better Christian.”
"I am both Muslim and Christian, just like I'm both an American of African descent and a woman. I'm 100 percent both," Rev. Ann Holmes Redding told the Seattle Times.
I'm speechless again...
Frankly, all non-Catholic religious sects have reduced themselves to an irrelevancy and a laughing stock.
Well, it’s an open thread.
We can turn it into a standard Roman - Protestant slugfest if Catholics want to hijack it. Traditionally, Roman Catholics have refrained from doing so on these threads, since they sense an opportunity to urge Anglo-Catholics to ‘return home’. But if the Vatican has given new instructions, so be it.
Hi grellis, I’m Catholic too!
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams.
FReepmail Huber or sionnsar if you want on or off this low-volume ping list.
This list is pinged by Huber and sionnsar.
Resource for Traditional Anglicans: http://trad-anglican.faithweb.com
Humor: The Anglican Blue
Speak the truth in love. Eph 4:15
Catholics have always participated and been welcome on these threads. It's one of the few places where Catholics, Orthodox and Calvinists (usually) get along.
In Buddhist usage, Buddhist monks are ‘ordained to the monkhood’. There may be other usages.
Actually, if one makes the Christian distinction between the created and the Uncreated, and realize that all phenomena, the “this-or-that” that Buddhism calls on us to reject are part of the created (including the distinctions between being and nothingness, unity and multiplicity, and indeed between immanence and transcendence), the Buddha’s insights, applied to the created, are quite compatible with following Christ. (Yes, even his attitude toward ‘gods’—it really is irrelevant to our lives whether there are or are not the sort of beings the Hindus call ‘gods’. Either way we should be following Christ.)
The Buddha’s greatest failing was that he did not see through the erroneous Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, and reject it. His understanding of the connection between desire and suffering is echoed by the Fathers of the Church in their discussions of the passions and their relation to sin.
The Buddha and Lao Tsu (and to a lesser extent Zoaraster), along with the neo-Platonists whose use of ‘Logos’ influenced St. John the Theologian to take up and fill the word with a new divinely inspired depth, are worthy of some honor among Christians: before the coming of Christ, without benefit of direct divine revelation, all of them managed to escape to some degree from the mental structures of paganism (the base religious state of Fallen Man) and move, however haltingly, toward the truth. (In Lao Tsu’s case, I would even dare to say toward The Truth. Read the Tao Te Ching with the thought that the Tao is a person. Only one fits: Jesus Christ.)
Still, there is something sad about a purported Christian clergyman not seeing analogous insights, deeper insights by virtue of the benefit of divine revelation, among the Fathers of the Church, and chasing after the Buddha’s outdated and halting attempt. The Desert Fathers in the generation after the persecutions stopped had insights to equal and surpass all the Zen masters—who are the finest Buddhism has to offer, who arose only after centuries of refinement of Buddhist tradition under the influence of Taoism.
In my view, a part of the divide between Buddha and Christ (philosophically speaking) is the idea of Logos, or a human incarnate source of Absolute Truth is not compatible with the thought (for lack of a better term) that undergirds Buddhism.
There are parallel teachings to some extent, as you point out there are eternal truisms, however the idea that there could be a culmination in this world, in the flesh, is not a pillar of Buddhism.
As for the dual cleric a “ordained” Buddhist seems a paradox for him.
“You really think this guy is a true Christian? It seems unlikely, to say the least.”
That is not the point. Buddhism is a cool philosophy that is worth studying and practicing. It is a supplement to the perfection of Christianity. It adds value to this world.
Anyone who claims that one can be Buddhist and a Christian, either doesn’t understand Buddhism or doesn’t understand Christianity.
One of the basic tenets of Buddhism is Samsara.
Samsara is the continuous cycle of birth, decay and death that all beings are engaged in. That Samsara can only be broken once one attains Nirvana.
Christianity denies any notion of reincarnation. Our souls are only returned to corporal form for the Last Judgement.
In Buddhism, the ulitmate goal is to attain Nirvana, which is the state of nothingness, the state of obliteration of self.
In Christianity, the ultimate goal is to be with God for all eternity.
Finally, Buddhism teaches that you can reach Nirvana through your own efforts.
If we can reach Nirvana through our own efforts, then why do we need a Saviour. Then what was the reason for Christ incarnation and his suffering on the cross?
Anyone who believes he cannot learn from other world philosophies and adopt what is good from them, (denying the opportunity of applying them to his life) is an idiot fool that is either a politician, a militant, or a fanatic... or a simple igit retard.
"Work out your own salvation with diligence." - last words of the Buddha
I don't claim to be a Buddhist, but I think there is something to admire in those words.
Buddhists...nor muslims, nor sikhs, nor Hindus did not found the United States. Judeo-Christians did.
Somehow I suspect there’s a difference between taking a few good points from Buddhism while recognizing that the philosophy as a whole is inconsistent with Christianity and receiving a “Buddhist lay ordination,” whatever that is.
LOL! Ain’t it the truth!
The secret vatican decoder ring is glowing green then orange... the decoder key was lost and no one knows what to do next...:-)
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