STRANGE "DIVERSITIES" (Or, The Episcopal Church Welcomes You)

The Christian Challenge | 1 August 2003 | Lee Penn

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STRANGE "DIVERSITIES" (Or, The Episcopal Church Welcomes You)

By Lee Penn The Christian Challenge August 1, 2003

STRANGE NEW FORMS OF SPIRITUALITY have gained a oothold within the Episcopal Church in the United States (ECUSA) - the Labyrinth-walking fad, the weird eclectic spirituality practiced at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and the "Creation Spirituality" promoted by Matthew Fox, the renegade Dominican whom California Bishop William Swing received as an Episcopal priest in 1994.

All these new movements have set up shop in ECUSA with little organized resistance, and with the open support of members of the ECUSA hierarchy. The leaders of these spiritual ventures all support Bishop Swing's controversial United Religions Initiative (URI). ECUSA's theological troubles, in other words, extend well beyond the sexual issues that are grabbing today's headlines.

At the Episcopal General Convention now underway in Minneapolis, today's "Morning of Prayer" included several ways to reflect on "reconciliation," including "an outdoor labyrinth."

But Bishop Swing's Grace Cathedral is the center of the modern-day Labyrinth-walking fad that has spread through New Age workshops, mainline Protestant churches, and Roman Catholic retreat centers and convents. The leader of this movement is Lauren Artress, an Episcopal priest who runs Veriditas - also known as the Labyrinth Project.

Artress, Canon for Special Ministries at Grace Cathedral, says that she first encountered the Labyrinth in January 1991, when she decided to "return to a Mystery School seminar with Dr. Jean Houston, an internationally known psychologist, author, and scholar whom I studied with in 1985." (In the 1990s, Houston was best known to the public as the guru who helped Hillary Clinton contact the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt.)

Artress says, "as soon as I set foot into the labyrinth I was overcome with an almost violent anxiety"; the next morning, she "awoke, distressed from a dream of having a heart attack." Nevertheless, she has devoted herself since then to spreading the labyrinth walk as a "spiritual tool" for all faiths.

Labyrinths were built into some medieval Cathedrals in Western Europe before 1500, but no documentation survives to show how - or whether - Catholics used labyrinths as part of their public liturgies or private devotions. After 1500, most labyrinths were removed from cathedral floors; the Chartres labyrinth is one of the few that has survived from the Middle Ages to the present day. It went unused - and was usually covered with chairs for worshippers - until Artress began taking pilgrims to Chartres in the 1990s.

Those who resurrect the labyrinth now are making up a new religious tradition in ancient costume, as the Neopagans have done since World War II and as the Freemasons did after 1717.

The labyrinth movement has long been intertwined with the URI. Barbara Hartford, a URI staff member in San Francisco, accompanied Artress on her first visit to the Chartres labyrinth in the early 1990s. Artress also acknowledges Sally Ackerly, who has been a URI staffer, as one of those who provided "help in launching the labyrinth."

Since 1995, labyrinth walks have been common at URI events - from many of the URI-sponsored "religious cease fire" events held at the time of Y2K, to the most recent URI Global Assembly, held in Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 2002 (attended by, among others, Canada's Bishop of New Westminster, Michael Ingham, who recently oversaw the first same-sex blessing rite in his diocese).

As promoted by Artress, the labyrinth movement is New Age in form and content. In Walking A Sacred Path, her foundational book on the movement, Artress says, "The labyrinth introduces us to the idea of a wide and gracious path. It redefines the journey to God: from a vertical perspective that goes from earth up to heaven to a horizontal perspective in which we are all walking the path together."

"When I am in the center of the labyrinth … I pause to honor and bring into my being first the mineral consciousness, then the vegetable, then animal, human, and angelic. Finally I come to rest in the consciousness of the Unknown, which is the mystery, the divine pattern of evolution that is unfolding." She continues, "When walking the labyrinth, you can feel that powerful energies have been set in motion. The labyrinth functions like a spiral, creating a vortex in its center."

With Artress' New Age cosmology comes unorthodox theology - as shown by the following lifts from her book:

"The labyrinth is a large, complex spiral circle which is an ancient symbol for the Divine Mother, the God within, the Goddess, the Holy in all of creation. Matriarchal spirituality celebrates the hidden and the unseen .… For many of us the feminine aspect of the Divine has been painfully absent from our lives, our spirituality, and our Western culture. The Divine feminine is often the missing piece for which both women and men are searching...

"This Yahweh is supposed to have been the God that created all of the natural order, usurping the role of the Mother, the creator of life. Yahweh, God the Father, is the only version of the Transcendent God that is offered in Western Christianity. He is seen as the first cause of all things, the God of history. He is a faraway God whom we do not know personally. He does not seem to want to know us, either...

"May we lead a spiritual revolution that includes us all, relies on inner wisdom, accepts the guidance of a wisdom tradition, and recognizes compassion as its guiding principle. Let us allow the Father and Mother God to unite in sacred mystery. Let us build a world community in which all people have the opportunity to create meaning in their own lives."

The literature produced by Veriditas (the Labyrinth Project) since 1995 is as heterodox as Artress' book. The project's publications assiduously avoid providing the specific Christian content that anyone could get from the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross (a Catholic walking meditation on the Passion of Our Lord), or the Jesus Prayer. In the Labyrinth Project newsletters published in between 1996 and 2001, there is no mention of the Trinity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Empty Tomb, God the Father, or God as Lord and King. The words - and the concepts - of sin, divine judgment, heaven, hell, repentance, redemption, and salvation are likewise absent. The Project's newsletters rarely mentioned Jesus.

This is no accident; the mission of Veriditas is not to promote a specifically Christian use of the labyrinth. Instead, as Artress said in 1995, "the labyrinth is a universal devotional tool. Anyone from any faith can walk it and find refreshment for the soul and renewal of spirit."

In 1996, Artress proposed weekend labyrinth retreats as a way for "all to find healing, self-knowledge and our soul assignments and to continue weaving the Web of Creation." She added that the Labyrinth is "a perfect spiritual tool for helping our global community to order chaos in ways that take us to the vibrant center of our being. You walk to the center of the labyrinth and there at the center you meet the Divine."

In 2000, Artress wrote of the effects of this ool: "I'm surprised by how perfect the labyrinth is for our times. It provides a fluid pattern that allows the structure between body, mind and spirit to break down. That is a tremendous offering at this time, because we are so divided in this world. The fact that people who walk the labyrinth can loosen their strictures and soften their boundaries is truly amazing."

This all-purpose spiritual tool has the approval of the highest authorities in the Episcopal Church. In 1999, 2000, and 2001, Phoebe Griswold - the wife of ECUSA' s Presiding Bishop - led labyrinth pilgrimages to Chartres Cathedral, under the auspices of the Labyrinth Project; she also published an article on the labyrinth of Chartres in the Winter 2001 issue of Anglican Theological Review. As of 2001, thirteen Episcopal cathedrals had labyrinths, "including St. John the Divine in New York, National Cathedral in Washington and St. Mark's in Seattle." Grace Cathedral, San Francisco--the seat of Bishop Swing--has two labyrinths. One, a large rug with the labyrinth design, is inside the cathedral near the Baptismal font. The other, made of terrazzo stone and open 24 hours a day, is in the plaza outside the cathedral entrance, between the cathedral and the diocesan office.

The labyrinth movement has gained many followers utside the Episcopal Church, as well. In early 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Millions of people have walked 1,800 labyrinths around the country, with 1,100 people trained specifically to teach others how to walk them. Dozens of labyrinths have been built in the Bay Area." Whether they know it or not, these seekers are being led toward the "Divine feminine," and away from God.

-More Weird Spirituality-

If the labyrinth is not to your taste, how about some Egyptian and Voodoo gods?

Another New Age Anglican supporter of the URI is the Very Rev. James Parks Morton, formerly the dean of the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, and now president of the Interfaith Center of New York.

While at St. John the Divine, Morton said, "The language of the 'Sacred Earth' has got to become mainline." Morton acted on this belief by holding a St. Francis Day communion service in 1993 that invoked the gods Yemanja, Ra, Ausar, and Obatala during a chant just before the bread and wine were brought to the altar; the celebrant was then-New York Episcopal Bishop Richard Grein. (Yemanja is an Afro-Brazilian goddess of the sea; Ra is the Egyptian sun god; Ausar - also known as Osiris and the Green Man - is the Egyptian god of life and death; Obatala is the Voodoo "Father of Wisdom.") It was from the pulpit of Morton's cathedral in 1979 that James Lovelock first publicly announced the Gaia Hypothesis - that the earth as a whole is a living, conscious organism.

Morton has worked to spread the Green gospel worldwide; he "co-founded the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, a group that has reached over 53,000 congregations of every faith across America with the ideas of sacred ecology and environmental responsibility." He has also been a board member of the Earth Charter Project and of Global Green, USA - the U.S.affiliate of Gorbachev's Green Cross International. Morton was a co-chairman of the Parliamentary Earth Summit, held in 1992 in conjunction with the UN Conference on Environment and Development; he filled the same role for the "Wisdom Keepers II" conference, held in conjunction with the 1996 UN Conference on World Settlement.

-OutFoxed-

Last but not least, there are the activities of Matthew Fox, a former Dominican priest who was received as an Episcopal priest by Bishop Swing in December 1994.

In 1995, Swing told the Diocesan Convention, "this year Matthew Fox and I are gathering an ecumenical group to create an alternative liturgy for young adults." Swing lent $85,000 of diocesan funds to help Fox establish the University of Creation Spirituality, and joined former Gov. Jerry Brown in dedicating the new university in August 1996.

As of the spring of 2003, the school had about 200 students enrolled in its doctor of ministry program. At the 1997 diocesan convention, Swing praised Fox's "total exploration of the power of God in the goodness of creation" at the University of Creation Spirituality, adding that "The experiment is worthwhile and aims at tomorrow and forever."

Fox leads syncretic worship services that are consistent with the ideology of the URI, which he also supports. He says, "The Techno Cosmic Mass (TCM) has been up and running for five years in Oakland...By altering the form of worship through taking in the elements of rave celebrations, three things happen: First, new life flows through the ancient liturgical formulas, and second, ravers are relieved of the drug aspect of raves and learn they can get high on worship itself. Third, the priesthood is not projected so exclusively onto a single minister but everyone participates in midwifing the grace of the event (no vicarious prayer!). Because everyone dances, everyone offers the priestly sacrifice…

"Themes for the Mass, which attracts not only many kinds of Christians but also Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Taoists, Jews, pagans and goddess people, are chosen consciously," Fox says. "They include: The Green Man; Imagination, Dreams and Visions; the Return of the Divine Feminine (where we dance in the context of 400 images of the goddess from all the world's traditions including of course the Black Madonna and Mary from the West); the Celebration of the Sacred Masculine, Gaia (usually on Mother's Day); the African Diaspora, the Wisdom of Rumi and the Sufi Tradition, Kabbalah and the Jewish Mystical Tradition, Feast of Lights (in December), Celtic Spirituality, Flowers, Plants and Trees, the Holiness of Animals, Our Lady of Guadalupe, The Sacredness of Our Bodies and more. The themes are of universal attraction just as dancing is and worship is. Dancing of course takes us into our lower charkas [sic] where we literally connect with the earth and so this kind of worship truly serves an ecological era."

Each month, more than 1,200 people attend these services, which are held in a former ballroom in Oakland, California. Two observers of trends in American religion - one of whom is the San Francisco Chronicle's religion reporter - say that Fox's "creation spirituality" has "found an eager audience among lapsed Catholics of the baby-boom generation."

Matthew Fox described the Planetary Mass that occurred at Grace Cathedral on Reformation Sunday, October 29, 1994. There was a sun altar and a moon altar, used in a "Mass" where sin was "renamed:"

"It was like being in a forest, where every direction one turned there was beauty and something interesting to behold. This included not only the singers, dancers, and rappers … but also the projections on large video screens, on television sets, on a huge globe suspended over the beautiful altars (one a sun altar, the second a crescent moon altar). On the screens were hummingbirds hovering, galaxies spinning, flowers opening, humans marching, protesting, embracing and polluting (sin was present and indeed renamed for us at the Mass). Life was there in all its panoply of forces, good and not so good, human and more than human." Perhaps it's just as well that Fox did not name the "more than human," "not so good" forces that attended this service.

Bishop Swing was present at Fox's 1994 rave liturgy, and loved it. The bishop said, "the Mass reminds him 'of an experience I had as a 9-year old boy in West Virginia, coming to a sense of God through Nature. That gets so layered over by generations of study and theology, but this Mass leads one back toward that great awe.' Swing...bobbing to the techno-music, says it's 'so nice to see the church with a new song and a new language.'" He added: "The whole business of having the Eucharist in the context of Nature, and the planets, and the unfolding of life is a context that has to happen. This is probably around the time of the genesis of liturgies like this, and I'm sure that there will be more and more. It's coming … So we brought a lot of people in their 20s and 30s who don't go to church, and they were struck by this. I love it. I think we're on our way."

Fox's teachings have led other Anglican leaders to greater sympathy for New Age beliefs. George Carey, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 through 2002, "said he had initially been 'hostile' to New Age ideas but had come to appreciate their emphasis on creation and the environment. He told a conference on new religious movements at the London School of Economics that the Church had much to learn from New Age spirituality. He first thought New Age was a muddle of beliefs at odds with mainstream Christianity until he read Christian writers such as Matthew Fox on the subject."

Here follow some examples of the theology supported by ECUSA's Bishop Swing:

--- Fox has said that his theological agenda is to overturn Christian doctrine as it has been understood since the first ecumenical Council at Nicaea: "What is the rediscovery of the Cosmic Christ if not a deconstruction of the 'power Christology' that launched the Christian empire in the Nicean [sic] Council in the fourth century and an effort to reconnect to the older, biblical tradition, of Christ as cosmic wisdom present in all beings?"

--- Fox quotes Shiva, "creator and destroyer of things" and "lord of the dance," as saying: "The phallos is identical with me. It draws my faithful to me and therefore must be worshipped;" Fox then says, "This is Cosmic Christ language."

--- He also identified the Virgin Mary as a goddess: "As far as the Goddess tradition goes, for years I've recognized that the Goddess in the Catholic tradition was, of course, Mary.…Recently, I taught a class entitled the 'Goddess and the City,' about how things were in the 12th century. As Mary, the Goddess sat on a throne, ruling the universe with justice and compassion, as well andthe intellectual and artistic life of the medieval European city." (Leave it to a radical ex-Catholic to lend support to the Fundamentalist canard that Catholics worship the Theotokos.)

While not (yet) "mainstream," certainly, all of the foregoing is nonetheless included in the "diversity" in ECUSA proclaimed by its liberal leaders.

---------------------------- The foregoing is based on a chapter in a book-length analysis of the United Religions Initiative and the New Age movement, to be published later this year by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a research organization that monitors international organizations' activities from a pro-life, Catholic perspective.

The sources used in this story include, among others: Lauren Artress' book Walking a Sacred Path, newsletters and leaflets issued by the Labyrinth Project between 1996 and 2001, documents from the Labyrinth Project web site (http://www.gracecathedral.org/labyrinth/index.shtml),

the spring 1995 issue of Grace Cathedral Magazine, articles from the San Francisco Chronicle about the Labyrinth movement (Don Lattin, "Leader of labyrinth movement builds new empire upon sand," San Francisco Chronicle, May 13, 2001, and Heather Knight, "The peaceful path: In troubled times, more people turn to labyrinths to walk their worries away," San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 28, 2003),

Terry Mattingly's report on the St. Francis Day service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1993 ("Liturgical Dances With Wolves 1993: Ten Years As An Episcopalian - A Progress Report," http://tmatt.gospelcom.net/tmatt/freelance/wolves.htm),

articles from the Pacific Church News (the magazine published by the Episcopal Diocese of California) from 1996 through 2002, two books by Matthew Fox (The Coming of the Cosmic Christ and Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh), articles from 1995 issues of Fox's magazine Creation Spirituality, and Victoria Combe, "Carey 'has learned' from the New Age," London Telegraph, April 20, 2001, on-line at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/04/20/ncarey20.xml.

Another valuable resource on the Labyrinth movement is Mark Tooley, "Maze Craze: Labyrinths Latest Fad for Spiritual Seekers," Touchstone, September 2000 (on-line at (http://www.touchstonemag.com/docs/issues/13.7docs/13-7pg46.html).

A full list of sources is available from the author.

---- Permission to circulate the foregoing electronically is granted, provided that there are no changes in the headings or text.

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