The "amazing" story of the little neo-pagan Eucharist that could

Conservative bloggers Ted Olsen at Christianity Today, various right-wing Episcopalians such as this guy, and Terry Mattingly at GetReligion have been foaming at the mouth over a recent liturgy posted by the Episcopal Church's Office of Women's Ministries. The liturgy (which supposedly has Druidic origins) begins:

We gather around a low table, covered with a woven cloth or shawl. A candle, a bowl or vase of flowers, a large shallow bowl filled with salted water, a chalice of sweet red wine, a cup of milk mixed with honey, and a plate of raisin cakes are placed on the table.

When all are seated on the floor and comfortable, one of the women lights the candles saying,

"Mother God, Giver of light, let this flame illumine our hearts and minds. May its warmth remind us of the love in which you embrace us all. We thank you, Mother, for light."

So the conservative religionists of the blogosphere are now claiming to have broken a great news item: "the amazing story of the little neo-pagan Eucharist that could." They believe this story may offer conclusive evidence that the theology battle in the Episcopal Church extends beyond issues such as homosexuality to the very core of doctrine. In short, that the Episcopal Church is now advocating the worship of idols specifically condemned in the Bible. Mattingly concludes: "If the Episcopalians have decided to drop, edit or re-refine the Decalogue, those of us who cover the Godbeat/godsbeat will really have a story on our hands."

This isn't the first time that Mattingly, an ex-Episcopalian, has called to the world's attention the horrors of pagan idol worship at the Sunday service. In my response to Mattingly's previous post on a Gaia mass at an Episcopal church, I concured that deep theological issues do indeed seem to divide liberals and conservatives. The divide seems to signal radically different understandings of the Divine, in my opinion.

With regard to the current controversy, I find myself sympathetic to folks on all sides. Theologically I'm most sympathetic to the liberals, naturally, and find the opinions of the conservatives to be horribly ethnocentric, primitive, and unenlightened. The conservative's notion that celebrating the earth or affirming feminine images of the Divine is repugnant to spirituality strikes me as retrograde. Their notion that disbelievers in their sky god go straight to a fiery hell is also, I think, a wee bit problematic.

But the conservatives do, I think, have a point. They desperately want to cling to a notion of a God separate from the world in a mythological heaven, a male deity who has spoken words in the Decalogue that specifically condemn the worship of false idols. From this vantage point, the current controversy over the worship of feminine images of the Divine in Christian churches must be very upsetting. If I believed that only my male deity was real and all other gods and goddesses were phony imitations, then naturally I would be upset if liberals in my church wanted to actually EXPAND my understanding of the Divine to include symbols and images and stories from cultural traditions outside my own.

Surely it is understandable that religionist reactionaries want to preserve their mythological understanding of the Divine over and against the Christian liberals and modernists with their demythologized, rational understanding of the Divine. Surely we can understand and empathize with the fear and anger they must feel, when their precious beliefs are being threatened not only from the secularists outside their churches but also from the more enlightened brothers and sisters within their own tradition? These conservative religionists are not ready to grow in their spiritual life, and they will resist all efforts to change and adapt.

In the Bible, it is said: "I am the Lord thy God ... Thou shalt have none other gods but me." And therein lies the witness of the spiritual heritage of the Isrealite people at a particular stage in their collective spiritual evolution. It is also the ethnocentric conceit of every religion at the level of mythic-level belief. The God of the Isrealites supposedly hated and opposed the gods and goddesses of every other tribe. And the hatred and opposition by other gods and goddesses was generally mutual. And today, much of the world remains at mythic-level religious belief or lower on the evolutionary ladder. Mythic-level believers fight holy wars over which god or goddess is the One True God.

The mythic-level approach to faith isn't the only alternative. Rational-level believers also recognize on some level that there is One True God, One Absolute Reality, or Great Spirit. What separates them from the mythic-level believers isn't believe in God, but the question of whether or not that belief is limited merely to a particularistic, ethnocentric revelation. There is One God, and that Being has many faces.

So what are the more enlightened Episcopalians to do? Their understanding of God has moved beyond the primitive sky god worship into a more sophisticated understanding that the Divine's work in human history can actually include not only revelations in the Bible but also the authentic spiritual experiences of pagan traditions. Indeed, they may even see positive traits in the pagan religions that are missing in much of otherworldly Christianity, including affirmation of the beauty of human sexuality and the goodness of the earth and all of creation. Shall they abandon Christianity to the primitive literalists and fundamentalists? Or shall they put up a fight?

As the battle lines in the Episcopal Church get drawn, it looks like the conservative religionists are in for a fight. The battle is indeed over more than homosexuality or the inclusion of feminine imagery in liturgies. The battle is between factions of a religion who are operating at two radically different levels of consciousness--mythological-believing conservative religionists on the one hand, and rational-minded religionists on the other.

God bless them all. And I pray that they will find their way to an understanding of God that is big enough for both of them. God, after all, is not merely found in the truths of the mythic-level religionists and the truths of the rational-level religionists. The Great Mystery that goes by the name of God or Spirit includes all their truths, and many more besides.

Comments

[C. Wingate]

One man's "rational" is another man's "rationalization". What's really going on here is something entirely different from your rather patronizing identification of the "conservatives" as unsophisticates obsessed with theological litmus tests.

The real problem is honesty. Once the syntactic hedge clippers are applied to the thicket of liberal revisionist verbiage, it's pretty clear that there is a group of people out there who actively disbelieve the traditional teachings of the church (and in ECUSA, that's not a very high standard to have to meet). It's also clear that they have no scruples at all about co-opting the power establishment at hand and thus effectively lie about what ECUSA teaches.

The notorious druidic "eucharist" is a case in point. It's not the esoterica-dabbling author of this "rite" who is the real problem here; we've always had Anglican clergy who did that. The novel aspect is how the staff in OWM put this thing up under the name of the church and then, under Rev. Rose's signature, did a bit of duck-and-cover that demonstrated either the most extreme carelessness or the most calculated dishonesty. It's hard for me to understand how a cleric could fail to understand the significance of a blasphemy so precisely perverse as to require a seminary education to write it, and given some of Rev. Rose's other writings I've found, it's pretty plain that she's very big on the uses of power that being a cleric or other church representative affords.

After all, the writers of Samhain rituals and anti-Hosean sacrifices surely could go and do their syncretic thing in some other hierarchy. The problem is, everybody would ignore them, seeing them as the fringe that they are-- or not noticing them at all. An ECUSA webpage, though, is a pretty big and, at least until we got to be the dilletante denomination, respected bullhorn. So it pays to keep one's finger on that bullhorn's "talk" button, and to push one's detractors' fingers off.

Frank Griswold is going around telling everyone (in his usual obscured style) what ECUSA is going to do about the Windsor Report. It's perfectly obvious, listening to the various diocesan bishops check in, that ECUSA itself is in no state to have a position, and that the responses to the report are all going to be about the divisions that already exist within the church. Presumptuous liberal attempts to speak for the whole church are failing utterly, because nobody is so stupid or so deaf that they can't hear the loud chorus of contradiction in the background. The same falsehood seems to stink up the Women's Ministry office; it just isn't plausible that they speak for women clergy as a whole, and it's blatantly obvious for who they do speak.

[Joe Perez]

C. Wingate: What a fine expression of the dilemma from the mythic-level religionist's point-of-view! Your own interpretation of doctrine is the One True Understanding, and the more enlightened folks within your own church are attempting to "co-opt" the church, apparently motivated by a cold, calculating "power grab" rather than truly spiritual conviction. The truth that you are unwilling or unable to see is that both the liberals and the conservatives are engaged in a "power grab" motivated by authentical spiritual conviction that THEY and THEY ALONE have the true understanding of their tradition. You believe that they are "a group of people out there who actively disbelieve the traditional teachings of the church" and THEY believe you are a bunch of unintelligent imbeciles who believe in superstitions one step above Binky the Space Clown, to put it bluntly. My point isn't that you're right or wrong, but that you are only seeing the conflcit from a partial lense. My sincere belief is that the Divine is bigger than you both... and my hope is that the Church finds a way beyond these warring factions into a genuine embrace of all stages of religious belief, recognized as the vital and partial stages in spiritual development that they are.

[Richard Amiel McGough]

God has prepared a little present for all his Episcopagan enemies on the eve of their "holy day" of Halloween. Its documented in an article I wrote called:

Apostate Episcopal Priest Designed Pagan Sex Ritual in Whoreship of BEL

You can read it here:

http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=41138

In service of the Almighty God and His Son the Lord Jesus Christ,

Richard Amiel McGough

[Christopher Culver]

I don't quite understand how you can say that neo-Paganism presents a more "rational" religion, while Christianity is left behind in the Dark Ages. If you look at the logical proofs of the existence of God, one sees that the necessary God is pretty close to the God of the monotheist religions than to any sort of pagan "great spirit" or universal energy. Try reading Swinburne, Hume, or St. Anselm. So far the neo-Pagans haven't offered up any rational support for their religion, the onus is on them.

[Joe Perez]

Hi Christopher,

I said no such thing. There are many stages of consciousness ranging from the archaic consciousness of infants to the most sublime states of saints, sages, and mystics. I believe Christians and neo-pagans and folks from virtually every religion can be at all stages. Your assertions to the contrary are a misunderstanding.

JOe

[Pi PhD]

Has anyone evaluated this article regarding "Beyond the Binary"?

http://integralpolitics.info/articles_gay_marriage_homosexuality_2.php

Perhaps Joe will "adjust" a little after reading that?

:o)

- pi -