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Episcopal Church's Office of Women's Ministries removes pagan ritual from website
"We have been astounded and grateful for the number of people who have taken an interest in The Office of Women's Ministries of the Episcopal Church through Christianity Today's recent weblog," begins a press release from that office today. "We profoundly regret that Christianity Today did not contact us before making claims such as, 'leaders of the Episcopal Church USA are promoting pagan rites to pagan deities.'"

Let's get one thing out of the way. Here's what we've repeatedly said, and this message is linked at the end of every Weblog posting: "Weblog is a compilation of articles, and therefore doesn't involve any original reporting, nor does it necessarily strive to separate hard news from opinion."

And Weblog stands by its "claim." Leaders is appropriate, since this appeared on the Episcopal Church USA (ECUSA) website, not some random priest's personal site or a message board somewhere. Promoting is accurate, since the Episcopal News Service sent out a dispatch Monday highlighting "worship resources that are currently available to be downloaded and used by all." This news release was on all three home pages of the ECUSA site. As for "pagan rites to pagan deities," see the Weblog.

It's all been a big misunderstanding, says the Women's Ministries release:

The material questioned in Olsen's article, "A Women's Eucharist: A Celebration of the Divine Feminine" was sent to us in good faith in response to our recent call for resources. We regret we did not realize that the material was copyright protected. Proper notifications were not included by mistake and so the page has been withdrawn from our website. …

The resources listed on our website are not approved liturgies of the Episcopal Church. These liturgies are intended to spark dialogue, study, conversation and ponderings around women and our liturgical tradition. There is quite a difference in presenting resources for people's interest and enlightenment and promoting resources as official claims of the Episcopal Church. Only General Convention has this authority.

So the problem with "A Women's Eucharist" is not that it directly sides with idols condemned in the Old Testament and idol worshipers, nor that it's a "Eucharist" with no mention whatsoever about the death or body of Christ, nor that it very deliberately takes the focus of worship off of God and on to woman. No, the problem is that it wasn't properly sourced.

And here's a question about the copyright protection. The very end of the "Women's Eucharist" page had the name and address of Glyn Lorraine Ruppe Melnyk, rector of St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church in Malvern, Pennsylvania. As we noted yesterday, she was also the woman who wrote it. One might have expected the notation at the end to indicate that she submitted it to the site as well. Surely if she did submit it, there wouldn't be such copyright problems. So perhaps we'll just trust the Office of Women's Ministries and believe that she was not the one who submitted it.

But the office's credibility is seriously undermined by its claim that it didn't promote the liturgy for actual use. Here's the line from the earlier press release:

The Office of Women's Ministries is working towards creating a resource to be used by women, men, parishes, dioceses, small groups, within the context of a Sunday morning service, or any other appropriate setting where the honoring of a woman's life passages and experiences beckons a liturgical response. … Although traditional liturgy acknowledges little of these aspects of women's lives, many women have taken up the task of creating and writing such liturgies for themselves or others. The Women's Liturgy Project has begun collecting worship resources written by women for women in order to create a resource that is accessible to all. There is already a working section on the Women's Ministries website that contains worship resources that are currently available to be downloaded and used by all. (emphasis added)

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October (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48